The Wallpaper July Issue is devoted to sex and features a video and stills they commissioned for “Immersion”. You can see the video above, or go to their site, where the screen is a lot bigger. A friend of mine saw the images in the magazine and pointed out that they’re stylistically very similar to my gamer kids pictures, and had I considered exhibiting them together? Bless. But it was gratifying that the thought occurred to him as soon as he saw the images. The experience of doing the shoot was actually really nice, very relaxed and easygoing. It’s an area that I’ll develop further, for sure.

Anna, an acquaintance who works at Jezebel, put up a story on the Wallpaper video. It’s pretty clear from the comments that people like the subjects of the video, which is great. Normally when you watch a porn video your brain is almost short-circuited by the action- I posted quite recently about how fMRI studies show that the brain starts simulating sex as soon as you see the action. So it’s interesting to record this type of activity without the part of the image that’s going to limit it to titillation. And I think the combination of that, with the further intimacy of them talking about their experience of porn is quite powerful. However, if they came across badly or were unsympathetic, it would be exploitative.

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.

It’s pretty good, except for the idea that the academic study is about the effects of video game violence. There are a couple of parts in the story that are a little misleading;

The children who are most expressive in class, according to their teachers, are also the most expressive in front of the screens. Others – particularly the hardened gamers – remain utterly expressionless: ‘Nothing. Not a glimmer of emotion. If you couldn’t see the hands moving, you wouldn’t know anything was going on at all.’

I’m not sure where that quote came from, but I didn’t say it. The implication is that it’s the gamers who’re glazed in class. In fact all of the kids I filmed (and will film for the study) are gamers. It isn’t true to say that the ones who’re inexpressive are the ones who play the most. I have no idea about that and never said anything about it. And it’s a distortion of the point. The way kids respond to things in video games and the media must be influenced by their own background and psychology. That’s not to say that violence in video games never has effects, it would just be interesting to know how different kids respond to different types of media.

The point about using war as the subject matter for the study, is that it’s outside of the subject’s experience. It’s about what the kids receive and respond to in each type of media. So it’s really more about the types of media than the subject matter of war.

But, having said that, on the whole it’s great to have something out there on it! I have a feeling Sam got editorialized on a couple of points, but the rest of it is really good…