diptych # 171 ~ the central instrument of our time

signs of Autumn / shafts of light ~ Keene, NY / Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

As I was watching The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he did a segment with the inventor of / founder of GoPro, the maker of GoPro, wear-them-on-your-body, video cameras and it got me to thinking on the image-centric world in which we live. One of my first thoughts was of a James Agee's statement from his intro to the seminal book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a collaborative effort comprised of Agee's writings and Walker Evans' pictures:

The camera it seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time.

Having written that statement in the 1941 picture making world, one can only imagine what Agee might think of the camera in today's obsessive / crazed picture/video making world. I'll take a stab at it and conjecture that he might write something like:

Images it seems to me, above and beyond unassisted human looking and seeing, to be the central reality of our time.

Albeit a virtual reality and that's where my imagination took over ....

.... I can imagine a movie, set in the future, about the human race where everyone of sufficient means (the haves*) is implanted with a GoPro-like image/video capturing device (a third eye on the forehead?) which is conveniently and effortlessly linked to a mega-Cloud of recorded human experiences, a sort of hyper Facebook / Instagram in the ethereal aether.

Fledgling humans not only begin recording their life events but are also fed - via a dizzying array of devices - an ever increasing dose of the life events of others which, of course, are interspersed with copious amounts of adverts. Once a sustainable level of virtual reality addiction is achieved, individuals are then left to their own devices (double entendre alert) in order to satisfy their diversionary needs and desires.

Over time, addicted individuals become much more interested and captivated by viewing the virtual reality world rather than experiencing the real world for themselves. Although, the rules of the game are such that they must make some time each day to feed images/recordings of their life into the Cloud in order to keep a steady supply of fresh chum in the water.

Plot wise, enter a group of subversive revolutionaries / radicals who are not only living their live lives but are also working to rescue as many of the virtual reality addicted bioroid-like humans as possible. The work of the reality-based radicals is hampered by the fact that they are hunted (with the purpose of cleansing them from the planet) by the advertising consortium which rules and controls the virtual reality Cloud (and hence, the bulk of humanity which inhabits it).

The movie contains a lot of action adventure and loud noises as such a pursuit dictates. However, there is some quiet behind the scenes drama in which the advertising overlords are trying desperately to redact the images/videos of the conflict between them and radicals. Images/videos which have, ironically, been hacked into the Cloud by the radicals for the propose of educating / informing the addicted to the conspiracy in which they find themselves intertwined. Unfortunately, the virtual reality addicted are unable to distinguish virtual reality from actual reality and therefore consider those images/videos as just another form of virtual reality diversionary entertainment.

At the end of the movie, the plot line is left unresolved in order that the movie can spinoff a number of sequels and a long running television series. All of which are loaded with adverts.

*the have-nots are left to wallow in the boring world of real life.

Comments

[michael david sullivan]

The sheer simplicity of the camera as recording device shames the the utter wordiness of trying to explain the phenomena. Good ol' Agee like to drink and got too wordy for our own good!!