Zeus on a Web Cam

by Ken Sanes

To all appearances, the person pictured on the right has nothing unusual or outstanding about him. His appearance is pleasant but average. What we can see of his clothing is bland and casual. And, if he has special talents or gifts, they aren't shown in the image. 

But by virtue of art and technology he can now appear as a larger-than-life figure on the Internet. What makes that possible is the fact that his web cam image has been wrapped with a graphic "skin" depicting the inside of a movie theater. As a result, the cam image he appears in seems to be an oversized movie screen, and the illusion is created that he is a giant figure on the screen looming over the inside of a theater. 

Looking at him (in the two large images to the right), we can't help but experience a sense of awe at his massive physical presence. Our instinctive reaction is to see him as something like a cross between a matinee idol and a pagan god who exists outside the trivial world of society, far surpassing our own meager physical capabilities. 

The glittering light sources around him enhance the effect, subliminally suggesting that he is a "star" and that he is looking down on us from the heavenly firmament. Meanwhile, the seats and walls converge on his image, acting as oversized pointers that direct our attention to him and tell us he is the center of this world.

Psychology provides a number of explanations for how these effects are achieved. It tells us that the illusion of his vast size is a mistake of perception. Our minds are misled by the way the rows of seats are reduced in size as they are placed progressively higher up the image, and by the way the chairs and walls seem to converge on the screen. Picking up these cues for distance (as well as other cues, such as the darker areas that look like shadows), we misperceive this as a three-dimensional scene of a theater. And, comparing the size of the person on the "movie screen" to the size of the theater, we see him as a giant, an effect that is enhanced by the fact that he is in the upper half of the picture.

But this clever rendering of a theater doesn't only define the person on the web cam. It defines us, as well, since the scene creates the illusion that we are in the back row, taking everything in. As a result, we feel as though we are inside, close enough to be involved but safely at the back edge so we are neither immersed nor overwhelmed by what we are looking at. 

From our safe position, barely in the scene, we have a sense that the person on the screen is dominating and powerful. Outside of consciousness, we may experience him as one of the larger-than-life parental giants of childhood. As he seems to look down at us, we may even have a sense that he is about to invade us (perhaps reaching out from the screen) or we may feel slightly intimated by his looming presence.

At the same time, like all movie audiences, we identify with the figure on the screen, vicariously satisfying our own desire to be larger than life, to be admired, to exhibit our own magnificence and escape the limits of society and nature. The image thus presents us with our own grandiose self-image, illusionistically inflated to enormous size, for our identification and awe.

From our tripartite (and imagined) position, on the outside looking in, inside at the back admiring and dominated by the figure, and on the screen posing for our admirers, all kinds of complex reactions are set into play. Many people may even experience the person on the screen, outside of consciousness, as being larger than death or very long lived, and imagine that, if he were to die, it would be a monumental event involving the toppling of a giant.

Ultimately, what this web cam image shows us is that technology can now enhance anyone with special effects. In this case, it has transformed an average guy into the fifty-foot man by using a kind of visual karaoke in which he has been inserted into an imaginary scene.

The industries of communications and simulation are becoming masterful at evoking these kinds of effects. Just as other forms of technology are letting us become incredibly powerful and conquer nature, so movies and television, and now computer games, virtual realities, theme park rides and the Internet are letting us pretend we have already done so.

As a result of these new technologies, we will obviously have to expand on Warhol's claim that we will all be famous for 15 minutes. With advanced media and simulation, we can now, perhaps, be famous forever, in life and after death, even if people only stumble on our image in the data stream for 15 minutes at a time. 

The only problem for this star, of course, is that no one's in the theater watching him. No one, that is, except us.

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From here you can now go to Web Cams as Art
 Or back to the Introduction
Or to the home page, Transparency
The web page described above can be found here

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Note: Not surprisingly, we find this same kind of image of powerful, looming, figures throughout both old and new media, because it has so much psychological resonance. We see it in the movie Dracula, for example, in which another immortal, the vampire count played by Bram Stoker, looms over his victim in bed, the beautiful Mina, as he prepares to land on her neck for the unkill. As he does so, we see his oversized face hovering over us on the screen as if we are Mina about to be descended on, a scene that replays childhood fantasies and nightmares of parental attack. Here too the image is about power but it is unambiguously menacing, making explicit the threat of personal invasion that is hinted at in the web cam image. 

We also see oversized images of people's faces in some journalistic television interviews in which the camera focuses on the person's face to put him (or her) on the spot, so the face looms large on our television screen. In these situations, it is the camera that invades the other person's space; it distorts its subject, making the person look monstrous. These oversized images are acts of aggression, often used during hostile interviews in which the journalist plays Perry Mason, firing leading questions as we look for signs of guilt and defensiveness on the face of the de facto defendants, through the microscope of the camera. As the camera blows these people up (and doesn't merely appear to do so, as in the cam image), they are reduced in size.

Looming web cam star looks down at his small, perhaps slightly intimated,  audience, namely us. The way the seats sweep toward him enhances the sense that we are seeing something larger-than-life on the screen.

Web cam star as matinee idol and giant pagan God, "posing" for his admirers. You may want to look at the image full screen to get the full effect.

Dracula (as described in the note) looms
over his victim, Mina, about to descend
for the unkill

.