THE THIN LINE BETWEEN ON AND OFF

a (re:)cyclothymic exploration

A : - Look me right in the eyes. What do you see?

B : - Myself.

The Pulviscular Eye

Every human being is an integrated cinematic industry. We monitor reality, record

endless strips of routine events, store‘em in our (visual) memory. At night this huge

amount of raw material is compressed and re-arranged by the unconscious; from

tireless but easily distracted cameramen we temporarily become unaware but rather

specific directors/editors. Dream sequences are then projected onto the black

surface of our closed eyelids; a private screening for a single spectator, a distillate of

our deepest obsessions. Sometimes disturbing, often curiously forgotten as soon as

we open our eyes and log into the real world, these fragmented solipsistic films

remain offline shadows fluttering around solid waking life. We take for granted the

subjective-point-of-view, quick-and-dirty, non-scripted and cut-less footage

produced everyday on a biocamcorder basis; asleep, we wait for the noctu[inte]rnal

show (nebulously narrative and filled with spatiotemporal & visual jumps) as a

funny or scary remix of these unavoidable long takes, some sort of an automatic

image-digestion side project.

Through cheap, easy-to-use and almost unintrusive prosumer videodevices, reality

binocular surveillance is nowadays often squared by crude, handheld, seldom

edited instant-movies. The everyman, finally equipped with one or more digital

eyes, rediscovers himself as an independent cine-operator and starts to look at daily

moments as possible clips to be collected and revised in a near future. Different

from their analogical progenitors (homemade videotapes), these subterranean

products are indeed quickly generated, modified and then shared on the net; as a

result, a grainy and confused galaxy of ordinary gestures is painlessly assembled and

disseminated, its creative possibilities residing in spontaneous and unpredictable

post-production strategies. Symptomatic acronym détournement: if VHS (originally

intended for Vertical Helical Scan) is now identified worldwide as Video Home

System, why can’t the Motion Picture Expert Group finally become a dispersed

people's Memory Process Electronically Generated, to skim and confront our

saturated media horizon with? The concrete world gets diluted on interchangeable

binary strings, a soft grass-roots CCTV system is anonymously established; never

knowing where a camera could be, offline reality becomes stuffed with online holes,

tunnels that directly replay you(r image) across the globe. Subconscious filtering

labour is now collective, hazy déjà-vu taste characterizes web 2.0 audiovisual

experiences. Wanna look at something familiar with someone else’s eyes? Or,

conversely, wanna lend your visual files for strangers to evaluate? The physical

realm is just a warehouse, sense and emotions are actually built on our mutual[ly]

externalized sight/site.

From beat to bit

We’re taught how to write, read and make calculations, but not how to look (at

least, at the human-crafted mediascape we’re just supposed to avidly consume).

Even after a good century of moving image storytelling (with the parallel

development and crossmediatic flooding of cinematic language), the average person

is still not always encouraged to develop a relative AV literacy. So, when

videopencils are unexpectedly delivered among users, their media exposure

background is far more detailed as input than the possi(a)bility of them creating an

informed, well-organized output. We’ve been nourished since birth with a constant

and massive audiovisual stream, but it’s not sure if we already experienced the

possibility to scream our personal line, to optically say something. We’ve absorbed

cinematic nuances that we’re probably not aware of; at first glance we know how to

distinguish a feature film from a documentary, or a spot from a videoclip, but we’re

probably not able to explain exactly how: no problem, this self-taught

awa[kening]reness can be fruitfully and retroactively stimulated once we

prosthetically switch on.

Similar to what happened with the jazz revolution (where it took phonography and

improvisation to bring music back to its original use as a playful and real-time

artform), omnipervasive pulviscularecording will eventually break film/video's

formal and arbitrary structures – their characteristics being randomly rearranged

by inexperienced but genuine hands. Often without proper formal training, the be-

bop pioneers were able to effectively shake the sc[lerotized]ore-driven occidental

canon precisely by jumping into the abyss of sounds with aural sensibility as their

only parachute; almost a century later, via countless, exuberant digital trumpets,

optical jazz solos start to resonate in the infoscape while diegetic scr[ipt]uples melt

into videostreams of (un)consciousness - relentlessy infiltrating & challenging the

mainriver. The stylish camera-stylo radically metamorphoses into a camera-biro

style, a way of taking [jazzy?] notes that echoes the primal ontology of video (to be

