I’ve been watching web videos from the early 2000s, and all I can think of is the eyes. It’s incredible.
So the Flagpole Sitta Lip Dub was posted in 2007. It’s the first video in Andy Baio’s lip dup cultural history. Watch it again, it launched a thousand copycats and it’s still magical - a lip sync music video which is so well done, but also so clearly “real” and not professional.
And it opens with Amandalyn Ferri looking right through the screen, straight down the barrel.
(Web videos were new at the time. YouTube was founded in 2005. It was acquired by Google in 2006.)
Then there’s Ze Frank’s video project The Show: ‘the show with zefrank’ was a short video program produced Monday through Friday for one year (March 17, 2006 - March 17, 2007).
As an example, here’s The Show from 14 July 2006. I think it was originally on his site as a made-for-iPod show? But now the video is on YouTube. (This one is my favourite episode because it’s a defence of ugliness as the democratisation of design.)
If you take a look at the video, you’ll notice two things:
it’s short! 3 minutes 13 seconds. None of this rambling, begging for subscribers thing that vloggers do now (remember “vlogger”? Holy shit what a word hahaha)
THE EYES. Quick edits, face full frame, and THE EYES.
Ze doesn’t blink.
He’s basically inventing the form for personal web videos here (it’s 2006 don’t forget), and already he’s messing with the idiom by using this crazy jitter of quick cuts to not blink.
From a really solid long read about the “poetics” of web video: The poetics of any artistic medium studies the finished work as the result of a process of construction.
Beginning in April, 2006, Frank stops blinking onscreen. His eyes are always open wide in an exaggeration of an attentive stare. In an interview he has said that not blinking is a product of his intense concentration but in the episode on 23 October 2006, he advises would-be vloggers not to blink because when you blink, “that’s one less connection made” with viewers.
I remember reading that the ideal amount of time for mutual eye contact is 3.2 seconds and longer than that feels weird (read: threatening or arousing, depending on the situation I guess).
But Ze is 3 minutes!
And on Zoom calls it’s 30 minutes to an hour! No wonder video calling can be so exhausting.
See also: Apple’s FaceTime Attention Correction feature (in which your pupils were artificially manipulated in video calls to look right into the camera) which fortunately did not launch.
And just think about this: the idiom of web video didn’t necessarily have to be straight to camera. It could have been, like TV, modelled on theatre: a performance on a little stage in a little box, with everyone studiously pretending there is no audience.
There’s a ton online about how to hold a person’s gaze for just one beat longer in order to
sell them something
seduce them
beat them in a negotiation
etc.
Which is a hella creepy.
I wonder… what would anti-attention features be like?
How about a pair of augmented reality glasses with an app to manipulate everything I see, ensuring that no-one, no matter how charismatic, could hold my gaze for longer than 3.2 seconds?
Would this let me assess an argument better, if I could wear a software inoculation against enchantment?
And - continuing on this line - what if our politicians were made to wear such A.R. specs, so they couldn’t be wooed by charismatic leaders, and our TVs had filters built in, so we could shield ourselves from being drawn into any hypnotic gaze?
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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I’ve been watching web videos from the early 2000s, and all I can think of is the eyes. It’s incredible.
So the Flagpole Sitta Lip Dub was posted in 2007. It’s the first video in Andy Baio’s lip dup cultural history. Watch it again, it launched a thousand copycats and it’s still magical - a lip sync music video which is so well done, but also so clearly “real” and not professional.
And it opens with Amandalyn Ferri looking right through the screen, straight down the barrel.
(Web videos were new at the time. YouTube was founded in 2005. It was acquired by Google in 2006.)
Then there’s Ze Frank’s video project The Show:
As an example, here’s The Show from 14 July 2006. I think it was originally on his site as a made-for-iPod show? But now the video is on YouTube. (This one is my favourite episode because it’s a defence of ugliness as the democratisation of design.)
If you take a look at the video, you’ll notice two things:
Ze doesn’t blink.
He’s basically inventing the form for personal web videos here (it’s 2006 don’t forget), and already he’s messing with the idiom by using this crazy jitter of quick cuts to not blink.
From a really solid long read about the “poetics” of web video:
I remember reading that the ideal amount of time for mutual eye contact is 3.2 seconds and longer than that feels weird (read: threatening or arousing, depending on the situation I guess).
But Ze is 3 minutes!
And on Zoom calls it’s 30 minutes to an hour! No wonder video calling can be so exhausting.
See also: Apple’s FaceTime Attention Correction feature (in which your pupils were artificially manipulated in video calls to look right into the camera) which fortunately did not launch.
And just think about this: the idiom of web video didn’t necessarily have to be straight to camera. It could have been, like TV, modelled on theatre: a performance on a little stage in a little box, with everyone studiously pretending there is no audience.
There’s a ton online about how to hold a person’s gaze for just one beat longer in order to
Which is a hella creepy.
I wonder… what would anti-attention features be like?
How about a pair of augmented reality glasses with an app to manipulate everything I see, ensuring that no-one, no matter how charismatic, could hold my gaze for longer than 3.2 seconds?
Would this let me assess an argument better, if I could wear a software inoculation against enchantment?
And - continuing on this line - what if our politicians were made to wear such A.R. specs, so they couldn’t be wooed by charismatic leaders, and our TVs had filters built in, so we could shield ourselves from being drawn into any hypnotic gaze?
Human interaction firewalls.
Charisma shades.