That Moment Might Do
Miles, Adrian. "That Moment Might Do: Videoblogs and the Any-Instant-Whatever." Post Identity 5.1 (2007).
This is a work that awkwardly begins to actualise a cinematic hypertextual academic documentary form. I think of it as a preliminary sketch towards a yet to be. It is also an analysis of the relation of videoblogging to television via Deleuze's concept of the 'any-instant-whatever' and the pose.
This is a QuickTime based interactive essay. It does include pdf content of most the material (on screens where there is a text button in the lower left clicking this opens text commentary which, in turn, has a link to a pdf). It is intended to be used/read/played in this way. To play click the video and it will load in QuickTime player. What follows is a paragraph from the first screen:
For video blogging I am going to take it as a given (you're welcome to argue this with me) that it is currently defining itself against the mirror of contemporary popular television, and to a lesser extent various forms of independent film practice (documentary, essay films, travelogue, no budget cinema, home movies, and so on). Now, and I don't know where this will lead (if anywhere), but it might be productive to recognize that we could characterize contemporary television (I have in mind in particular things like television news, current affairs and traditional television documentary) as a television of the pose, of a disciplined (in many senses) instant that always knows what is next (hence the popularity of the blooper) and always tries, and certainly accepts, the privilege of its instants. While much televisual news presentation may have moved from the gravitas of the 1960s, it retains its autonomy and authority as a series of known and repeatable poses (the desk, direct address to camera, the 'call' or segue to reporters on location, motion graphics, and their role as 'anchor') that, as poses, are transferable or exchangeable (between individuals, stations, even nations). In video blogging (remember, I suggested caution here, I really don't know where this is going) the pose is evident in the rapid adoption of a novel form of direct address to camera where the speaker is the director/author of the blog post, but their direct address now aspires to the informality of the traditional blog. Hence it is usually hand held, improvised, and more often than not perambulatory. This a pose which has some of the qualities and all of the aspirations of the privileged instant, yet of course since it is a video blog (by definition the video of the very everyday) consists of any-instants-whatever.
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