Dan has been doing a video blog since June 2003. His practice, to date, is very specific, with each work more or less of the same length and generally concentrating on a series of abstractions derived from footage shot and what I assume are postproduction effects. The work, according to the page, is inspired by the work of William Gibson, and I’m assuming his most recent book, Pattern Recognition.
This would suggest that the individual video entries are part of a larger whole, and so it is definitely a serialised work in a way that most blogs, and video blogs, while assuming regularlity of publication, don’t quite accept, as in the general blog aesthetic explicit serialisation is rare. It also indicates that the individual pieces are intentionally abstract, so that while they offer an exploration of a particular video aesthetic they are also as much about the series. It is unclear if the individual pieces do form a specific and ‘closed’ whole, if and when the series ends, though given the first works are specifically collage experiments some idea of an alternative collage practice is probably indicated.
The abstraction at work is quite specifically video, not only because of its use of digital effects but also in the regular fascination with phosphorescent light and its avatars. Video as an electronic image (as opposed to film’s chemical and projected luminosity) is drawn to such light, the sort of electric click click of the contemporary street, and in Winckler’s work this forms the primary subject matter. This is most obvious in “5” which is the most referential of these pieces. Here the camera finds a flickering pulsing fluorescent tube and moves towards it, eventually moving in to an almost extreme close up of a X marked on the tube (in tape?). There is a glimpse of the street behind but its stuttering glow is what draws us, much like moths, and gives this video a found object everyday sort of quality.
As far as vogs go, there is no interactivity at work in the video, it is pretty much click and play, but their abstraction and the consistency of the idea and material shifts this work into something that is not just a dull documenting, nor a use of video online that is struggling with its own material conditions. It knows what it is about, why it is online, and it is not pretending to be television – all major plusses. What it appears to be is an experiment in treating low bit rate video as an experimental creative practice which wants to build or develop depth through regularity and constancy of its serialised form, which means no individual work stands out, but neither ought individual works be ignored.
I think it is this quality that offers a lot for thinking about vogging, since I suspect succesful vogs, as a genre, will need to combine the acuity of a well observed or crafted observational event (narrative, fiction or nonfiction, or perhaps a more experimental practice) with consistency. This is what good blog writing already does, it is just easier to write to the moment than it might to be shoot and publish to the moment. For now, anyway.
Tags:
practice,
Vogging