On vertical storytelling
Speculating about social media aesthetics for the avant-garde presentation of film archives
Based on our intentions to produce an artwork that can explore the notions of audiovisual archive and filmmaking in the realms of the Internet, we decided to study the aesthetics of one particular kind of online space where humans most directly get to interact with computer algorithms: social media. As result of our observations, we will share three theses that are the source of the artistic vision that shapes Jan Bot as an artwork. They will help you better understand our drive to build such a machine, as well as the poetry that lies behind its algorithmic oeuvre.
Thesis 1: The stream is the new archive
What does archiving mean on social media? What is the place for archives in the online space?
These are big questions and we are probably not the ones to give a definitive answer. But if we scale them down, and we think about archiving visual media in the personal realm, we can agree that the photo album is the most evocative kind of online archive that comes to mind.
Looking at digital photo albums today, we see that they have become streams of images made available through a constant process of actualization and rearrangement that is only possible with the aid of computer algorithms. As we upload images to our archive, they get organized in dynamic albums based on chronology, geolocation, face recognition, object recognition, etc.
A similar logic applies to photo albums in the social media timeline, like Facebook and Instagram. Here the photo album that we share becomes part of a stream of images that we and other people have subscribed to and that is edited by proprietary algorithms. This is just one of many examples that show how archives in the online world are not static. On the contrary, they are constantly in motion, making their way toward the virtual now of the Internet.
In other words, the stream is the new archive.
Thesis 2: The timeline is vertical
Social media narrates using the aesthetics of vertical timelines.
Unlike its horizontal counterpart, which has been traditionally used to narrate in videos, or in the way we write and read texts, the vertical timeline of social media confronts us to an endless non sequitur of media fragments that altogether don’t seem to make much sense. There is no character development, not even a theme that gets properly explored. The vertical timeline lacks an action-based logic, and yet it has the potential to captivate our eyes and minds like a blockbuster. This is a radical new form of storytelling.
Try to think of analog platforms that put together media in the way the vertical timeline does, and you’ll find none. Maybe a newspaper, where there is a wide variety of content, from long opinion articles to tiny-font classified ads, altogether arranged in a fragmented style. Yet such content is coherently located in sections by a group of dedicated individuals also known as editors. Editors make sure that all sections are present, harmonically organized and well-nourished. Unlike computer algorithms, editors also speak their mind and deliberately filter the content they publish. In other words, editors write the narrative of a newspaper.
Unlike the newspaper, the story that emerges from the vertical timeline in social media is dynamic. It absorbs content from an even wider arrange of sources and adapts it to the likes and dislikes of individual users. Such an epic task is not made by human editors, but by computer algorithms. And part of their signature is the lack of meaningful continuity.
This new approach toward editing and consuming media is affecting our perception of storytelling as we know it. Just like the Internet shifted our notion of reading to scanning (I see no shame in facing the fact that most people under 60 don’t read as much as scan news and articles), the way how we consume visual media is becoming more and more similar to zapping than actually observing. In such scenario, the traditional notion of continuity is fading away and becoming less necessary. We are beginning to conceive audiovisual storytelling from the new aesthetics that have emerged from social media and its vertical timeline.
This idea crystalizes in the relatively recent video format that in the last few years has become the epitome of social media videography: Stories.
Thesis 3: Stories is a format
Originated in Snapchat, Stories is an audiovisual format that consists of a recollection of video and photo snaps put together by users and then shared on the social media stream.
And just to be clear, Stories are not just a loose form of audiovisual storytelling, nor a genre. They are a legitimate and extremely popular social media format. Their narrative constraints are not only based on ideas or cultural agreement, but on formal limitations that exist previous to the content itself, and are being defined by the platforms that distribute them. Today, these platforms are Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Whatsapp.
One very distinctive feature of Stories is that they are not meant to be watched individually. Each little scene must be conceived as a short episode of a longer film. An endless film, virtually speaking. A film that is edited initially by humans and ultimately by algorithms. These algorithms use the very same logic applied to social media timelines to articulate a narrative out of the constant input of user-generated video material. That’s why we claim that Stories bring the aesthetics of the vertical timeline to the horizontal timeline of video.
