Never Blink



The first time I experienced a webcam was in high school. The webcamera was really a pre webcamera. Or perhaps it was the very old computers people where using then. The picture rather stammered than showed. I watched the strobing image of the kids sitting in another classroom and was excited. This was so cool.
    A few days later I surfed the Internet for my very first time. I was supposed to browse for information on CIA’s homepage, but someone showed me collection of webcam sites. And it proved to be so much more interesting.
    I saw a street in London, a bridge somewhere Ana Voog in the States, a newscast in Stockholm, and a coffee machine in San Francisco. When I was lucky I saw someone pouring coffee somewhere in San Francisco right there at the very same second as I was watching my screen. I watched the street in London again and different people where walking it. I switched back to the newscast in Stockholm and the people where still working hard.
    And I pulled the strings. I was a God watching over the world, just making sure that everything was as it always had been, putting my eye in every corner of the world. I couldn’t change anything, but the power of just looking was tremendous.

Ana is at the other side of the cam. As we met I can see her through the anacam. She's shaved her head and gives me a bit of a cyberpunkish feeling. She's Molly without the shades. And actually William Gibson have been watching her, Ana reveals during our chat. The thing was just she didn't know who he was until she read an article by Gibson, in which he mentioned her.

Ana's webcam have been on 24/7 since 22nd August, 1997. (The front door clealry declares this isn't about porn, but I'm not sure, flesh is a part of the voyeurism, wheter the exhibitionist want it or not.)
    The initial idea Ana got from JenniCam, and she still visits the site every few months. But she prefers the other side of that cam.
    "I thought it was an intense idea and I could do that in my own unique way," Ana says and adds, "I saw the potential in it."

One can imagine having a webcam around all the time, but Ana is all arty over it.
    "All the people watching me are not in my living room. They cannot hear me think or talk. A picture of my life is not my. People project upon that picture of what they think it is, but they do not usually know what it truly is. I'm more like an inkblot that anything else. What you see is who you are."
    "What do people usually see?"
    "They see anything?"

Perhaps thats nothing new; the voyeur within us, and the exhibistionist.

I blink and the camera blinks back at me. I snap the picture and it's ok, because it's just a picture. I know I haven't taken anything holy. But in a million years. Perhaps this picture will be life. And as I pick up the picture weeks later there I see her. Molly.

robin