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, storeem 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 dtournement: if VHS (originally intended for Vertical Helical Scan) is now identified worldwide as Video Home System, why cant 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 dj-vu taste characterizes web 2.0 audiovisual experiences. Wanna look at something familiar with someone elses 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

Were taught how to write, read and make calculations, but not how to look (at least, at the human-crafted mediascape were 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. Weve been nourished since birth with a constant and massive audiovisual stream, but its not sure if we already experienced the possibility to scream our personal line, to optically say something. Weve absorbed

cinematic nuances that were 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 were 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 bebop 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, its 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 whats exactly behind and beyondem? 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, were 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 well 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, were 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, were 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), its 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 singers 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 were looking at a carved out portion of life, but whats 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 filteredprocessed-reproduced on it. Waiting for the upload, were transmitting (while recording); reality is there, and were 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 were 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-euphoriatimes, 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 its 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: were 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 videos 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, its heading a pluralized tomo(u)rrow. Lets see.