And they do this in two levels: individual and collective.
On an individual level, because users are already immersed in the logic of the vertical timeline when watching and making videos. Each little scene of a Story is created by individual users. These scenes put together photos, videos and sounds in edits that most of the time are shamelessly fragmented, utterly disjointed, profoundly non-sequiturial, and yet they bring across a story.
On a collective level, each of these fragmented scenes contributes to a larger stream of scenes arranged and actualized by algorithms. And while these algorithms may differ from platform to platform, they are all guided by the aesthetics of the vertical timeline.
Stories and avant-garde cinema
If you imagine the media landscape 20 years ago, it wouldn’t be controversial to judge Social Media Stories as a contentious manifestation of video art. In fact, if you’d want to make a bridge and find connections between Stories and previous forms of audiovisual storytelling, I would tell you that there is a strong resemblance between these videos and avant-garde cinema. An early example to quote would be Jean Vigo’s experimental documentary À propos de Nice, released in 1930. In terms of style, the film looks like a loose and yet gracious travelogue composed of scenes recorded by Vigo in the French city of Nice. When it comes to narrative, Vigo’s critical eye for editing definitely surpasses the current capacities of social media algorithms. That said, when it comes to finding stylistic resemblances, there certainly is a visual connection.
An even closer connection can be established with a sub-genre of avant-garde cinema that emerged in the late 1960s and used film as a poetic platform to depict the prose of ordinary life. The most known exponents of this sub-genre are Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Marien Merken, and Jonas Mekas. Of all of them, the latter is the one who most systematically worked a line of filmmaking focused on documenting life using a non-sequitorial style of narration.
In his 3 hour-long film Walden (1969), Mekas shares with the audience intimate scenes of his life, including family, friends, and personal notes. The film was made with a 16mm Bolex, a camera that was considered high definition and yet still a portable device –the equivalent of a smartphone camera today in terms of usability.
While the film follows a chronological structure set by the reels used by Mekas in his Bolex, the scenes within the reels seem to be part of a harmonic dance wherein the maker’s intuition is the algorithm in charge. At the same time, the notion of stream is very present in the film. While we see Mekas, his friends and family members appearing and reappearing over time –thus endangering its cause toward a rather linear sense of story– the film intentionally tries to detach from being plotted into a single narrative. During its 180 minutes of archival streaming, Mekas lets images unfold with the grace and serendipity in which memories emerge from the unconscious when the mood is nostalgic.
Once again, as with Jean Vigo, it would be nonsense to compare Meka’s honest, humble, playful, and highly virtuous gaze to the videos that emerge from Social Media Stories. That said, there certainly are similarities when it comes to style. So even though there is no factual connection nor historical lineage between Walden and Social Media Stories, it is still worth mentioning that there are common aesthetic principles among them.
But unlike Social Media Stories, it is intrinsic to the definition of avant-garde that just a few people would understand or at least find meaning in these films. Now, 60 years later, with the inconspicuous dissemination of the vertical timeline and its aesthetics of narration in our culture, these films no longer needs a curator to introduce them. Either we like them or not, today most of us know very well how to read them.
The new tradition of vertical storytelling
Will the future hold new forms of algorithmically edited stories? While we cannot give a definite answer –after all you never know for sure what will happen tomorrow– it is hard to think of a near future without it. Thus, if we are to predict anything regarding this topic, it would be that the aesthetics of the vertical timeline will inconspicuously proliferate into new forms and formats of media.
In fact, Jan Bot is precisely that: a manifestation of the aesthetics of the vertical timeline applied to an old film archive that wants to be actualized, an archive that wants to join the stream of algorithmically edited narratives. Probably one day, not too far from now, Jan Bot’s approach will be the normal approach to reading visual archives. Instead of curators having to click their way through stacks of virtual folders (a metaphor that even today starts to sound old fashion), images will swarm through their eyes using custom-made algorithms designed to elicit impressions that will inspire them to review the past in everly new and insightful ways.
