See it Now
WORKS REFERENCED:
"Atomic Bomb Blast at Hiroshima August 6 and 9, 1945." Online video. YouTube. 1 Mar. 2011. Web access. 30 Oct. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXKLGRB4Hhg.
"Calming Seas #1." YouTube. 7 Aug. 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f77SKdyn-1Y
Cha, Theresa H. K, “audience distance relative” in Exilee / Temps Morts: Selected Works. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009, 19.
Documentary World. "National Geographic - CIA Confidential: Inside the Drone War. YouTube. 8 April 2017. Web access. 12 Oct. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUrI30SeLQ4.
Dudkowski, Ed. "See it now." Online video. YouTube. 4 Jan. 2008. Web access. 10 Oct. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7fu5M5OFe8&t=13s.
"Heartbeat flatline." YouTube. 25 Sept. 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpi5RoNmvTU
"Heart Rate Monitor." YouTube. 3 Feb. 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVm8pFDxUjU
Paik, Nam June. Wrapped Around the World. Directed by Nam June Paik. 1988. New York, NY, Electronic Arts Intermix, 1988. DVD.
"Predatory Drone Missile Strike." Online video. YouTube. 1 March 2014. Web access. 13 Oct. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcEoRae6Yog
Sakamoto, Ryuichi. "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Original Theme Song)."
“Tel-,” “Online Etymology Dictionary,” accessed Mar. 23, 2017, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tele-.
"Ten Minutes of Static." YouTube. 16 Nov. 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfycQJrzXCA
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My digital remix took on a landmark moment of telecommunication technology: a 1951 episode of Ed Murrow’s See It Now program that illustrates the first transcontinental televisual broadcast extending from East Coast and gazing toward the Pacific Ocean. Scholars such as Homay King have argued that this desire for televisual liveness—or telepresence—reflects a desire to be liberated from the shackles of earthly embodiment. Here, I would suggest that we encounter another take on “liberty” made possible by telecommunication technology. But what are the ethical and political implications of this “liberty?” In the case of Ed Murrow’s See It Now, televisual liveness demonstrates a drive toward broadcast signal clarity, a slow zooming-into-focus that delivers a humanist promise of geographic connection. In this sense, the ability to see across vast geographic distance also brings the promise of connecting with those who exist in distance cultures and lands. The aesthetic of “static” challenges the humanist rubric that evaluates technology by efficiency and function without critiquing its ideological context. By playing with the aesthetic of “static,” it suggests the failure of this telecommunication fantasy. My remix video illustrates that this drive to “see the distance other” is ideologically link to contemporary drone warfare. On another level, the drone combat conducted largely in the “War on Terror” in the Middle East is an extension of violence occurring at the cost of securing “freedom” and “liberty” for the US—a link back to my Barbara Kruger image project.
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- STATIC: Screen Ethics Huan He
