Blog

Temporal Imaging, Reality TV, and The Vision Machine

In preparation for leading a discussion last fall, I did a deep reading of chapter 5 of Paul Virilio’s The Vision Machine (download a free PDF). As I’m finding is typical with Virilio’s writing, he packs a lot of ideas into a short number of words. But there are a few overarching threads that weave in and out of the chapter. I present a couple of them below. While the book was published in 1994, it is still very relevant as a critique of today’s technology and culture. In fact, at times it seems eerily predictive of our present.

Is TV Affecting Our Ability to Store Memories?

Of most interest for me was the idea that the temporal nature of film, video, and computer graphics is altering our ability to create memories. The way I interpret him is that we only have available to us so much “depth of time” (in relation to depth of field), and splitting our experience into discrete time slices thus limits how much of it we can retain. Before temporal imaging (e.g. film or video), our memories were not stored in a frames-per-second manner, but were more about story and sense perception.

In real, non-imaged life, the temporal resolution of memory is affected by the context of the event being remembered. Think about the difference between memories of a casual conversation versus a car accident. The conversation is likely to result in memories primarily about some of the things that were said, with very little temporal resolution of the physical surroundings. But in a car accident, the context results in an extreme temporal focus. Time appears to slow down as each detail of the impending critical situation is imprinted on our brains. We would have a very different story to tell about each of those events, and the types of memories recorded were dependent on the context in which they were perceived.

25 second clip from Hell’s Kitchen w/o audio, Season 8, Episode 1, 2009

But in virtual experience driven by temporal imaging such as film or TV, the pace of cuts can flood our short term memory. Consider the above video clip, taken from the opening of the reality TV show Hell’s Kitchen, Season 8 (I have removed the audio). How much of this can you retain? Recent studies suggest that we can only remember three or four things at once. In a real life experience, the context of an event can expand the length of these three or four things. But the frames-per-second nature of video, and the fast-paced nature of video edits may be robbing us of the ability to perform such an expansion. Virilio would say that our temporal construction of memory is an essential part of what helps us distinguish between real and fake, and if virtual imaging is changing our ability to store memories then it’s changing our ability to identify the real.

This is one of the concepts I explore in my recent work, titled Speed of Reality. The piece looks at how these fast edits are affecting our perception of reality TV. Does it change how we form memories? If yes, does it change it in non-TV contexts as well? Is “reality” media altering non-mediated reality?

Pervasive Computer Vision

The Vision Machine, by Virilio

While my interpretations regarding memory formation outlined above were of most interest, Virilio focuses most of the chapter on what he calls the Vision Machine. He saw us as entering a world of sightless vision, where machines create their own view of the world for their own purposes—thus changing our relationships to reality and power. This “splitting of viewpoint” between humans and computers is an essential component for artificial intelligence.

Vision machines that perceive us and interpret us for their own purposes, even in our private spaces, has lead to an erosion of public and private space. They also enable a new genre of military deterrence, where images, and the manipulation of them, become more effective as ammunition than conventional weapons are. This leads to a “total dissimulation” where wars are fought through images by the Perceptron, a 24-hour real-time telesurveillance-enabled and -controlled vision machine. In this space the plausible or implausible replaces true and false—it’s all about what the images may or may not represent. The speed of imaging becomes paramount, and thus is the machine’s primary sense. As such, extensive time gives way to an experience of ‘intensive time,’ or technologically accelerated moments beyond our comprehension that result in a new concept of reality where speed prevails over time and space.

Certainly Virilio’s predictions about sightless vision have come true. In the New York Times’ recent article, titled Smarter Than You Think – When Computers Keep Watch, the author details many of the ways that computer vision technologies have crept into our daily lives. Everything from the health care industry to computer gaming companies now employ ‘smart’ vision technologies in order to improve human-computer interaction and data collection. Without question, these applications are fun and potentially useful. But the technologies are also used by law enforcement and corporations to elicit our unspoken reactions and thoughts about the things we see and hear.

