The Aesthetics of Fail Videos

Now so more than ever moments are caught on glass retinas, recorded, uploaded, observed. The culmination of this technology are short films in which people are injured then edited together into a ten minute compilation video titled 'Fails of the week'. Like 19th century optograms, the sight and sound of people losing control of their bodies is watched after the fact by hundreds of thousands of people, cheering and laughing in the near future. I find them to be of cultural value, the aesthetics of each video has a certain quality that is so far removed from reality and cinema it lends itself more to a dream.

Each snapshot is captured from the point of view of an observer, although occasionally the victim is holding the camera. The accidents vary in violence and banality, although most feature an urban setting, often involving human powered vehicles, such as roller skates, falling afoul of architecture and Newton's laws of motion. There is often a cosiness about the background, they are the places people go to have fun. American streets, ski-resorts, boats, sport days, the family home, out in nature. Each serve as the scene of a potentially lethal accident, through the lack of foresight in an individual or insane luck. The accidents themselves have a painlessness about them, even though the footage is caught in eye bleeding high definition the video cuts off soon after. We don't get to see the consequences of the acts. They are bloodless, there is little emotional response to the accident besides shock. We don't see the interior of hospitals where mothers sit in empty rooms drinking coffee, looking at the setting sun with faces dried by tears. Whilst watching this malarky we are jet around the world as it is today. The fashion technology people could be the same as the one's standing outside your door (waiting for you), although we are taken to such exotic locations as Russia or America. This is a version of the world away from news channels, as polished television drama, as documentary footage and so on. It is a window into a world that is normal to those in it, yet becomes increasingly alien as time goes on.

The viewers of these videos dub themselves 'The Fail Army', who scour the digital globe for the juiciest accidents and attacks for splicing. These vulgar nerds respond to accusations of sadism that what they are doing is slapstick and light-hearted, suggesting that for the video to be uploaded in the first place that there was an element of consent, an acknowledgement of survival. Not only is it amusing, it is inspiring how the human body reacts to falling down a flight of stairs or being hit by a tree whilst riding a motorbike. We are a durable species, it reminds us that the world isn't necessarily safe, yet that in itself can be overcome. Yet there is still an antiseptic nature to the videos. Though the event happened, the viewer is watching it remotely from the safety of a chair. The end result is still the simulation of violence rather than being in any actual risk. There is a sub-sect of 'The Fail Army' who call themselves 'The Pain Lords'. This group has a much more misanthropic view of the world. They spend hours collecting the screams of pain and making them into bizarre soundscapes they listen to in their sleep. They hang around accident black spots with night vision cameras, giggling to themselves as they wait for the next car containing a family to wrap itself round a tree. They watch snuff films on their phones as they ride public transport, not caring that the people around them are torn between curiosity and disgust. 'The Fail Army' is trying to distance itself from these sociopaths, yet they do have the best taste when it comes to selecting footage for the annual 'Fails of the Year' videos.

It is empathy that makes the videos worth watching. Is it more valuable to place yourself as the cameraman at a distance, or as the victim of the accident, imagining your vision spinning as your head tumbles over a fluctuating centre of gravity? To imagine the smack of concrete against an elbow or having a metal fence rammed between your legs brings out a more satisfying enjoyment of the videos. That way when the day comes in which you suffer a horrible accident, you will have already felt it a thousand times before. And maybe somebody will be filming you as it is happening.

How To Smell

What are the smells currently around you? Unless foul it was likely you didn't even notice them in the first place. Yet breathe in slowly, through the nose. What are the things that give off a smell nearby? Perhaps a cup of tea, an ashtray or a dog. Better yet you may be reading this out in nature and have the luxury of chlorophyll and wind. But you might be asking yourself 'am I smelling enough?' and the answer is 'probably not'. An entire perspective, up there with touch, sight and hearing, yet having a good nose isn't taught in schools and rarely discussed in public. I have been experimenting with my nose recently and thought I would share the findings with you.

