It's been a while since my last post and much has occurred that might merit writing about. However, I choose today to focus on something I have noticed increasingly creeping into several experiences that I enjoy...
With the advent of the smartphone--whereby everyone now has a voice recorder, video-camera, still camera, and access to social media, in their pocket-- there is a surprising increase in 'mediated experience'. There is a dirth of academic writing to support this observation, however I'm more concerned with the practical applications.
As a performer, I am familiar with being recorded and having my photo taken. However, what I am finding more and more, is that audiences no longer engage in performances but, instead, wish to 'capture' them. For example, two weeks ago I was performing in a lecture-demo format with a respected colleague of mine in a beautiful, intimate space. We had roughly 20-30 spectators per session and were close enough not to need mics, nor were we separated by the traditional stage-seats division. Here was the perfect opportunity for a few people to come together and be in the unique and ephemeral experience of that particular interaction, which was specifically for that group, at that time, in that space. Instead, over half of the people 'watched' the performance through the narrow lens of their camera phones, attempting to 'steal' some part of the event, myself, and my colleague for themselves and their extended networks.
I find this shift incredibly sad. There is something to be said for experiencing a moment, where a memory is created through the visceral combination of the senses in that particular and unique moment. A photograph is but a milliseconds' capture of an entirety that cannot be duplicated. As Roland Barthes writes, photography is like "the gesuture of a child pointing his finger at something and saying: that, there it is, lo! but says nothing else; a photograph cannot be transformed (spoken) philosophically, it is wholly ballasted by the contingency of which it is the weightless, transparent envelope." (Camera Lucida; 1980, p.5)
In short, once in a while put the phone away! Experience what is happening to you with your own body, experience some viscerality. Your friends on Facebook and Twitter only cursorily care anyway! Put some memories in your bodymind, let social media be a mere superficial scrape of the totalities that are your experiences.
It's worth it.
