The example of slow TV that we watched today reminded me of this video that I actually love, it’s a real-time animation of the Titanic sinking. It’s quite interesting because it was made as a part of a VR game that is being developed to re-create the titanic sinking for both entertainment and educational/historical purposes. In the video’s description you can read through the timeline of everything that happened and click on the timestamp to see it happening in real time.
This is an interesting example we could use to discuss liveness. The "real time" component of this video suggests that there is something to gained (a better experiential understanding, perhaps) from watching the Titanic sink in the exact time and manner of the historical event. It forced me to acknowledge two things: (1) that the ship sank quickly and (2) that the ship took a long time to sink. Through this contradiction, I think we can get to some answers about the specificity of television. When I opened the video, I was surprised to see how quickly the ship sank; under three hours is a shockingly short amount of time to confront the inevitability of one's own death, let alone get your affairs in order. However, while watching the video, it feels like it takes forever; after all, it is almost three hours of watching a single ship. This example illustrates television's temporal capacity. A program's known runtime restrains and/or guides our expectations of the program's content. On the other hand, the continual liveness of the medium (24-hour broadcast, cable access, and on-demand streaming) combined with the stylistic aesthetics of slow TV (the long unbroken shot, little-to-no dialogue) invite the viewer to observe the sinking of the ship at one's own leisure. This is a very different educational experience than watching James Cameron's Titanic or a documentary on the tragedy. Feature films afford far higher emotional stakes than this simulation provides, but in exchange for our investment in Jack and Rose, the form forgoes narrative or stylistic investments in "real time." As an educational experience, this film is not didactic, but the emotional stakes may educate the viewer as to the dread, chaos, and panic of being a victim onboard. Now, take the hypothetical documentary. That educational experience is less likely to invest the viewer's emotions; instead, documentary affords strategies of visual analysis, fact-finding, and expert testimony. This video, I think, only works as a televisual program. No one would sit (let alone pay to sit) in a theater to watch a feature-length simulation of a boat. We will, however, use it as background visuals to accompany housework. Again, I see a contradiction: perhaps the most impactful experience of this content would be in a theater, forcing the audience to individually confront an imagined position for themeselves on the boat
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of one of my favorite educational spaces on the planet: the Titanic museum in Branson, Museum. The museum itself is shaped like the ship in miniature (though still enormous) and much of its aura is achieved through attempts to mimic the spaces and conditions of the real historical referent. They have a replica of the grand staircase, and several exhibits placed throughout aimed at giving spectators a 'feel' for the trajectory of the ship's demise. One example is a basin full of water kept at the exact temperature of the Atlantic that night, complete with a timer to see how long you can keep your hand in it; another is a series of miniature decks, representing the angle of inclination that passengers had to maintain their balance upon as the ship sunk. Of course, as with most historical museums, the place is full of televisions spewing historical info, but they never seem to put them to a similar sort of re-enactment purpose. I wonder why this is?
ReplyDeleteThis is such an interesting example of slow TV (or slow cinema? Documentary?). As Jesse said, going through the real time reenactment experience does force one to imagine being on the boat, but you get out of it quickly since it is very hard to sit through the entire thing. However, when I skipped towards the end, the slowness of it made the experience more haunting and somehow more thrilling: as the ship is sinking, we get closer and see inside the ship, and the animation is quite detailed in terms of representing the space, but it is completely devoid of humans. It is particularly eerie to see empty lifeboats launched to the ocean. Combined with the realistic sound effects of wind and metal being crushed, the slowness actually starts to work as a tool for building extra tension in an unexpected way.
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