Easter week at the Met was a mob scene. I found myself trying to imagine the least popular areas to get away from the crowds but i wasn’t passing up the opportunity to visit the 20th century wing. My focus on the people brought me to a realization which had escaped me in the past. A good percentage of the visitors were snapping pictures with their cell phones. What do they do with these pictures?
I have a pretty good cell phone but the pictures are still not as good as the ones on the internet of just about every piece in the Met.
Are these trophies? Bagged to increase the stature of the clicker in his social circle. Are they aligning themselves with something perceived to be greater than the everyday? Maybe they just don’t have time to look now but will review their visit later on the phone.
I noticed the following in an article about the movie Passio being performed this week at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Yes performed, it’s a silent film accompanied by Trinity Choir performing the Arvo Pärt composition St. John Passion.
Mankind’s Appetite for Destruction in the 20th Century
“The movie evokes a theme that has increasingly surfaced in the contemporary world of media inundation. It suggests how our obsession with studying, multiplying and beautifying our images robs us of our humanity. Instead of contemplating paintings in a museum, visitors prefer to take pictures of them with their digital cameras. Reality television is unreality. And in the movies, violent, digitally enhanced spectacle is steadily subverting human drama. Studying life through a camera’s lens turns us into detached observers reluctant to tear ourselves away from the role of clinical voyeur to take action against the very inhumanity we witness and record.”
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: April 27, 2007
What’s the story here? Do we not have enough time to contemplate so we’ll TIVO life and hopefully get to it later? How many Cd’s have I bought that I haven’t had time to listen to more than once? I rarely watch a film more than once so why own the DVD? Am I increasing my social stature with my vast library of media I could choose to access at any time but I’m so important I don’t have time for such things.
I saw an interesting film on Demand through Showtime. The film wasn’t as interesting as the story told as preface. it was part of the “This American Life” series episode 4 “The Camera Man”.
The part that intrigued me was an animated short by cartoonist Chris Ware about the danger observing life from behind the safe distance of a camera lens. Chris told a story about a grade school phenomenon which had a bad outcome. The kids in the playground took to playing tv show games. Interviewing each other with cardboard cameras and developing competing “networks” to get the exclusive story. A cute game until the whole schoolyard was caught reporting the news as two kids beat the shit out of each other. The teachers took all the cameras away and the trend was over.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbVeN13wGFc]
What about us? Who’ll take our cameras away? How many home video scenes will we be outraged at before we realize someone was standing around filming this and not doing or saying anything? How far away from the art can we get? If I capture art in my phone is that enough? Will I be safe then? Can i avoid participating if I’m recording?