This week, Pieces has been humbled by various acts of bravery and commitment. Friends have run marathons, done wonderful deeds for charity, returned from epic travels and I…well, I dug up some really huge weeds in the garden. It’s all about the little victories…
As more and more commentators raise the issue of authorities using CCTV to track ordinary citizens, and abuses of these powers are revealed, I’ve come across a consequence of the growing number of cameras in the world. More and more video-capturing devices are being produced, sold and used all over the world, which means more and more film footage is being shot. When I pick up a video camera and film myself doing something, I’d say that I was filming one of my ‘life hours’ for every hour of filming, because an hour of my life has been captured on film. Given that there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the amount of video footage being produced to drop any time soon, will there come a point where the number of hours of video produced actually overtakes the number of hours of actual life? Or, to put it another way, will more ‘life’ be recorded than actually lived?
In many ways, this state of human existence, where there is more human life contained on celluloid or digital capture than on the face of the actual earth, would be a kind of natural culmination of the drive to preserve that’s always been a hallmark of homosapien existence – from the drive to bury and commemorate the dead that is one of the earliest acknowledged behavioural patterns of civilised society to the urge to detail in writing every small progression through your day in Facebook statuses. And it’s not confined to filmed footage – that’s just the easiest to measure because of the 1:1 relationship between time recorded and time played back. Granted, it would be impossible to produce enough visual art to be able to claim that it cumulatively constituted more than the lives of those that produced it, because you can’t equate one painting to any temporal measure of human existence, only an emotional one. But there are thousands, if not millions, of hours of recorded sounds produced by all kinds of people all over the world – it could be that already we’re living on a planet where it would take so long to listen to and watch all the music and film that exists that it would take longer than the combined lifespans of every person alive today to do so.
Wow, big thoughts. Don’t let them stop you looking forward to buying the Pieces album when it comes out, though. There’s a recording that’s definitely worth spending more time on than CCTV footage of a Dagenham car park on a Thursday afternoon (at least we hope so).
What a shameless plug. Ah well.
After last week’s massively American playlist, this week’s Piecesounds is brought to you by the letters R and B, and the number 15. And it’s still pretty American. But this time with added French. And Welsh! Click the link below to hear it all for free on Spotify.
2 - Iggy Pop – Sister Midnight
3 - Leon Haywood – I Want’a Do Something Freaky To You – Thump Version
4 - Fever Ray – Coconut
5 - Throbbing Gristle – Walkabout
6 - The Last Poets – Jazzoetry
7 - Isaac Hayes – Something
8 - Brigitte Bardot РM̩lanie
9 - The Cookies – I Want A Boy For My Birthday
10 - Harry Nilsson – You Can’t Do That
11 - The Apples In Stereo – Shine A Light
12 - Super Furry Animals – Lliwiau Llachar
13 - Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No. I, 3rd Movement
14 - Animal Collective – Penny Dreadfuls
http://open.spotify.com/user/blownawish/playlist/3HrbDi2CHGa8ZdEe6xbJ4x
Enjoy. See you next week for more.
Pieces x
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