Pre-EYE thematic

Methods text about the work in progress:

I am currently making a short video of around 2-3 minutes for the pre-EYE thematic seminar. It is an exploration of the online surveillance and datafication of the sea and the coast, compared to the experience of actually being there. It does so through a combination of homevideo-like footage of me being at the beach intercut with screen recordings of live video feeds of the coast, comments of viewers, statistics of high and low tides, etc.

This project started with a fascination for the cyclical time represented by the sea. This fits within my larger interest in and research into the experiences of time and time keeping. For me, the sea represents a natural form and voice of time, with its high and low tides being clear moments where this is expressed. Although not necessarily included in my approach at first, the online data keeping, live-streaming and aiming for predictability then sparked my interest while looking into this, and when seeing which tools I was using to do so.

In contrasting these two, I open up — mostly for myself rather than in the video, as I do not necessarily intend to have such a determined message at this point in the research — the idea that the presence at the beach causes us to tune into this natural form of time. We go along with the coming and going of the waves and we feel the time and tide has progressed when we have to move our towel further up the beach not to get it wet. Our online surveillance of the sea instead translates our desire to force this way of movement into our human-created way of measuring, to eliminate nature’s more organic and fluid communication of time and change.

Something that is not yet very prominent in this video, but will perhaps become important in the larger research, is how this serves a different function for different people, or rather different “users” of the coast. For someone that intends to go fishing or sailing or surfing, it is of course much more crucial to have an idea of whether the sea will be suitable for that, than for someone simply planning to take a stroll along the coastline. So perhaps the comparison is not just between the different ways in which one person can relate to the sea, but rather how different people, representing different functions, relate to the sea.

Some themes that are present in this work have also played a role in previous works. Such as the concept of time and different ways in which this can come to the surface. But also the role of digital media, our online presence, and the screen as having become an important way through which we experience the world. However, the sea specifically hasn’t yet made an appearance in other works. I am quite happy to be focusing on it now, as I feel even just my going there regularly and tuning into its movements is already giving me a lot.

Video