So I went to Bonnaroo again this year and loved it, as usual. I've been trying to think of something interesting to say about it, but have been a bit stuck - I don't need to explain why My Morning Jacket and Arcade Fire produced the best 4 hours of music I've heard in years, at least since Tom Waits in Birmingham and I don't really feel like commenting on the people who claim that Bonnaroo sucks because it's "too commercial," which actually feels like a comment that has become as commercial as what it criticizes. So I've been a bit stuck, until just a moment ago when I was watching YouTube videos of a lot of great music I wasn't able to catch during the 4 days of Bonnaroo.
And then I remembered a lecture I gave in a Pop Culture class I got to teach about the way the camera-phone has replaced the lighter at concerts - which is true, and like all things technological comes with a Hefty-bag of implications. The reason I can watch all of these shows I missed is because somebody chose to experience a concert through a medium - or at least experience a concert with his arm in some god-awful position to hold the medium in the air. Now why would someone do this? It is certainly more pleasurable to just listen to the show, to move with the music, to act like a total fool with thousands of other fools. But recording dictates stillness - a quality good music attempts to combat.
And so we must think about TIME - the most dreaded of all necessary ontological categories - the most inescapable facet of the human condition, for we are always being-in-the-world and being-towards-death. So what does this have to do with a camera phone? Well, the need to record experience - the need to validate that we were in fact there is always in the face of the sad fact that one day we won't be there - hell we won't even be here. It seems to me the need to document everything - on facebook, on blogs like this one, are all symptoms (but not just symptoms) of finitute.
So should we not record the concert and just experience it? Well, that's my take, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thrilled that somebody recorded all of this wonderful music that I missed. More than anything, it seems that we should realize that experiences are localized, temporal, and always fleeting - trying to catch them won't work - but it will make for a fun hour on YouTube.
(To put this another way - if I wasn't finite, would any experience really matter that much? Finitude should be embraced - it's what makes the world meaningful, even while scarring the shit out of us constantly.)
So this may ruin all of our youtube video experiences in the very near future. In summary Apple has created a patent on an infrared device that will shut down all video sensors such as ones pointed at a stage.
ReplyDeletehttp://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/view-the-story-disastrous-impl.html
Sad but true.
-Adam
Oh wow - I wonder if that will really make sense though. I mean if I had never been to Bonnaroo - or wherever - what might get me there is seeing all the videos of the music. It might turn out that it makes financial sense to let people produce low-quality video. Otherwise those people are going to be back to making recordings without picture ala Gdead and that aquatic band that I passionately dislike.
ReplyDeleteI actually teach Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" in my Tech and Society class - it's great. I'm changing it next semester though to this book by Jaron Lanier - who you probably know - he was on the ground floor of AI in the 80's - called You Are Not A Gadget. You would probably really dig that book. He's got this one part where he says if we'd known in the 80's that the upshot to the internet was going to be a glorified chat room and a big encyclopedia I'm not sure we would have kept working. His take is interesting because he's not a techno-phobe at all - and he also plays and owns some of the weirdest instruments I've ever seen. If you haven't checked him out - google his name. You'll enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteThanks man I will check that out! You should join twitter, I hate to say it but it is some of the best news source I have in my life. If you follow the right people ou will see tons of news before CNN or any of the other plethora of news stations put it up.
ReplyDeleteLulzsec is my favorite twitter name to folow right now. They are trying to hack into all sorts of government and financial organizations and I have to assume they are like 13-15 yrs old. They post hilarious news clips though.