Moore’s Law (2018)

 

The first computer network camera was set up in 1991, before the World Wide Web had been invented. The camera was connected to an audience of 15 computers spread throughout an office building. It refreshed a live feed of a filter coffee pot 3 times a minute so that people were able to see when the pot was full without having to get up and leave their desks. Over 10 years, the camera’s audience grew to 2 million watchers and this, the first webcam; once cutting-edge technological novelty, deteriorated into a historical internet artefact.

 

When YouTube was created in 2005, 24 hours of video was uploaded to the website every 60 seconds. Every minute this year, 400 hours of video is uploaded.

This swiftly moving obsolescence leaves little space for reflection or posterity; my work exists within the widening space between the past and present, contrasting old and new. The video in this piece- the first ever uploaded to YouTube in 2005- moves at the painfully slow rate of 3 frames per minute; the same rate as the coffee pot camera in 1991. This stretches an 18-second long clip into footage that lasts 1 hour 30 minutes, a pace that is inconceivably slow to present day observers.