Capturing a moment

[Guy Rowland]

I've always had a soft spot for MGMT's lofi electro anthem Kids. A few months ago a daft video surfaced of the duo singing to backing track in 2003, outdoors on a college campus to handful of enthusiastic onlookers, 4 years before it was a global phenomenon.

There is something genuinely delightful and oddly moving about this ramshackle, fun performance art. I was prompted to revist it by a Guardian article today - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... rld-phones .

Isobel Brooks writes:

"Social media doesn’t exist yet. There is something about the way people look and behave and inhabit the space that tugs at my heartstrings and fills me with nostalgia. No one is dressed that well; the camera zooms unsteadily to capture the crowd’s awkwardness, slumped shoulders and arrhythmic bopping. Beyond the footage we’re watching, no one seems to be filming.

I was only four when the video was filmed, so why does watching it make me feel as if I’ve lost a whole world?"

Apparently half of kids and young people today wish the internet didn't exist. It's sadly fascinating to me that they fixate on a video like this and yearn for being lost in a moment.



Sometimes a video captured a great song, a great feeling and a unique experience at the same time, where the technical imperfections help make it what it is. I already posted this in the legacy section but it bears repeating - Mike Scott of The Waterboys performed The Whole Of The Moon to a bunch of schoolkids in rural Ireland in school assembly one morning in 1987. The quality is terrible and it's joy in a bottle.



If we are looking for ways to combat AI, I think we start here.