This
video chronicles my personal relationship with a web cam; the
live, 24-hour web cam of the Empire State Building in New York.*
In November 2000, I began taking pictures of the image I saw
on my computer screen. I did not use a camera, but instead took
thousands of images using the screen shot function built into
the operating system of personal computer. The still shots are
compiled into a video diary of the distant building in an internet
browser window, as it sits on my computer desktop. The ability
to experience, capture, “own”
and care about the remote building kept me engaged. As I sat in
a windowless computer lab for hours on end, I came to understand
that the ability to see the weather and natural light patterns reflected
in this icon of human engineering was what was so compelling to
me. Perhaps even more compelling is the ability to see it through
someone else’s camera - a person I have never met in
a space I have no physical knowledge of. At times, the existence
of life in the same room as the camera is revealed through
the close observation of the web cam, shadows, handwriting
on a window and jogs to the camera.
*Empire 24/7 at http//live.thing.net is no longer
online, was operated by Wolfgang Staehle |