Google’s landmark recognition program Goggles can recognize architectural artifacts in photographs and automatically provide background information about them. Some have asked Google to include facial recognition in the program, something they could easily do. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, says they think doing would be “too sensitive,” and risk “enabling stalker behavior.” At least for now humans appear to be in control of the technology. But as these applications become more and more tied into national surveillance camera networks, and increasingly used by machines for machines, Virilio’s prediction of a Perceptron could inch closer to reality.

How Accessible Should An Artwork Be?

I have heard and held a variety of opinions over the years on the issue of accessibility in the arts.

Blasting Away My Audience with Loud, Ugly Music

Cover image for an old CD of my music

When I started out in music school I was proud if a listener walked out on a performance of my work, unable to understand or enjoy it. All the more space for those that did (e.g. me and the few other people on the planet who had a context to understand the piece). This was fine for a year or two, but the more I listened and the more I wrote, the less excited I became about driving away my audience. It wasn’t that I wanted my music to be any less complex, or to be any prettier. But I did want a wider audience, and in order to get one I had to try harder to provide a context for those who lacked one.

Looking for Increased Accessibility in my Music

By the time I left music school I was writing some of my most raucous sounding work, but it was definitely more accessible. By integrating more recognizable forms, working harder on titles that reflected something in the music, and shifting my construction of rhythm and pitch into areas that showed awareness of the outside world, people stopped walking out. The result wasn’t a reduction in complexity or a dumbing down of concept, but an increase in layered meaning (more on that in a bit).

Outside a New Medium Looking For a Context

For the last ten years or so my artistic focus has been on the visual arts. When I started the switch to visual my artistic medium was new, but my conceptual approach was already well developed. I still wanted that higher degree of accessibility, but to provide it in the new medium I would need a broader understanding of the visual contexts viewers bring to a work. Thus began an intensive self-driven course in the artwork of others.

One venue for this self study was museums. I spent a lot of time in them, looking at everything I could. Very quickly I ran back into this accessibility issue, but this time it was as the outsider looking in. I shortly grew tired of taking my time to look at work that cared nothing about me. Even as I learned more and more, I unsurprisingly continued to find works that presumed a context I didn’t have. But here I was, a knowledgable and interested person trying to get something from the work, and kept finding pieces that provided nothing.

Layered Meaning

By layered meaning I intend to describe a set of meanings that provide something of interest to viewers/listeners with a variety of backgrounds. These viewers range from the interested novice (someone willing to spend a few seconds looking at my work), all the way up to seasoned artists or critics who bring a lifetime of art historical context with them when they consider what I’ve made. I want each of these two, and everyone in between, to take something away from the piece: an idea, a suggestion, and/or a question. Perhaps more importantly, I want my work to invite those with less context to engage with the work and learn more about it. In other words, I want their efforts to be rewarded, not repelled.

Layered Meanings in Speed of Reality

A good example of my focus on this is a recent piece titled Speed of Reality. This work, which explores issues of speed, editing, and sound in reality TV, is composed to provide something for each of these viewers.

For those without a developed art understanding, the piece presents a portrayal of a visual medium many are familiar with—reality TV. If your only context is having watched a reality TV show, you will hopefully walk away from this piece thinking about how what you watch is a constructed presentation with particular intentions. If you spend a bit more time watching the work, you can understand more about the mechanics of that construction, and perhaps how it relates to intention. In other words, the piece invites you to consider it further.

For those with a sophisticated art historical understanding, the piece tries to provide all of the above and more. They might also think about the new ways reality TV is mediating reality, or how the structure of the program alters the meaning of the content. Maybe they would even tie it into ideas of mine regarding how memory is formed in the face of fast-paced cuts, ideas that grew out of my reading of Paul Virilio. A viewer with a complex background in new media would hopefully take away that I’m interested in how algorithmic the editing of these shows has become.

As the artist I can’t begin to predict all of what the viewer might see in my work. But by bringing intention to the concept, and by working to address those with a variety of backgrounds, I hope to engage my audience in a way that leaves them thinking about rather than (solely) cursing what they’ve seen or heard.

Related Content