First of all, how does smell work? Well, how does vision work? Light is shone onto objects and then bounced back at different frequencies picked up by the rods and cones in the eyeball. It is similar for smelling. Smells are bounced off objects and hit you in the nose. Here special cells called sniffodoruns detect any irregularities in the pure scent of nothing (from which all smells are made) then send messages to the brain which translates this information into smells. On the smell spectrum we have sweet, sour, dirt, water, musk and grass. All smells have varying elements from each of these six primary scents and no other smells outside this spectrum can be smelt by the human nose, although it is thought some animals can detect Ultrabitter and Infrasweet.

When you breathe through your nose it is important to do it slowly. Too quickly and the increasing air will push the odours away from the sniffodoruns and give the sensation of coldness. Although I do recommend breathing in quickly once to properly feel where your sense of smell is actually located. You should feel a sensation at the front of both nostrils (even though you are only breathing through one) that runs up your nose and into the middle of your head. You can use your tongue to triangulate where the true sniffodoruns are whilst with tracing a finger up and down the dorsal ridge of your nose. Close your eyes and focus on this point, imagining the sniffodoruns detecting the delicate yet complex fragrances all around you. Can you identify each unique smell inside the symphony of odours? If you are unsure what something is, perhaps moving around the room would be helpful. At first a sense of smell can be quite weak and require close proximity in order to fully smell something, although like the ear of a musician, the nose can be trained and improve over time to be more sensitive.

The next step is to smell your hands. Go on, give 'em a sniff why don't you! What is it you can smell? Do you know why? If there is anybody else nearby, ask to smell their hands. You might be pleasantly surprised to find their hands will smell totally different than yours. Perhaps you're able to identify if they smoke or not, what they've had to eat, if they use soap and what brand, all sorts can be learned from smelling the hands of a person. Next is to smell them all over in order to properly process their scent. It can help if you look at them whilst you do this and they talk to you, in order to fully build up an interperspective feel of a person. In a more subtle way you can take to the streets, smelling joggers as they run past you.

One should be careful with their sense of olfaction. Not only do you have to protect it by not smoking or insufflating drugs, but you may smell some things previously unimagined yet more horrifying than any vision or noise. And like all senses, will begin to fade with age and steadily decline into nothingness, which is all the more reason to begin training now. Have you ever smelt pregnancy? How about smelling a sunrise? Many avenues reveal themselves whilst focusing on an underrated perception.

Moving Road And Ting

Sick of cars? Walking? The drudgery of getting to work? The new invention by Salem Peters hopes to cure society of the messy questions of transportation. The new smart road is still being tested, though I had the chance to meet it's creator at his new Nokia sponsored laboratory.

The smart road is essentially a high speed bespoke travel surface in which citizens can join a rolling road that quickly jets them off towards their destination. Gone are the days of public transport, say hello to the days of transport publiqué. The road is made up of many narrow lines that each move at a slightly faster speed than their neighbour. This allows pedestrians to gradually pick up speed on the moving expressway, by standing toward the crash barrier people can gather up to speeds of twenty five miles an hour! And that's not including the speed in which people could run on this high tech pavement. The whole thing was a wi-fi hotspot to, and could be lit up at night. Salem Peters is hoping to add touchscreen technology at people's feet. You could order pizza or watch the news. I couldn't wait to see this in action, but the smart road is still in the developmental stage. Not to mention the extravagant cost of replacing roads with a complex set of graphene lateral microsteps, this will also mean cars aren't able to travel on these horizontal autopedestulators. Nevertheless, it was an interesting idea.

Salem Peters stands next to a glass window, his reflection doppelganging in the blackness. I stand next to him and look down on the smart road. Four hundred metres of the stuff has been built in this empty factory. I watch mannequins be moved forward, making a circuit along a fake street.
“Check your wi-fi signal.” says Salem Peters. I do and am surprised I'm getting a 4G connection.
“It's pushing five bars.” I say, impressed. “Mind if I take it for a spin?”
“Of course.” he says, turning to me and showing a mouth full of false teeth.

