Ken Hollings on ResoVision

It’s easy to like television but much harder to make it like you, I’ve discovered. The reason why television is such a delirious medium is that it entirely transforms you. You no longer have the protection of an isolated sensory impression to hide behind – as you can when presenting texts or conversation on radio or when recording an album. Nor can you entirely dissimulate yourself behind a live performance, which is the one forum that encourages you to act out a role, however natural it might appear to the audience. No, television demands a total transformation of the self into some kind of isolated other – not one sense, but all of them at once – not working together but completely against each other. You no longer know where to place your hands, or where to look – even the phrasing and punctuation of your thoughts seem oddly at odds with each other. Many thanks to the ResoVision staff for creating in real-time the retro chroma-key effects for my talk ‘The Whole World Is Watching: McLuhan, Marcuse and History – or Something’. Their efforts in the control room made it feel as if I were part of some early 70s BBC2 happening. McLuhan would have been proud.

Pictured above: four studies in online TV, KH goes all the way live, photos courtesy of ‘Hollingsville’ girl about town, Hana Tanimura.