Sometimes you stumble upon certain things online that feel almost readymade and consciously artistic, even though this may be created collectively and down to luck some times if just feels organic.Firstly I love the fact that the first ever film shown to an audience, The Lumiere Brother’s ‘Arrival of a Train At La Ciotat’ exists on youtube, a platform that has arguable the biggest audience in the world. I feel that its very illustrative of the way that we react and accept tradition in a digital world. The context we come to expect from known works like this incredibly historic piece of moving image become complexly skewed. I find a great interest in the online representation of something that had absolutely no dependance on the internet in its creation.
This Lumiere Brothers film has become iconic. It has this mythical tale of people running from the its first screening deeply attached to its history. Its a representation of the birth of modern cinema and something that is so fundamental to our lives. It existence on youtube is almost enviable. There are intact over 6 copies of the same video, and I am sure there are more versions uploaded by individual users which I have not found. The most popular of these videos has amassed nearly a million views (970,687) in close to a decade since it was first uploaded (May 27, 2006). Its not a bad figure but not particularly impressive in comparison with some of youtube’s most popular videos these days.
Just having this film on youtube as a platform to be able to experience the work was interesting enough but the comments section was absolutely amazing. I felt that it represented the truth of how we accept this work today. A piece of work that is so relevant to our history and culture, and the start of something that has developed into a world of digital available content. This video that lasts only 49 seconds seems to fit perfectly into the environment of youtube and internet video. The comments praise and scorn the film as well as a lot in between. I felt that I had to collated together to create what felt like the internet’s very own review of Arrival of a Train At La Ciotat.
Internet comments are inherently awkward, it is much a breeding ground for hate or admiration as it is for useless nihilistic boring rhetoric. There is very rarely any reason what so ever to post any sort of comment, yet people always seem to find a way to express some sort of bizarre opinion. You read some comments shaking your head wondering what on earth possessed someone to write something so dull or mindless. Yet all of these comments have some sort of strange relationship to the film and to the work that the Lumiere brothers created.
I felt that in a way these comments created a disjointed narrative, commenting on the history and cultural relevance of this film, along with a lot of irrelevant humour. The language its self is very humorous. The levels of sarcasm and utter nonsensical discourse has great parallels to surrealism. I talk before at how automatic poems I had created using an iPhone had similarities with Automatism, a technique deeply embedded in the work of the surrealists. In a way, id say these comments have become a review of ‘Arrival of a Train At La Ciotat’ created through exquisite corpse. Where sentences have been formed with hardly any recognition with whats become before or whats going to come next. Of course some of theses comments are in reply to others and we get the occasional strange strain of conversation when reading through the text.
“Its depressing to think that everyone in this film is dead.” or “how do you feel that all these people are actually dead”. This one variety of comment and its repetition through out the work really struck me and something that I felt connected with philosophical notions of the photographic image. The word dead appears 21 times within the whole passage of text I've created. These quite tragic comments almost of suggest peoples insecurities around death. The photographic image has fixed the people within the frame into immortality. Something so lifelike as a moving image, and being one of the earliest moving image film, there is even more of a human connection to these people who appear in the frame. Perhaps in 100 years people would read this text and assume the same tragic sentiment about all the people who have written these comments.
After collating all theses comments, I decided to remove all traces of user names or any other artefacts other than the text of the comment its self. I felt that this would create a much nicer flow and read more like a conversation of statements than individual comments. There was only really one decision to be made in terms of displaying the work - to immortalise these comments between the covers of a book. Even just printing them out and treating the as text in the physical work gives a different context to the work. It can be taken more seriously and feels more considered.
I felt the book itself needed a simple design and nothing else to detract from the text. I copied the design from my previous book [Untitled] 5685 Titles of abstract art. I felt that the two were part of an ongoing series that took elements of text online or text that had little or no platform and collated it together. The iPhone poems do something similar but I do not feel that they do enough to be included in such a series, not yet anyway. Of course similarities can been drawn from each of the works I create but using a linear design reinforces these parallels.
Once this book has been created what next. Binding the pages together is one thing but I feel that an extra level of context could be added. The idea of reading the book cover to cover isn't really warranted. It is much easier to pick up the book and be amused by its content but with out having to read to much into it. Its completely possible to drift in and out of book, pick it up at any page and you'll be just as lost in its absurdity as reading it.
What better place to enjoy these books that when waiting for your own train to arrive. Leaving these books in train station waiting rooms could add to the level of comical entertainment. It makes sense that these comments could manifest and be enjoyed in a place that is fundamentally devoid of any enjoyment (unless your a train enthusiast). The book almost has become like the comment section of a station its self, but read a little closer and realise that what is being discussed happened a long time ago.