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Web Cams as Art by Ken Sanes Below, are seven examples of web cams wrapped in graphic skins, taken from the web site, Camarades. Most are examples of a principle that will undoubtedly become more important in the next few years as Internet technology expands. The principle can be expressed in a simple "equation": A live image + graphics = a new meaning or aesthetic creation. Although this "equation" is simple, common sense says that its permutations are practically endless. After all, with every alteration in a live image and every change of graphic, new possibilities are generated for aesthetic creations. Of the seven cams and graphics examined below, the first three in particular offer ideal examples of how this works. In each case, the web cam and graphic work together to create a unique meaning with aesthetic value. As you view these examples, please click on the smaller images to see the larger or full page version, except where the text notes otherwise. |
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This web cam "star" looks like he's trapped in a device from some kind of post-apocalyptic hell, where technology is coming apart at the seams. The fact that he has a vulnerable and sensitive appearance and that his image has suffered some degradation adds to the sense of breakdown and distress, enhancing the fantastic and post-apocalyptic qualities of the scene. The image inevitably calls up science fiction scenarios. We can easily see it as a depiction of someone who is communicating on a futuristic, half-broken, video monitor, or as the human face on the visor of what is left of a robotic creation. The cam star's gaunt appearance and what seems to be his shaved head makes him look much like the characters in a number of post-apocalyptic movies. |
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Click on image above for full-size version.
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The most interesting graphic skin offered on Camarades is of the interior of a movie theater, because it allows the cam image to interact with a realistic depiction of an environment. To the immediate left, we see one result in which the deep, almost tunnel-like, rendering of the theater seems to sweep into the cam image of an actual room. Even the color of the room is similar to that of the walls of the theater. But what gives this scene its character is the fact that the room is cluttered with technology and unidentifiable objects. In the cam image, it has the look of an underground bunker or basement, a sense that is enhanced by the lack of windows and the sign toward the top, which suggests it is a bomb shelter. The lights in the theater and the glaring screens in the cam image play off each other and add to the anomalousness of the scene, filling it with the glare of unnatural light sources. Meanwhile, the man in the room types away at a computer keyboard (partly obscured by a cat). With a little imagination, it is easy to see him as an eccentric scientist at his master controls or a survivor of a holocaust sending out a computer SOS for help. The reality, as described on the web page below the image, is more mundane, of course. The page describes the web cam owner as an artist/cartoonist/actor/limo driver who is starting a business giving Hollywood tours. But this artist...limo driver's cam image is only one of many that use the interior of a movie theater as its graphic skin. Another cam image (second down on the left), uses the same graphic to achieve a very different effect. There, the person on the cam appears to stand right up to the surface of the movie screen, filling the space, so he seems to be a powerful larger-than-life figure, as everything in the theater seems to point to him as the star of the show. In that scene, the overwhelming impression is one of dominance, whereas in the scene with the cluttered room the impression is of depth, and we have a sense of peering into a cloistered world that is different from our own. On
another web cam page that uses the same depiction of a
theater, we get an effect that is different from either of these
two. Images of sex are shown on the cam, turning the interior of the
theater into an adult movie house. |
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This will take you to a somewhat larger version. To see the full-size version, click on the link in the text to the web page. |
The web cam image wasn't displayed at the times this page was examined. But you can still see how the graphic can create the effect that the person in the cam image has become a giant advertisement for him (or her) self that is moving across the sky. The cam image seems to take on larger-than-life dimensions; it becomes a flying billboard advertising the magnificence of the person it depicts, providing a fitting symbol for an age of marketing, exhibitionism, and self-involvement. Whereas the images we previously
examined, of the cluttered room and broken down looking technology, have the feel
of post-apocalyptic grunge-tech (whether or not that is the intention),
this scene surrounds a contemporary hi-tech cam image with an
ironic imitation of technology from a past era. It offers a window of fantasy into a
nostalgic past instead of a ramshackle present or future. |
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This clever page layout turns a web cam image into home movies, once again surrounding contemporary hi-tech with an imitation of technology that many people will associate with the past. The potted plants, which act as a kind of symbolic gateway to the screen, enhance the effect by conveying a sense of domesticity. The fact that the guy on the cam screen looks like a product of homogenized 1950s America enhances the theme of nostalgia and innocence. But there is also something a little eerie about this scene. Whether by design or because of a lack of design, it is strangely vacant, with a number of objects we associate with domesticity sitting in a blank environment. We associate these things with home and hearth, but the home and hearth are missing. When we learn more about the guy in the cam, the sense of anomaly deepens and it becomes clear that his use of nostalgia is ironic. On his home page, which is linked to his "home movie" cam page, he describes himself as a "weirdo" and says "similarly outcasted people" are welcome to contact him. Meanwhile, the title of his cam page -- "The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, blah blah blah" -- is an example of the kind of absurdist irony that is common in contemporary culture. If this is nostalgia, it is the nostalgia of The Twilight Zone. ----- Note: This
web page has changed its skin since this article was written.
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These two images don't
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Finally, here are two graphic skins that create a (more or less) circular tunneling effect. The first, which is nonrepresentational, seems to engulf the web cam screen in a shape that is something like a wormhole or maelstrom (an effect that is more obvious in the full-size version). The screen in the center looks simultaneously like it is floating in the maelstrom, emanating from it and being drawn into it. In addition, the bright lights give the guy on the cam something of a "deer-caught-in-the-headlights" look, while the curved blue elements on each side look vaguely like pincers or talons, all of which gives this graphic image an emotional tone that contains more than a hint of paranoia. In the second example, the web cam image is encircled by a ring with a snake-like surface texture (which is again obvious in the full-sized version). Here, the cam image floats like a window into an alternative space, while behind it we see a fantasy landscape that has the feel of the American Southwest. Between the border of the graphic on the page, the ring, and the border of the cam image -- and the way the cam looks diagonally down to the floor -- there is a sense that the scene takes us through a number of layers as we tunnel visually into the room. ---------------------------------------------------- It is a good bet that what we see in all these images is the early stage of what will be a long and complex development. Before long, it will be possible to insert our live and manipulated image into almost any kind of virtual environment. We will surf the world net presenting a mask of ourselves as a second skin, and every element from art, history, society and nature will be the raw material for our creations. In this brave new world of shifting forms, one can't help but wonder -- who will we be and what will we pretend?
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Most or all of the images
shown here were live when they were examined. |
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