Ruminations on the future of synching...
| One of the big topics that's been brought up, in the Arkiving Synchronicity podcasts, is the future of synchronicity. Which kind of got me thinking a bit, and then reminded me of something that was part of the plot in William Gibon's 2003 novel Pattern Recognition. The plot element I'm thinking of is called simply "the footage" in the novel. Apologies if you haven't read it, but the basics of "the footage" are that it consists of short segments of video posted "anonymously" to the web. Those short segments are entirely created from other images, and seem to, at least by a certain definition, fit the idea of manipulated and derivative art. When I read the book, back in 2004 or so, at the time I recall being reminded a bit of synching, and even the synching community. In the book, there's a community of enthusiasts that have sprung up around "the footage", that post theories and ideas about the origins, intent, etc. |  |
It did, at times, seem to me that that was almost a "warped mirror" version of a kind of synching future. I guess I could see synching take that path, as well as others. Maybe we'll end up splintering out across the net, each carrying that "jewel" of an idea that started it all. Maybe the original idea will be lost too, much like no one really knows who started the Dark Side of the Rainbow. But what was interesting to me was the idea of "the footage" being created from a feed of images. After all, to a certain extent film itself really is animation. At least in the sense of being static images that create the illusion of motion and life. I could envision the internet's "remix" culture taking advantage of that at some point, maybe even from within the synching community, to create something new from the detritus of image and sound material now available. And that is, at core, the idea behind "the footage".
Read more after the break...
Maybe there's even already attempts to do that. I have to admit, I haven't actually looked yet to see if someone has tried to "externalize" the idea into something created. Since the book has been out for a number of years, it's certainly possible. But I do think the idea, as an exercise, holds some validity for considering synching's future.
Like our current situation, copyright does put up some barriers against that. But the net has shown a remarkable ability to route around those types of barriers in the past. Although individual "authors" may get taken down, the ideas they put forth tend to survive, especially if they have a certain amount of artistic validity of their own. Danger Mouse's Grey Album (the mashup of the Beatles' White Album with Jay Z's Black Album) immediately springs to mind.
I think, at a certain point, Western culture is going to have to give up some of the myths we've built around authorship, the idea of an author alone with his muse for one. And art like this, which I think is only going to grow as more people join the internet culture, does seem to make manifest one of my favorite ideas from eastern philosophy/religion. That idea is usually portrayed as a riddle... "who is the buddha who makes the grass green?" The answer of course being you. Your brain interprets the signals from your eyes and creates a picture in your head which we call green. But there really is no way of knowing whether your picture of green looks like my picture of green. Maybe if I could peek in your head, your green would look blue to me. And ultimately, all of the thoughts and concepts that we use as humans are the same. We react to the shadows in our minds as if they were the real objects, but those shadows are filled with, and created by, our own preconceptions, thoughts, opinions, hopes and dreams.
Here's a quote from Robert Heinlein, from one of my many quote notebooks, that I think captures this idea...
"Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea as a symbol, be it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely reaction to symbols, and only neglibly to phenomena. As a matter of fact... it can be demonstrated that the human mind can think only in terms of symbols. When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions -- rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of the phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic-mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we think not-sanely."
- Robert Heinlein, "Blowups Happen", The Past Thru Tomorrow, pg. 90-91
There was always another great line in William Gibson's first book, Neuromancer (which posited the idea of cyberspace, and also defined a lot of what the internet would become), that the street has its own uses for things, and that those uses are often lightyears away from what the creators or inventors might have intended. I see that idea manifested every day on the internet. In the culture of remixing and creating and "user driven content" (to use a marketing buzzword, effectively meaningless but still represents something real happening). In the way that people build things (Make magazine/blog/etc.), create things, share things (p2p file sharing). And although it's probably not certain, I just can't comprehend how that genie could be stuffed back into the bottle.
Which brings me back again to synching. There's an awful lot of material out there. More and more every day. Like Baker and others have said, I think we do, as a community, need to move beyond simple one-cue movie/music matches. Really get those creative juices going. Move away from just using Pink Floyd, or the Matrix, or any one of the number of things that have been used before. Break away from just using whole movies as the yardstick of the art. Personally, I like the idea of shorter bits, since they do fit well the "attention deficit" culture.
I think we're stumbling towards a very interesting future... what do you think?
peace,
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