– as opposed to cinema - a live technology, capturing time on the spot without

necessary physical impression or storage). As a strong comunicative/rumina(c)ting

attitude is gonna redefine/remix standard procedures, dialects and serendipities are

expected to flourish at the border of academic art; videodialogues will become

regular conversational practices, manifesting an increasingly d(uctil)ynamic and

pi[dgin]ctographical taste. Translating perception into pure dataflows: neither big

concern for authorship or aesthetics, nor off-broadway disciplined rebellion (in case,

on-narroway is the target). After the debatable era of g[lamourous]athering, here we

have some tasty but lumbering home-grown delicacies: updating from neolithic to

paleolithic, it’s time for an agriculture of the eye.

Still from "Quixotic", an improvis(ualiz)ed short by @lbert figurt. Cinema Solubile: celebrating 100 years of futurism with a 24-hour film marathon

Groningen 2009

Tele-pyjama parties

Starting from our very intimate surrounding, videosecretion is becoming the norm.

Telepresence, in a very wide sense, coincides with telecomunications: fragments of

you are all around me, just waiting to be detected. Videopresence has virtually

existed since the advent of TV, but only recently has become usable for private

interactions. Thanks to the juicy lovematch between cheap webcams & affordable

broadband connections, millions of people are nowadays videotalking. In this

worldwide-scale immaterial cartography, screens seem to be the theoretical

watersheds. But what’s exactly behind and beyond‘em?

The eye is both a camera and a mirror; digital eyes are cameras, but in videochats

they also become mirrors. Emerging online applications like Chatroulette, allowing

the user to casually leaf through his peers, finally clarify that by using a webbie we

turn into channels. Transmitting (from) our highly accessorized telerooms, flying

over the internet by manoeuvring buttons in our lounge cockpit & spreading our

post-chronobiological coordinates all around, we’re dramatically exposed to the

possibility of being “nexted” or “zapped”. My [third] eye is mounted on your

laptop; when you call (or accidentally find) me, your [third] eye awakes in my

laptop. Videochatting means opening tridimensional chasms in interlocutors’

screens; our actual position rapidly packed and sent to the other, we scrutinize him

via an extrusively rented pupil. Browsing potential videopartners is a very intriguing

and terrifying re(a)lational sport - I stare at you looking at me while peeping at

myself glancing at us two from the flipped desktopreview.

In just a few years, the fascinating wilderness of accidental framing is quickly

vanishing. Re[cursive]flexi(a)bility is virtually assured; from a haphazardly

expanded visual privacy we’ll hopefully move to a more refined self-exposure (both

in terms of light/frame composition and of visibility). Or maybe in the near future

everything will be arranged webcamwise, allowing us to take care of only what is

visible – the rest of our rooms, or life, abandoned and drowned in chaos. Videochat

as voluntary, self-inflicted bigb(r)otherin’, ephemeral online data for anyone - or

nobody; passing the days leaning out of public livecams (as ultimate windows on

our screened life), broadcasting our own lives. When the gadget is on, we’re also

on[line]; a form of subtle s(kype)talking - archiving others without directly pointing a

camera – can be the outcome, as well as plenty of astonishing videocadavrexquis or

freaky youtopian hikikomori formats. The computer display as the paramount

wonderland theatre: a mad reality-shake where everything can happen (better, be

instantly reported & captured), giving rise to s[creenshot]ituationist docufictions.

Introspective drosteffect from "Skype is the limit" (a multimedia project by @lbert figurt, Amsterdam 2010)

Proletarian cubism

Parallel - or maybe just complementary - to the eclectic stardom[estic] odyssey

(occurring across extemporaneous arenas of connected laptops) is the proliferation

of LCD surfaces of many kinds and dimensions in public spaces, especially relevant

when these dynamic sources are embedded in private mobile devices. Already quite

accustomed to human-made urban landscapes whose aftertaste is uncannily shaped

by commercial stereotypes, we’re indeed not too surprised or ravished if some big

video projection or huge display adds an (audio)visual complement to the artificial

playground. If cinema and TV rhetoric progressively advanced from drawing on

the real to suggesting photogenic steps for its staging, an en-plein-air overlayed

screening is just a coherent step forward in this blurring boundaries scenario. But

when clusters of personalized miniscreens suddenly enter our lives, or when we

enter one or more of them without knowing (or without caring too much), it’s

perhaps wort[ime]h to reflect on this molecular splintering of viewpoints.

