Last week I accidentally found a webcam picture of a restaurant in Bali which was taken at precisely the moment Fiona and I were eating there in April 2000, we were sitting out of shot so you can't actually see us, but I've checked my personal digitial photos time and date stamps. We were there.
But it got me thinking this morning about contextualising historical events through the contemporary, pixilated view of a webcam with its constricted field of view and random placement, and so I got the idea to make these photos up to show you what I was thinking. In particular I like the strange, distorted feeling of recency you get when you look at these.
Almost a year ago I blogged about a similar effect I felt when using Google Groups to look at old news items but presented in a modern Windows XP browser interface. Digital information or images don't carry with them the sense of timeliness you get when you look at their traditional counterparts like an old newspaper reprint for instance, where stories and images are presented in the correct context, surrounded by the advertising of the age which contributes and helps the reader to recognise an authentic context.
Mouse over each image for the descriptions, the individual times and dates are accurate.
But it got me thinking this morning about contextualising historical events through the contemporary, pixilated view of a webcam with its constricted field of view and random placement, and so I got the idea to make these photos up to show you what I was thinking. In particular I like the strange, distorted feeling of recency you get when you look at these.
Almost a year ago I blogged about a similar effect I felt when using Google Groups to look at old news items but presented in a modern Windows XP browser interface. Digital information or images don't carry with them the sense of timeliness you get when you look at their traditional counterparts like an old newspaper reprint for instance, where stories and images are presented in the correct context, surrounded by the advertising of the age which contributes and helps the reader to recognise an authentic context.
Mouse over each image for the descriptions, the individual times and dates are accurate.