Vicarious Feelings - Raw Sound

Third time's the charm. All my research on visual media led me to a couple of statements, one of them being - to really f**k with some heads, we have to f**k them from the inside. As I've mentioned before, when analyzing the videos, experience is a mental construct, an intangible entity, thus, we can't define it, thus, we can't store and archive it for others. What we CAN do is capture as much stimuli as possible, cleverly chuck them at the end-user and hope for achieving similar effect. Unfortunately, we do not yet possess technology or cleverness required to capture most of these subtle stimuli. So, a question arises - what other ways of getting into one's head we have?

Reminding myself of all the movies that "sucked me in", I've also realized how they've done it. Precise scene cuts, tricky camera angles, parallel shooting, silhouettes... All of these techniques are connected by one trait - not revealing anything. The most straightforward of media - sight - was stripped completely, leaving the audience with nothing but set of clues and their own imagination. Note the keyword. By removing part of the stimuli, a skilled director can force viewer's mind to "fill the gaps in". And to perform such daunting task, all the parts of the brain exceling in analyzing and patterning - parts crucial in process of experiencing - have to be active and working at full potential.

This is te exact strategy I've decided to try out this time. All the recordings coming from my trip from the university back home (don't mind the quality - again. I've only had digicam this time as well) are stripped of video stream, leaving only audio track left. Does it give out the feeling of "being there"? I certainly hope so.

The reason I think a raw audio might get better results without any accompanying video than with lies in the way our brain is recording and linking different stimuli. An example - what is the image that you'd link with the sound of car engines and smell of gasoline? I can't speak for everyone, but I do have a sound feeling that most people will think of either highway of petrol station. Another example - extensive echo and low pitch that wind generates at high altitudes? Mountain range? Twin Peaks (as in geographical place, not this god-awful TV series). When provided with such sound and smell, you can't help but bring about the mental image of whatever place you come up with.

The same principle I've been trying to use here - by providing only the auxiliary stimuli, you enforce the end-users' minds to project the whole scene, making use of their own imagination. This way, raw sound succeed at something two previous kinds of recording usually fail at. We trade off the accuracy for expression, but, opposedly to most video recordings, we don't end up in "uncanny valley" of media.

For everyone wishing to listen to the recordings, here's all of them (makes use of <audio> tag, was too lazy to find Flash player - use Firefox 3.5, Safari 4 or latest Google Chrome):

Part 1: Part 2: Part 3: Part 4: Part 5: Part 6: Part 7:

Or the download links:

• Part 1: MP3 | OGG
• Part 2: MP3 | OGG
• Part 3: MP3 | OGG
• Part 4: MP3 | OGG
• Part 5: MP3 | OGG
• Part 6: MP3 | OGG
• Part 6: MP3 | OGG

Vicarious Feelings - Video Recording

As promised, second take on an everyday experience would be done in yet another popular kind of media - video. This attempt is not as extensive as the previous one (IF "extensive" is even the right word to describe it) due to some technical difficulties cause by my bloody memory card being stuck inside the camera (could not transfer the files back to my PC or clear the card out to shoot more footage), but hey, I work with the tools I've at my disposal. :)

These videos, shot the day after, deal not with my work (thank whatever Gods are there), but with a regular day of a university student. Less of my everyday activities are covered (I needed both hands most of the time), yet I'm glad to share some of the views I lay my eyes upon most of the week.

Moving straight to the point, I do have a feeling that video is tremendously better way to pass the experience on that still picture, mostly on the account of portraying the main thing that still image cannot grasp - movement. With the movement come all the dynamic subtleties, little details that create most of the experience. Take an example. A mashed-up group of people in front of... up to 5 blokes, all of them in weird poses. How an you differ between a bar brawl, mosh-pit and traditional folklore dance? First clue, what kind of music in the background. Still image has no such information, most of the videos have audio track as well. Second clue, watch the movements. Are they chaotic or organized? Full-blown chaos, people ferociously swinging their limbs around - that's probably a bar brawl. Everyone's smiling, limb swinging looks more careless that malicious? We're in a middle of a mosh-pit (yes, I know there's hardcore moshing and body slamming, buy Oi! I'm trying to make a point here). Again, this kind of detail needs to be experience as a whole, not with just one frame, taken of out context. That's another feat video has as a media - the context. Still images often need explanation on the conditions during the shooting, the location, often the focus of a photo itself, it can rarely exist on its own (at least if its purpouse is not to be open to interpretation, artistic photography is exempt from that rule). "Moving pictures", on the other hand, often contain enough data to exist purely on their own, without additional data. End-user's mind can start patterning the information and evoking the experience without being constantly pulled away for clarification.

