slow tv is great
I just discovered slow tv. I've hungered and searched for it, not knowing what it was called, but knowing what I wanted. It's funny to read the reviews written by busy magazine writers. They can't understand it. They're standing on the outside looking in and trying to figure out what the appeal is. They have never had enough chill time to need to give the space ambience.
These are people who rush through breakfast in 30 minutes for grooming and feeding and dressing. These folks then occupy themselves while commuting with social interaction work. Usually called "email" or they read the news, whatever, they spend the commute time reconnecting with the social environment. They arrive at a new location and socially plug in to that for another two hours. With keyboard, telephone and personal face-time they are busy processing more language and social communication. They then take time for quiet before lunch, an hour or so of concentrating on a focussed task with perhaps some instrumental music in the room at a low level. This period of time may also be spent in one-on-one socializing for the extreme social humans, such as caregivers, sales people, service people, and so forth. I would bet that if you did the research you'd find that how people spend the hour before lunch relates directly to their personal level of gregariousness or human connectedness. Lunch is inevitably spent, again, plugging in. Whether it's done by eating with others or catching up on "private correspondence" at work. Some might carve out a portion of this time for quiet personal distraction like a computer game since for those suffering from people overload, the quiet of a lunch time office can be a treasure. So the second half of the day continues, a barrage of deliberate focussed activity intended to produce quantifiable results for pay. The day is broken into fifteen and thirty minute chunks dedicated to specific parts of this or that task, or appointments to meet people.
The television has little place in this world unless it is as a product or tool for production. It might inhabit a waiting room now and then set to some inane network babble you can't follow or something that presents short bits of stuff you don't have to follow.
Here at home, there's another use, and that is where slow tv starts to make sense. I propose it would also fit much better in the above waiting rooms, and in many public places where people alight for afew minutes. As I type, there is a beach scene on my tv. I'd rather glance up and watch a train journey (I'll probably run that when this finishes) or a boat ride or knitting circle. I'd love to tune in too the local night club friday night for an hour. Just like going and sitting in the corner for an hour without the dressing up and travelling. My own beer is much cheaper too. what's more, no men would come pester me to try and seduce me. They don't know how annoying and intimidating they are.
Slow TV is a type of wallpaper, or lava lamp. It's mood lighting, it's ambience. It's more than that, though, it's exactly like having a transdimensional window onto another time and place and watching what's happening there. Pick your beach, or time on the ISS or perhaps there's a train, bus, plane, or boat ride you've always wanted to take?
In fact, I'd actually pay cable fees for access to a library of streams both recorded and real-time. People have been using webcams for this but the quality of webcam video is quite poor. The resolutioon is always very slow, and the fps is usually quite jerky if it isn't just a series of brief stills with audio. The audio matters too, though. You can't just let the mic grab anything it likes. You have to filter out the wind noise, rattles from nearby mechanics, and aim it away from the droning motors or digital beeps so they're background noise. A bad audio ruins the video faster than bad video because you aren't looking up that often.
Speaking of bad video, the video must be quite stable. It shouldn't look around as much as a helmet cam, for instance. It should just maintain a set view point, wide as the lens can do, and occasionally the view can change to another angle if you have several cameras involved, like with the train or boat videos. Nothing is more annoying than a dancing image out of the corner of one's eye. Movement in the corner is what draws your eye over occasionally, making it pleasing and a healthy distraction. People shouldn't stare at one spot so much the way we do, whether working on hand work or digital work. We need to look up and around, and if the image on screen changes too often, we'r eannoyed, tooo seldom, it gets too boring. That boat journey I can't find on youtube would be an excellent example of taking time to see the scene but letting it change also. This current beach video is made of shorter segments of separate beaches. So just when you're ready to go into town for an icecream thee beach switches to a new scene.
So, slow tv isn't for watching so much as for ambience and gentle distraction, like the view out of a window that has a really great view.
Just wait till it's 3d. Ooohhhhhhh programmable 3d window that is your tv.
These are people who rush through breakfast in 30 minutes for grooming and feeding and dressing. These folks then occupy themselves while commuting with social interaction work. Usually called "email" or they read the news, whatever, they spend the commute time reconnecting with the social environment. They arrive at a new location and socially plug in to that for another two hours. With keyboard, telephone and personal face-time they are busy processing more language and social communication. They then take time for quiet before lunch, an hour or so of concentrating on a focussed task with perhaps some instrumental music in the room at a low level. This period of time may also be spent in one-on-one socializing for the extreme social humans, such as caregivers, sales people, service people, and so forth. I would bet that if you did the research you'd find that how people spend the hour before lunch relates directly to their personal level of gregariousness or human connectedness. Lunch is inevitably spent, again, plugging in. Whether it's done by eating with others or catching up on "private correspondence" at work. Some might carve out a portion of this time for quiet personal distraction like a computer game since for those suffering from people overload, the quiet of a lunch time office can be a treasure. So the second half of the day continues, a barrage of deliberate focussed activity intended to produce quantifiable results for pay. The day is broken into fifteen and thirty minute chunks dedicated to specific parts of this or that task, or appointments to meet people.
The television has little place in this world unless it is as a product or tool for production. It might inhabit a waiting room now and then set to some inane network babble you can't follow or something that presents short bits of stuff you don't have to follow.
Here at home, there's another use, and that is where slow tv starts to make sense. I propose it would also fit much better in the above waiting rooms, and in many public places where people alight for afew minutes. As I type, there is a beach scene on my tv. I'd rather glance up and watch a train journey (I'll probably run that when this finishes) or a boat ride or knitting circle. I'd love to tune in too the local night club friday night for an hour. Just like going and sitting in the corner for an hour without the dressing up and travelling. My own beer is much cheaper too. what's more, no men would come pester me to try and seduce me. They don't know how annoying and intimidating they are.
Slow TV is a type of wallpaper, or lava lamp. It's mood lighting, it's ambience. It's more than that, though, it's exactly like having a transdimensional window onto another time and place and watching what's happening there. Pick your beach, or time on the ISS or perhaps there's a train, bus, plane, or boat ride you've always wanted to take?
In fact, I'd actually pay cable fees for access to a library of streams both recorded and real-time. People have been using webcams for this but the quality of webcam video is quite poor. The resolutioon is always very slow, and the fps is usually quite jerky if it isn't just a series of brief stills with audio. The audio matters too, though. You can't just let the mic grab anything it likes. You have to filter out the wind noise, rattles from nearby mechanics, and aim it away from the droning motors or digital beeps so they're background noise. A bad audio ruins the video faster than bad video because you aren't looking up that often.
Speaking of bad video, the video must be quite stable. It shouldn't look around as much as a helmet cam, for instance. It should just maintain a set view point, wide as the lens can do, and occasionally the view can change to another angle if you have several cameras involved, like with the train or boat videos. Nothing is more annoying than a dancing image out of the corner of one's eye. Movement in the corner is what draws your eye over occasionally, making it pleasing and a healthy distraction. People shouldn't stare at one spot so much the way we do, whether working on hand work or digital work. We need to look up and around, and if the image on screen changes too often, we'r eannoyed, tooo seldom, it gets too boring. That boat journey I can't find on youtube would be an excellent example of taking time to see the scene but letting it change also. This current beach video is made of shorter segments of separate beaches. So just when you're ready to go into town for an icecream thee beach switches to a new scene.
So, slow tv isn't for watching so much as for ambience and gentle distraction, like the view out of a window that has a really great view.
Just wait till it's 3d. Ooohhhhhhh programmable 3d window that is your tv.