For the past couple of years, every time I've finished a book I've taken a photograph of it, maybe hoping that this will make me read
more. I took six photographs of books in January I see, and one in February. And none in March. Here's Holland Park. I'd get wheeled around here when I was one, so I've been told. I don't remember. Now it's just up the road.
Photographing Kensington was one thing I managed to keep up in February. Was I doing it hoping to feel more like a resident, or like a tourist? Did I want to feel more at home or the opposite? I still stayed sociable, although I stopped going to the BFI as much, another fad of January. But I still had spending money from my first two commercials shot at the end of 2021. I still met friends, and if I was twenty years younger maybe there'd be photogaphs of that too. Here's a concert I was invited to in February. I couldn't remember why I'd photographed it, until I looked closer and saw everyone's masks. Click to enlarge.
I met Gemma Brockis a lot. I could afford to go out for coffee. We'd knock ideas about, her teaching and seeking meetings, me working a couple of days a week at the Crystal Maze and meandering. She told me how as an immersive theatre veteran she'd also occasionally get approached by Virtual Reality Engines to participate in Research and Development. Intimacy was what they were after now. "Virtual Intimacy" was VR's philopospher's stone.
What does "intimacy" actually literally mean though, I asked? We talked about that a bit – Chris Goode used to ask it back when he still did the blog, and was alive – then I decided to just look it up on my phone. We all have an idea. What do you think it means? As far as I could work out, "intimacy" just means the opposite of loneliness. That doesn't seem to have much to do with Virtual Reality. I didn't think they were going to find it, and I made a note of that on my phone. That phone broke, but I remembered.
I don't know about VR intimacy, but one of the weirdest aural experiences I ever had was Dr Pfeffer's Lonely Hearts Club, which aired as an 11:30 comedy on R4 quite a long time ago now. First of all, it was weird in that I was listening in Pacific Time, so 3:30pm, in bright blazing sunshine, and yet the show had such a late night aura about it that it actually felt like I was up past my bedtime, despite being the middle of the afternoon. But mainly, it was some sort of psychological/emotional experiment that subtly stripped off layers of detachment and wormed its way into my tender parts without my realising it until it was too late. This was made plain because they aired the episodes out of their intended order, so instead of hook-deeper-crisis-resolution it went hook-deeper-deeper-WRENCHING BETRAYAL and then just left it hanging there. It was such emotional whiplash, and so masterful, but also so unexpectedly personal. Brecht couldn't have done it better. (In fact he deliberately didn't, that was his point. But as far as messing with the conventions of narrative structure for emotional irresolution ...)
ReplyDeleteI am sure that, as with most things, I happened to hear it when I was particularly receptive, and it wouldn't have had the same effect a year earlier or to a different person. But at the same time, I've also never heard anything else even try to do what it did. There is something uniquely insidious about audio, which you have to participate in imaginatively, that you don't get when immersivity is spoonfed to you as in VR – and what is more intimate than someone murmuring in your ear? Points to them if they can do "virtual intimacy" their way, but it's already been done ...
P.S. I meant to include the exciting discovery that the whole show is up on Soundcloud now! https://soundcloud.com/acraigster/sets/dr-pfeiffers-lonely-hearts-club God bless the internet.
DeleteExcellent, thank you! I've done quite a bit of ear murmuring for Darkfield, and "Ring" before that. I'm sure people must be getting used to it now..
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