Immersion Blog

It’s been interesting to see the Immersion video take on a life of its own and hit sites like YouTube, Digg, Kotaku, Technorati etc. Some of the most interesting discussions about it were on community sites. But what really surprised me was some of the “expert” opinion about it. Every couple of weeks or so I check the photography blog “Conscientious”, and yesterday I read an unusually misguided piece on it. In his post “When Photography Beats Video”, Colberg doesn’t seem to know that the video of “Immersion” was accompanied by a print piece that was composed of stills lifted from the footage;

I think despite of what many people want to believe, photography, when done well, can have a quality that moving images don’t have. Maybe this is because in that video there is basically nothing left to the imagination (you got the sound of the game in the background, and not being able to see the game itself actually doesn’t matter all that much; as an aside, this is also the reason why Hollywood remakes of foreign movies are typically so bad: Everything that might be “missing” in the original movie is spelled out) – in contrast, the viewer has to fill the photos with meaning her/himself.

This is also why I think that that fancy new camera that has lots of people drooling poses a real danger for newspapers, because they might be tempted to replace still images with movies, thus falling into the trap that I have just outlined. I think multimedia is the future of newspapers, but I think the kind of multimedia shouldn’t just be videos shot with some fancy camera. After all, if you want moving images you’ll watch TV. If newspapers want to be able to compete with TV, they’ll have to offer something TV can’t offer.

There is alot that can be said about this, but what’s interesting in this case is that Colberg has clearly filled the video with meaning himself. The internet is about distribution (Joerg, if you’re reading this, I urge you to look at this), and ad revenue is disappearing from both print AND broadcast. Both TV and newspapers are competing with just about everyone. Video games, in my view, are a new type of picture in that they are about sensation more than they are about meaning. The biggest companies that make these games are consolidating- and they are hugely more profit making than their sister companies in broadcast and print media. Online, the brand identities of traditional media companies mean very little. Subtext can be pretty much whatever you inform yourself with. And beyond that people view the kids as everything from agents of the game, completely possessed and impenetrable, to charming and funny. The Immersion video and stills are being picked up by both traditional media companies as well as places like YouTube, Digg etc. Here’s a sample exchange from YouTube;

WHTafTeach: “Have I got this right: A video camera perched atop a game station captures the intensity of children engaged in violent games? Scary brain-altering consequences. Watch the pupils of these sets of eyes reacting and changing the links or pathways of response.”

koalatalk: “YOU FAGGOT!!!”

The Leica rangefinder, in the 1930’s, was a “fancy camera”, and we all know what happened next. Picture Post, Life, Cartier-Bresson etc. Infact both photography and video are technology based mediums, so being sniffy about radical advances in technology is pretty stupid. Even the plate camera, the trusty 10×8 or 5×4 that is de rigeur if you want to be considered an art photographer (a fancy camera for a specific crowd) was at one point the top-end most advanced camera there was. It still is if you are looking for pure resolution and color depth.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 10:03 am and is filed under Immersion Project, Internet, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.