Video is a space hog*. No other media can match its gluttonous appetite for storage and bandwidth. Even now, with render farms easily assembled from off-the-shelf parts and hard drives below the $1/Gigabyte threshold, working with digital video on any significant scale requires substantial money and space. It's always been this way. Which is why, early on, lots of smart people came up with some techniques to help.
This method of compression looks for information that is not necessary for continuity to the human eye or ear (remember that videotape plays back sound as well as pictures). It looks at the video information on a frame-by-frame basis for changes between frames. For example, if you're working with video of a talking head (a clip of a person sitting or standing with little motion), there's a lot of redundant information in the recording. The background rarely changes, and most of the motion involved is simple head movements and the movement of the area around the mouth. The compression algorithm compares the first frame (known as a key frame) with the next (called a delta frame) to find anything that changes. After the key frame, it only keeps the information that does change, thus deleting a large portion of your file. It does this for each frame until it reaches the end of the file. If there is a scene change, it tags the first frame of the new scene as the next key frame and continues comparing the following frames with this new key frame.
We pay attention to the differences. Display them, and nothing else, until so much changes that you have to reset your baseline.
***
What are the representatives of a time period? What separates ordinary from iconographic? Distinctiveness. Overwhelming singularity. Differences.
When we look back at history, we mostly see delta frames. This is especially true of our imagery. We pose different people in front of the same monuments, cityscapes, and beaches, using the static nature of landmarks to anchor the ephemeral subject of the photo. We see JFK collapse in his car and we spot the tragic delta; we do not note how remarkable it is that wheeled carriages are unbeholden to horses, nor that street lamps to the side will help ward off night-time crime. We've noticed those before.
There are always clues in photographs to help date their capturing. Most of the time they are deltas - a hairstyle, "don't walk" sign, or the comparative height of siblings contrasted against an indistinct background. Not in western American suburbia. Not in the 70s.
New houses, new culs-de-sac, new communities, new facial hair, new televisions, new blenders, new ping-pong tables, new denim, new curlers, new advertising, new VW bugs, new power lines, new freeways, new sunglasses, new door paneling, new landscapes, new fabrics, new children's toys, new costumes, new lampshades, new suits, new window screens, new tile colors, new blouses, new central air-conditioning. And all of them designed to break hard and fast with the old. Not subtle deltas, pure difference each time, heaps of it. No heirlooms, no old cottages. New scenes. New baselines. Everywhere. Every photo a key frame.
Backyard Kabuki is like backyard wrestling, but instead of wildly dangerous physical stunts designed to imitate the WWE, participants adopt the mannerisms of a time-honored Japanese performance art and battle through pure dramatic expression.
Similarities include the domestic location, face paint, exaggerated gesticulation, and a certain DIY theatrical air.
Backyard Kabuki doesn't actually exist, but I think it should.
Millard Fillmore (1850-1853) - In his rise from a log cabin to wealth and the White House, Millard Fillmore demonstrated that through methodical industry and some competence an uninspiring man could make the American dream come true, at least until he was crippled by chronic vomiting and fever.
Franklin Pierce (1853-1857) - Franklin Pierce became President at a time of apparent tranquility. The United States, by virtue of the Compromise of 1850, seemed to have weathered its sectional storm. By pursuing the recommendations of southern advisers, Pierce--a New Englander--hoped to prevent still another outbreak of that storm. But his virulent policies, far from preserving calm, hastened the disruption of the Union and inflamed not only the secessional debate, but the lining of his large intestine.
Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) - Beneficiary of the most fiercely disputed election in American history, Rutherford B. Hayes brought to the Executive Mansion dignity, honesty, moderate reform, and rectal prolapse.
Warren G. Harding (1921-1923) - Before his nomination, Warren G. Harding declared, "America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality; not florid feces, but a sanguine stool..."
This weekend I moved apartments, leaving my cozy 2nd floor Alphabet City breadbox for a Tribeca share six stories higher. I lost one roommate, added two more, and am finally able to sleep in a room where touching two opposite walls with only one's hands outstretched is impossible - once, that is, the remaining wall is constructed. I spent 3.5 years at my old location, longer than any one place since high school, and even then by a matter of only a few months.
I gripe often, though not often in this space, about the city, the borough, and the neighborhood, but it is undeniable that I developed a strong attachment for that little corner of the island. It is an excellent substrate for growing the first timid tendrils of adulthood without the Miracle-Grow of a mortgage or even car payments. For every adorable puppy in the dog park urging you to let domesticity curl up in your lap and lick your face (there is no way to domesticate another breed without doing so to oneself; even the most absentee of landlords is diligent enough to collect rent) a happy-hour game of Big Buck Hunter beckons with which you can blurrily beat back responsibility. There are also pretty gardens.
And just when you thought nostalgia for things only a few days removed couldn't get thicker, my company moved offices on the exact same day, from the old location where I worked even longer than I'd lived in my old apartment. My entire adult working life (I dare not say career) was spent there, and leaving it will take some getting used to, though I am happy to report I have not developed a comparable affinity for my work neighborhood. I am unhappy, therefore, to report we have not left it, moving only seven blocks uptown.
Nick and Kayje invited me to their wedding, which required 8 hours of flying and 24 of driving for three days in Montana. It was well worth it.
As I noted before I'm awash in a sea of moving boxes and buckling under travel lag, so I have nothing further to add at this time, but I thought posting photos with little to say would be preferable to waiting for the full commentary.