Video still feels little bit out of the place. Although much better at creating the feeling of "being there" than several other types of media, it is too vicarious, not intuitive enough. Why is that? Why does video resembles scrying more than participating?

To answer this question, we need to ask ourselves another one - where does experience take the place? In my opinion, experience is not tangible for it is a mind construct, not the actual occurence. All sensual factors, including (but definitely not limiting to) our basic senses, as well as spatial and rational awareness, social perception and numerous other variables, are influenced by whatever's in our minds. Such union of perception and rationalization is what we call experience.

How does it relate to video? In my opinion, it seems TOO descriptive. It usually focuses on the main subject of whatever's being filmed. It's straight to the point - a lot of subtleties are still kept "off-screen", keeping the whole creation too artifical to evoke any kind of experience, yet at the same time, there's enough information in focus to keep us from wondering about all the nooks and crannies not caught on tape. Video provides decent stimuli, but fails to awake the analyzing parts of our brains. Still, a note should be kept, I don't want to generalize - there are many great recordings that succeed in such task, but again, key lies in proper video manipulation (quick cuts, exotic camera angles and similar) and most of the tricks are based on NOT showing something to the viewer, leaving them wondering.

Video is a powerful media platform, capable of evoking strong experience - it needs extensive skills however, else we end up with yet another amateur-shot wedding scene (everyone forced at least once in their lives to watch wedding footage know the suffering).

And for all masochists out there, a YouTube playlist containing the video footage. Don't expect HD-class quality, I've only had a digital camera to record it:

Vicarious Feeling - Still Images

As part of my research on "experience" and possibility of sharing it with other people, testing different media is probably one of the most essential ones. The what factor, while critical, can't affect people without proper how - even the most visceral of horrors will be laughed at if presented with cut-out cardboard puppets (don't think too much about this metaphor, I certainly didn't).

One of the most obvious frameworks, tools allowing us to share the sensations, is still image - carvings, paintings and, in modern time, photographies. Being in a good mood, I've decided to conduct little experiment - my digital camera in my hand, I'll take a point-of-view picture of everything that catches my eye, from morning to late night. One little caveat was that I was supposed to spend the following day at the office, so I could no longer hope for capturing any fascinating, zany adventures, but hey - what's more of "everyday experience" than office work?

The next day, after a long day of tedious work, I've reached my shelterous room armed with two new scraps of knowledge. First one - up until this day, I haven't realized my job was SO BLOODY DULL. Second one - still images are extremely versatile with all their possible uses, but when it comes to re-experiencing something, they're possibly the worst conceivable choice. With one exception, I think - and this is when you're trying to make the end-user as bored as possible.

Why is that the still image is the worst way of evoking an experience?
The way I see it, there is one trait that all life, sentient or not, even more, that the whole world around us, has in common. Movement. No matter what we lay our eyes upon, the world is dynamic - every gesture, every notion, though or feeling is somehow related to movement. We relate stress with shaking hands and violent, quirky guestures. Arousal is strongly connected with close physical contact, while fear causes everything around to shake and twist, dilated pupils being partially responsible. Every sense is stimulated by some sort of movement, be it most obvious sight, sound, smell or taste.

Browsing through all the photos I've taken today, I have noticed something. It was boring, yes. But it was "there's a lot of similar pictures"-boring, not "another unclosed >>if<< statement and I'm going to shoot myself"-boring. Still imaging could not capture the flickering lamp that was slowly eroding my mind into little more than a gray pulp. It could not relay the nausea I felt everytime a co-worker sitting against me took a slurp (not a sip, slurp) of his tea, making a noise fit more for clogged pipes than human being. But the most important thing was that all the pictures I have taken were nothing more than just a dry description. It all gave me a detailed information, but no actual experience behind. To draw a conclusion from this point on is an easy task - what makes an experience is a constant fluctuation, change and shift. Remove that aspect and you remove the "life", the underlying layer of subtle clues and details that transpire a raw set of genderless data into an actual event.

All of that in mind, I'm not disparaging photography in general - it's still a powerful form of expression, able to retain its layer of meaning despite the limitation. A scene frozen in space might be open to more interpretation when taken out of context - and it's still aesthetically pleasing. But when it comes to immersive interaction, still picture is the exact opposite of what we are trying to achieve.

Next time I'm going to try something little more dynamic - video recording. Let's see how that one goes.

And for these reasing it that still want to suffer some more, link to my recent photo-shoot. I'm calling it "Day of the mindless Drone":

· Amazingly awful Photo-shoot