Lynch-ing mobiles
Written by Sebastian Strakowicz. no comments
About Sebastian Strakowicz
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Sebastian Strakowicz works in media and has recently completed an MA in mobile and cinema studies, now published as Being Mobile.
Is watching movies on mobile phones really the bane of the film industry, or is it the next step in the evolution and revolution of personalised content?
If you’re playing the movie on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film. You think you have experienced it, but you will be cheated. It’s such a sadness that you think you have seen a film on your fucken telephone. Get real!
Artists don’t know better – they know different. But with access to creative tools such as mobiles, who isn’t an artist? Creativity can be enhanced with our mobiles to become a seamless, everyday activity. Mobiles, and online life generally, challenge and expand our notion of ourselves by increasingly exposing our relationship with art, making us virtually abstract. Through our presence on Flickr, RSVP, Gaydar, Myspace, Twitter, Facebook we become processes of still and moving images in constant flux across physical and virtual worlds. Photos and videos of events, things and mates; avatars, blog posts and status updates all add to our broadcasted selves – merging our virtual existence with physical presence. David Lynch’s creativity has had a significant impact on our screened culture, and the ideas in his films become increasingly important as we lead increasingly screened existences. With our mobiles we have the ability to position his ideas in our virtual personas. Just as we personalise media, why should cinema be different? Lynch’s art might no longer be perceived as two-hour shrines to the director at the cinema, rather his films can be adapted and accompany our existence on our own screens.
Think about the following. My parents proudly display Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the form of two gold-framed posters in their living room. How would Van Gogh feel about seeing a reproduction of his art among Ikea furniture? Would he be like Lynch and oppose this appropriation? But that poster has a profound significance and function for my parents. Lynch’s distaste towards mobiles lies with missing out on details that make up cinematic experience: lighting, mise en scene, vast establishing shots etc. But by this purist argument, would we have never watched films on television? Film itself is in an ongoing process of absorbing other media. Now is the time to absorb film across our own individual screens. We will always associate Lynch with cinema, so appropriating his art into our creative and increasingly screened selves simply exposes how his products enrich our screened lives. The bizarre worlds and characters of Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks or Wild at Heart are too rich to live only on the silver screen.
Mobiles carry and produce, but are hardly the end product of content. Instead they make it more of a continuous, non-linear experience. By translating content into our individualised existence, and exposing it to others, mobiles show us that content never dies. The Lynch quote above lives on YouTube – an opinion open for others to discuss. Why can’t Lynch’s creativity be treated in a similar fashion?
