I was thinking about our discussion last week about "personal documentation;" the trend of post-Kodak culture to increasingly document the personal: from family albums enabled by the Kodak Brownie, leading to easier and easier point-and-shoot film and digital cameras and the polaroid, to the now ubiquitous camera phone (see this for a discussion of Japanese keitai culture). And this trend toward the recorded life is not entirely in private hands anymore as CCTV surveillance becomes more and more a "natural" part of the landscape.
I was reminded of this little animated short from the This American Life series on Showtime:
The television feature follows the typical format of the NPR radio program, This American Life: someone telling a "true story" about their life. In this case, the show's host, Ira Glass, is interviewing someone (Jeff) about a playground craze they remember from grade school. Their conversation is paired with an animation by the artist Chris Ware.
I thought it might have relevance for our class for several reasons. The story is about memory. The story is autobiographical and presented within the frame of a program that itself is a kind of documentary/autobiography hybrid. And, the story is about the mediation of "real life" by the camera: something with consequences even when the camera isn't real.
No comments:
Post a Comment