At the end of a concert the musician announces his latest hit; everybody used to

raise a lighter to warmly appreciate the long-awaited song, while in these days the

flames’ swarm is replaced by a videophones’, and the singer’s image instantaneously

explodes into kaleidoscope fragments. Like many post-modern votive candles,

digital eyes are launched above the regular view, fighting for a clear perspective,

surrounding and optically hugging the target. Tridimensional vlogging

syn[chronicity]ergy winds among the excited crowd, a new kind of spectacle is

added to and superimposed on the first one. Video-bootlegging material that will

soon be transferred online (usually without further sound or image adjustment), is in

the moment narrowcasted at a small distance for indiscreet, shortsighted or lazy

fans. Philosophically speaking, the LCD reveals itself as the m[ethonymical]atrix, or

mother, of this inside-out and swapping gaze-o-rama; a small liquid crystal display

(regularly attached and recently built into video/photographic equipment) that

liberates the eye from a binding prox[emics]imity with the viewfinder, encouraging

experimental and aleatory framing while simultaneously acting like a preview

monitor. It seems like we’re looking at a carved out portion of life, but what’s really

running over the display is an already digitized sequence of visual stimuli (i.e. liable

to real-time zooming procedures in absence of an actual lens); a bunch of liquidata

whose destiny - to be endlessly poured and sipped through

com[putational]municating vessels – is figuratively inscribed in its original spouting

form. Reality is not grasped by or represented in the miniscreen; it is filtered-

processed-reproduced on it. Waiting for the upload, we’re transmitting (while

recording); reality is there, and we’re centripetally or centrifugally doublechecking it

(whilst immersed).

Public webcam turned into a rudimental communication platform from "Skype is the limit" (a multimedia project by @lbert figurt, Amsterdam 2010)

Offading out

Just like many unintentional neuroticelebrities, at length we may find ourselves

overwhelmed by a constant spectacularization of the contingent – the distinction

between a narcissistic image-bulimic ecstasy and a paparazzi nightmare being not

so clear. In the past we came out of our houses to breathe some fresh air, leaving

technology behind and happily facing the probabilistic opportunities of the street;

today we’re surrounded by sensors and bugs (both external and wearable), at the

point that the seemingly offline outside is in fact a dissimulated – not necessarily

glorious – red carpet. Photocam-free parties are blooming here and there, as

archeological rem[emorial]edies to celebrate good ole’ pre-recording-euphoria-

times, when losing control went along with losing the memory of it the very next

day. Metropolitan legends about remotely activated webcams leads to paranoiac

sticky-tape-based habits, or even drastic hardware removals. The up-skirt shots

phenomena (nonchalantly hunting for images below the lines of etiquette, midway

between soft pornography and underwear mapping) is catalysing unexpected

audiences on the net.

Curtains are vanishing, or maybe it’s just that we love to indulge in

sm[ediated]ooth voyeuristic behaviour without accepting the (symmetrical)

counterpart. A miniaturized camera mounted on a mobile phone is not just a

powerful enhancement, but probably a hidden metaphor: we’re expected to discuss

video, to walk with the idea of video in mind and the possibility to effortlessy realize

it in the pocket, to look at the video universe with more attention, but to also grasp

the microcosm of our own daily events with an augmented lucidity – and possibly

without the device. In the end, the unlimited productive & storing capacities

guaranteed by digital reprovisual apparatuses, along with the web as the main

platform for creative potlatches and scattered cooperation, could be a way to

reposition ourselves both as producers and consumers within the AV mediascape;

the way we look at the world (is it video’s referent or viceversa?) will change

accordingly. The online videoframework has not acquired a specific trajectory yet –

it totally depends on us; suspended between a mere replica of today and

recombinant meditations about yesterdays, it’s heading a pluralized tomo(u)rrow.

Let’s see.