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 webslinky: throw away your tv
This week, internet video killed the television star. There's nothing on - face it. No matter how many channels you subscribe to, no matter how many hours of material are sitting unwatched on your Sky+ box, broadcast television can't cut it against web-based video tailored precisely to you. That big ol' screen in your living room? Kid, they don't call it the idiot box for nothing.For starters, broadcasters are now making web-only shows, like CBS Clark And Michael. One of the big gags behind this mockumentary about two kids trying to get on network TV is that the pair have been relegated to the web (each episode opens with the words "The internet presents…") but it's actually funnier than most primetime fare. Putting TV formats online also allows for interactivity, as in the case of noirish drama-cum-multimedia puzzler HBO Voyeur. In the best tradition of Hitchcock the viewer can explore tiny lives through the windows in a beautifully-rendered cityscape. The soundtrack's full of Collective favourites like M83, but clunky interactivity renders Voyeur more of a board game than a TV series. The key appeal of most HBO drama has been missed: that of buying a breezeblock of a DVD box set then digesting the whole thing over a weekend, in your pants with the curtains drawn. That's not to say voyeuristic telly is unappealing – but wouldn't you rather spy on your real life neighbours rather than fictional ones? Well you probably can, if they've started putting stuff up on YouTube, DailyMotion et al. Our newfound obsession with life-logging means that most elements of daily life are now online, in video. Got a favourite train journey? Someone's probably filmed it, like so. Sometimes they've even added a bangin' house soundtrack. User videos are rarely edited into shots and sequences like normal TV, so have a much more hypnotic quality of actually being somewhere. Soon, perhaps, you won't need to go on holiday. Just pick your itinerary, cut 'n' paste together people's videos and you're away. (Incidentally, did you know that they make announcements in robotic English on the Tokyo bullet train?) Sure beats Google Sightseeing, anyway. But there's a downside too. The dystopia of uncensored web-based video imagined by Margaret Atwood in her novel Oryx & Crake has already come to pass. Consider the mobile phone footage of Saddam Hussein's execution – the first mass market snuff movie. Similarly, the Laura Bush-endorsed YouTube channel for missing children might help some to be found, but you could also make a TV soap out of real-life suffering. Wasn't life simpler when all we were lumbered with was the idiot box?
David Jones
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 webslinky #145where you live  webslinky #144stock photography  webslinky #143robot friends  webslinky #142hair  webslinky #141how to relax  webslinkyarchive books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. art  art archive Watch artist interviews and see images from British exhibitions. |
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