In Memory

This video project, as almost all of my projects have, started out as a very different beast than the one I ended up with. I always intended to do a video project about the influence of social media on people's emotions, but as I was musing and brainstorming I started thinking about a very recent time in my life when my emotions became largely dictated by digital communications from a particular person. This seemed to fit well within McLuhan's idea about a "simultaneous happening," and that "we have had to shift our stress of attention from action to reaction." (McLuhan 63) I don't think this was a good shift in my case. I felt nauseous waiting for the next excruciatingly emotional texts, or I was learning about Instagram posts second- or third-hand when they contained important information that one really should not be posting on social media. I felt constantly blindsided. I could never see the next big event coming, I could only wait for the floor to drop out from under my feet. This is part of what scares me about the new digital landscape, and yet I think it's part of what excited McLuhan. Sometimes I can see it from his perspective. Most of the time I prefer to avoid the hyperconnected online realm, because it's simply too exhausting. An unusual thing for someone in a New Media in Art class to say, no? 

Well, perhaps I have always been a bit out of place.


Watch In Memory on YouTube here. 

Content warnings: implied emotional manipulation and gaslighting, emotional distress, brief reference to abuse, and overlapping speech and sounds that may be overwhelming.


Screencap of an unused take.


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