Jeff Lovett a public forum for personal documentation

The Flower

This is an image of a flower to which I do not know the name. I captured the image at my best friend's wedding while trying very hard not to take the sorts of pictures that one usually takes at a wedding.

The exciting thing for me about this photograph is not its beautiful and elegant composition; it is that I, upon reviewing the images, did not notice it. I simply dismissed it. This was in August of 2008. In January of this year while “rustling” through my images from last fall I was struck, only slightly, by this flower. As a result it found a new home on the desktop of my computer screen.

This has occurred with numerous images over the last several years and what interests me about this process is not my memory of the flower or even my judgment of the image five months ago. It is how strong the affection I feel for the image is after only a week living in the background of my computer monitor. 

The computer monitor is a place of amazing diversity. Things of the utmost importance occur in a virtual proximity with the banal delights of everyday life. The exciting thing for me is the illusion of space and layers that are so completely believable. For a flat, back-lit, surface of tiny red green and blue squares to possess such captivating qualities is truly amazing. To place an image on the background of a monitor is to place an image in the periphery of your mind. Even as I write this, I am looking at the fringes of purple and unfocused water droplets on a field of green. As a result, while I read news, correspond, and create, that image is resting peacefully in my mind growing steadily into something I can more completely understand and appreciate.

I believe that it is the consistent contact, in digital form, with an image that both glorifies and debases the image simultaneously which leads to a more whole experience of the image and it’s content.

The monitor glorifies imagery through a series of situations that place the viewer in a state that leaves one open to immersion. One sits at a desk with the express purpose of interacting with one’s computer and the digital world at large, posed with arms at the ready and monitor placed directly in the center of the field of view. Even speakers are arranged to evenly and effectively disperse auditory information to the user. The primary means of participation in the digital realm is visual. This is easily observed when one switches off one’s monitor. The environment of the desk changes drastically. Suddenly the monitor is nothing more than an obstruction, a black board that is flat and inert. The keyboard and mouse become useless props, paper-weights, without the visual feedback of the monitor. The actual horizontal surface of the desk begins to feel crowded and cluttered. When the monitor is powered on; the desk, keyboard, mouse, and so on, are transformed into the cockpit through which you control your experience in the digital realm.

It is the ritualistic way in which one place one’s self in this environment, with the expectation to be transported through information in the intuitive visual vehicle that is one’s computer, that allows information to be pressed deep into one’s mind. We expect to experience joy, freedom and insight through the monitor.  We are liberated from the static by new versions and the constant input of thousands of other pilots through their own cockpits.

Unfortunately by compressing so many stimuli through this immersive portal simultaneously, one loses the deeper levels of experience caused by spending uninterrupted and focused time with a work thus debasing it. This is exemplified in the way that one experiences feed readers that amalgamate countless blogs and their posts into a simple browsable format. It is not only tempting but necessary to spend less than a couple of seconds deciding whether an article / post is worth your “extended” time. In the last 30 days, I have “read” 350 articles through my Google reader account. Of those I have starred 18, shared 40 and emailed 11. Without data to support my claims, I would imagine that of the articles I read, I spent over ten seconds on 50 of those and perhaps there are only 20 that I actually read.

The experience of reading blogged information occurs simultaneously with any number of other equally complex tasks, email writing and reading, chatting, twitter maintenance, music selection and the listening that follows, browsing and sorting photos, and so on.

The windows of an operating system stack on one another as a way to keep so many varied portals to information open and accessible at any time. The windows layer so deep that whole other programs have been written to allow the user to sort them out. At the same time, it feels as though ads are everywhere peeking in on your information and customizing themselves to fit your “needs”. It is this intensely multi-level experience of navigating through information for information that exposes one to a level of self customized articulated data in quantities that would be impossible in more traditional formats.

In the background of this multifaceted digital navigational environment, my flower rests peacefully with water droplets forever on the verge of breaking loose to a free fall. Its purple arms are reaching outward always suggesting new narratives. This image resides quietly growing behind the bramble of information slowly attracting my attention and eventually my love. Somehow now, not long after I didn’t notice it, it takes my breath away.

Share/Save