I go downstairs and stand on the fake pavement. Photos of shops have been printed onto high glossy cardboard as the mannequins move past me. The only sound is the gentle whirring of the smart road. I step onto it. It's an unusual experience at first, but gentle enough not to be surprising. After trying out the different speed zones it isn't long before I'm running along the smart road.
“This is fantastic!” I say, dodging between human sized dolls. The fake shops zip past me as I run faster and faster around the circuit, laughing and shouting 'woopee' to myself. I whip out my phone and take a high speed selfie, uploading it through the 3 gigabit connection onto social media streams. There's a knocking overhead and I look up. Salem Peters is standing at the window, watching me. He takes out a small touchscreen device and nods his head. The road beneath me is beginning to accelerate and so I hop to a halt, nearly knocking over a fake woman. Why is he doing this? I stagger towards the pavement though have found that the road is moving too fast for me to take a step on. I'm trapped. Mannequins zip past me, beginning to rock back and forth under the high speeds. One falls onto the still pavement and cracks into six pieces which roll inside the suit. I leap to the ground and hold on for dear life as the road accelerates beneath me. I have to get out of here! I crawl along the floor towards a fallen mannequin and use it to paddle myself closer to the pavement, the shops are now just a blur. Struggling to kneel up at the smart road's edge I lift the mannequin and shout before slamming it down onto the still concrete. I am yanked from the road and do a handstand on the mannequin as I grab onto it, skimming across the surface of the fake shop-front and straight through the window in which Salem Peters is standing, spearing him through another window. I watch as the mannequin throws him down the single storey and onto the wet grass outside.
“Help!” he says weakly.
“Looks like you got hit in the cul-de-sacs, road man.” I say, pulling a face at the sun.

Festival Experience 2013

I was standing in a muddy field, tweeting, dressed from head to toe in leather. It's festival season in England and I have used this opportunity to meet the manager of Daughter, the indie-folk band from London. I had been listening to them before they were famous, but Daughter had played Glastonbury and were selling a personal record number of albums across the country, getting serious air time on all the big radio stations and podcast d'loads. Their manager, Ryan Riley approached me carefully. He looked like a bird or reptile, all dead in the eyes and thin in the face. I introduced myself and he lead me towards the stage that the trio were playing on.
"I'm the one with all the ideas you see. I came up with the name of the band even." he said.
"Really?"
"Yeah, I also did the cover art for their first album, but they ended up going with that photograph of them trees. Still, if you're interested I printed off a few copies with the original artwork on."
"So how did you meet the band?"
"Well I met them at a pub. They all played or sang so I said, you guys should be in a band. I had to help them a fair bit as they didn't know what to do at first, but I reckon they're getting better now."
"Yeah. They're really stupid."
"That's good right?" said Ryan. I nod and remove the leather cap from off my hair. We're backstage, fat men roll cigarettes in the dark. I trip over a crate of bottled water as we make our way to the green room.
"Hold on, can you take my picture? It's that one." he says, pointing at a button. I take his picture next to the door, it has a sheet of paper that says 'Daughter' stuck to it. We wait in the green room as the last few notes are played onstage and Elena Tondra thanks the audience. A few minutes later they appear, slightly ruffled after playing for the last eighty minutes. I introduce myself and rest my bag on the table, snapping it open and taking out a machine.
"What's that for?" says Igor Haefeli, the guitarist. I attach the lump of metal to the side of my head and begin to plug it into the power supply resting at the bottom of my bag.
"I'm experimenting with some new recording equipment." I say before turning the machine on. Magnets descend over my face and begin to hum. I have to grab onto the table quite tightly as the machine begins to vibrate my whole body as if I'm having a fit, though this is part of the process. The hum rises to a high tone before clicking off, the sounds of the fans and inner mechanisms running themselves still once more. The pieces of metal are drawn back into the machine and I set it down back onto the table. The four people sat around now look exactly like me. I have printed my face onto their heads.
"What just happened?" says Ryan Riley. It is odd to see myself speaking with someone else's voice, wearing somebody else's clothes. They look at one another and begin to shout, although they are confused which one is me. I run out of the room and out behind the stage, chased by my facial clones.