Time to wheel out one of my favorite quotes about the signature of a medium:

"Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them." - Brian Eno

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Kaliboy 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I never heard of this quote, but "heard" something similar a while ago, must have been 2020.

I was watching a live worship session on Youtube and it was beautiful, kept my mind at peace.

Now mind you at the same time I was also a perfectionist, which means you tend to see imperfections in others.

Now at a certain point the singer's voice broke as she was hitting a high note. But before I could mentally register the imperfection I heard or felt such a clear gentle voice that said: "that was the most beautiful part".

In an instant it reframed the imperfect into perfect for that moment and thus forever.

And that's what your quote encompasses. Good read, thanks for sharing.

	▲	npunt 18 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Cracks in the voice are so visceral. One I love is in the Rolling Stone's Gimme Shelter, Merry Clayton is just about screaming and her voice cracks and they kept the band's cheering reaction to it on the record [1]. Truly a case of the subject matter trying to break out of the medium. Related is that a lot of cultures embrace intentional imperfections in art for spiritual reasons, as it conveys authenticity and humility in the face of perfection. E.g. Persian flaw [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimme_Shelter [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_carpet#cite_note-68
	▲	101008 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In the same vein, the most beautiful part of Patti Smith performing "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" at Nobel Prize Award Ceremony is when she mistakes the lyrics. Whenever I need to cry, I watch that video.

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stgo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's also Marshall McLuhan:

- Every new medium obsolesces the previous one - which then becomes the content, or the art form, of the new medium.

- Once the old ground becomes content of a new situation, it appears to ordinary attention as aesthetic figure. At the same time, a new retrieval or nostalgia is born

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BretonForearm an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> "Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature [...]

I bet the first viewers of VHS were busier with marveling at color, compactness and convenience instead of thinking of the new medium as something ugly and nasty. New technology that gets very popular usually starts as state of the art and impressive, and it's only in retrospect that people think of it in condescending way.

	▲	ahartmetz 11 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I've always disliked VHS. Broadcast TV was available for comparison at the time and it looked much better. DVD resolution seemed fine to me at the time - it does not seem fine anymore. Cassettes were not great, not terrible compared to CDs. That is still the case because stereo audio doesn't get much better than CDs. Conclusion: Whether something seems good at the time depends on availability of something similar but better.
	▲	npunt 33 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Sure the first first ones, but hedonic adaptation happens pretty quickly. If you watched a movie in the theaters and then got a VHS copy to watch on your TV at home, you'd notice the difference, especially if it was a well-worn copy. I remember being so excited about laserdiscs because they overcame the VHS noise.

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dylan604 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm familiar with the quote. Still don't like this nostalgia-esque recreation. As someone that spent many hours in edit bays dealing with these tape based artifacts, seeing them now is not nostalgic but brings out a Pavlovian response nearly PTSD like triggering. However, I do understand why others less in the trenches of trying to avoid these types of issues would want it.

	▲	npunt 37 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		We all want what we don't have. Back in the day we were desperate for a clearer picture and found these artifacts annoying. We longed for an alternate reality that was as crisp as our own. Nowadays folks that didn't experience the pre-digital era want aesthetics that embrace the imperfections that today's visual culture glosses over. They want reminders that life wasn't always this way.
	▲	Animats 35 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'm getting really tired of seeing dust and scratches applied to YouTube video. Especially when it's applied to zooms and pans over stills.

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BobbyTables2 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That is pretty good!

Hmm. Now that we have 1 terabyte 1000MB/s NVme drives, we can really be nostalgic about the 1.44Mb 3.5” floppy drives that have about 30KB/s throughput…

Might even be practical with the latest trends in storage pricing…

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bel8 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The power of nostalgia.