Response to On ***** Media

I thought the bit about Mathew Brady’s documentary Civil War photographs brought up a powerful point. He certainly wasn’t the first person to attempt to capture the aspects of war, but he was different in that his work revealed the realistic, raw side that had long been ignored. While other portrayals expressed glory, heroism, triumph and victory, Brady’s expressed defeat, death and austerity. Generally, many people (today) would agree that the latter are common feelings associated with war, so Brady was successful in using “the camera’s eye to create new mythos;” his work is iconic. It’s interesting how multimedia ties together in that they all are means of communicating something; a feeling, an idea, anything—it’s a language.

http://www.ubu.com/film/rimmer_pizza.html

The video I chose is a compilation of selected moments from eight months of filming the street life outside of a Manhattan pizza parlor. I chose it because the artist is able to capture the mood of an urban setting by filming interactions that bring life to the concrete sidewalks