How You See It (case study)
Manipulation of a Moving Medium
The Elevator Pitch
It seems the local nightly news focuses on the same stories, with the same images and same script. Frequently the anchors and reporters look, speak and act in manners so similar that they are indistinguishable. That formulaic presentation and content is laid to bear in How You See It, a six channel video installation.
Building A Prototype
Img 1 - video prototype The initial prototype for How You See It was built using stills captured from the internet and layered on top of one another. One such still, the layering of a deposition video with the Chairman of Madison Square Garden, Jim Dolan was created to test the commonalities in news station coverage of the Isiah Thomas sexual harrasment trial (Img. 1) After receiving some positive feedback from Nancy Hechinger and Daniel Rozin, the subject matter was expanded to include political figures.
The footage of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards was confined to the primary Sunday morning talk shows (This Week, Meet the Press and Face the Nation). The structure inherent to the Sunday monring talk shows created a backbone for the work, and provided for the similarity in camera angles and presentation styles. As illuminated by the series, the talk shows also seemed to pose similar questions and thereby generate similar answers, a welcome surprise for the work.
Early Online Gallery Prototypes
Img 2 - gallery prototypeEarly online gallery designs tended to imitate colors, graphics and design elements employed by NBC at the time (colored rectangles appearing as thought bubbles from a fixed point - Img. 2). Designs also aimed to provide a navigation scheme that allowed viewers to access the individual stations video peices of a particualr story. A vertical design was then tested (Img. 2a) but this too became troublesome for those with widescreens. Both ideas were scrapped to a large measure because they did not adequately serve the final piece. Overall the design was simplified to display an opening image of color bars with 6 stories presently horizontally along the bottom, creating both an immediate connection to television and easy access to the final work (see Images).
Installation
Installation of How You See It is as a six channel video installation with monitors facing each other on two gallery walls. The order of videos is not important, however facing videos must be of opposite content, namely, a Sunday morning talk show piece facing a local news story.
Img 4 - MAX/MSP patchHow You See was shown at the ITP Spring 2007 show as an interactive display where users could control the opacity of each video feed and determine for themselves which channel they wished to watch and listen. This was created using a MAX/MSP patch (Img. 4) but is not intended to be used outside of that particular installation.
The full series can be seen at http://pravinsathe.com/howyouseeit.
