When we were planning our wedding, my wife and I agreed that we had seen too many ceremonies ruined by technological attempts to immortalize the memory. We also wanted our wedding to be intimate and fun.
So we specifically instructed the photographers and videographers to stay out of the way. We didn't want them obstructing the view of the guests. We didn't want their assistants moving around too much, carrying blind-inducing lights.
We wanted our wedding to be experienced firsthand, remembered in human memories and not through images frozen on magnetized discs. That way, the guests experience would be truly unique.
Why am I rambling about our wedding? Today, I was browsing in a second-hand bookstore and discovered Turn Signals Are The Facial Expressions Of Automobiles
"Ah yes, once upon a time there was an age in which people went to enjoy themselves, unencumbered by technology, with the memory of the event retained within their own heads. Today we use our artifacts to record the event, and the act of recording then becomes the event."Spot on!
How many times have we fidgeted through the controls of our recording gadgets while that once-in-a-lifetime event passed us by? Is stupidly designed technology interrupting our ability to experience an event in more human form?
Here's more of Chapter One:
"Probably we've all seen a wedding reception, an event meant to be full of spontaneous expressions of joy, transformed by the photographer into a series of staged events. 'Kiss the bride.' 'Again, please.' 'Cut a piece of the wedding cake.' 'Would the bride feed the groom?' 'Move out of the way of the camera.' It is amazing how tolerant we have become of this manipulation of experience. The act of recording taking precedence over the event."
The setback, of course, is that having been trained videographers ourselves, we sometimes ask why we didn't have a clip of this scene during the wedding. But then we remember the basic principles we wanted to follow. It is the memory in our minds that is more important.
