All the photographs this week were taken on George Street in Hastings. Its a very picturesque pedestrian street full of bars, cafes and quaint little shops. It is also one of the main thoroughfares of Old Town and so you get an amazing array of characters strolling down there, both locals and tourists. It actually reminded me a lot of Portobello Rd so felt like a home from home and spent a lot of time there watching people go by and capturing the ones you see before you.
Sometimes you don’t realise what a gem of a photo you have until you review it later. It was only after seeing this shot that I spotted the Mr Happy Mug sitting right in front of Mr Grumpy. That is ironic synchronicity at its best. As a photographer you can’t ask for more than that. Although it’s probably me taking his picture who is actually souring his mood…soz mate.
It does seem that almost everyone in Hastings has a dog. Babies are also quite popular, although not everyone seems entirely happy to have them.
The thing about people watching is you believe through observation you can work out what they are thinking but rather than an insight into the minds of others it is much more like holding up a mirror to your own. Let’s all take a moment to reflect on how deep that was…
Like take this dude, he absolutely looks like he’s up to no good. Is that for real or judgemental assumption? Did I just catch him at a bad moment? And is it my imagination that the old guy is getting a grilling from his wife, the latest in a long long line of domestic beration?
I think what I really love about observing and also documenting my fellow man, woman, child and occasional dog is that as I fully immerse my mind in their perceived life it is a holiday from myself. When I dwell on them I am not dwelling on my own life. And let’s be honest we’ve all done that more than enough so I think it’s actually vital to have these welcome breaks from insular thinking by focussing on the internal workings of others. And whether projected or not, it’s still breaks the endless rumination. And that can only be a good thing. Not for them obvs. It’s tantamount to slander but hey ho…
Over the last 3 years the only place I have been apart from at home is Hastings. We go down there to dog sit for our wonderful friends (yes michelle & chris I am talking about you) when they are away. It is a mutually beneficial relationship as we love being down there and we also love their dog (yes mazzy I am talking about you). Anyway whilst down there I have also been documenting the characterful coastal town and its characterful inhabitants. And as my brain is back in gear a bit I am finally able to go through the photographs and share with you some of my selections, which I will do over the coming weeks…
So I hope you will enjoy this little visit to the seaside. Having been marooned in my local area for such a long time it was great to be taking pictures on a different turf. Hastings has a very unique vibe and doesn’t feel like anywhere else I have been in U.K so was very inspiring to photograph. This week featured captured moments that ignite an imagined story.
Like this dude..a one man walking disco. He actually looked a bit pissed off and quite charged up. He doesn’t look he’s going to bust some moves so I imagined he had just gone round to his ex to take back his disco ball which she had commandeered after the break-up and he had taken back what was rightfully his. “You can have the rowing machine but the glitterball is coming with me! I’m gonna have loads of fun without you..I’m gonna have a party and invite loads of people and it will be amazing and you’ll hear about it and curse the day you broke up with me and now every time you see a disco ball you’ll think what did I do? he was the best thing that ever happened to me..why? WHY??”
ok, I got a bit carried away there but you get the gist..
Some days I wake up, have a cup of tea, bit of toast and then I go to Venezuela and visit the tallest waterfall in the world, or I go to a beach in thailand, or scuba diving inside the wreckage of a WW2 plane..and I even sometimes go into space. I actually go into space quite a lot. The first astronauts were obviously beyond excited at the thought of being amongst the stars but what they didn’t realise until they got up there was that the most breathtaking sight was not looking outwards but instead looking backwards and seeing our own planet. This life changing experience known as the ‘Overview effect’ is something I have done many many times over the last few months. How have I done all this? No, this has nothing to do with hallucinogenics. I have been inhabiting the wonderful world of virtual reality. I have been nowhere but have ‘visited’ more places than I have maybe done in my entire life.
The world is currently ‘closed for business’. Travel is off the menu. Being able to go to another country is virtually impossible at the moment but it is ‘virtually’ possible. And so whilst I wait for the real world to return I travel in VR. On the Occulus quest 2 (which is the headset we have) they have these 360 degrees immersive films and so at the click of a button you can suddenly be on the streets of Havana, swimming with sharks or skydiving over the alps. You feel like you are there because, just like in real life, you can look all around you. You are not fixed to one viewpoint. The other day I was in a panda enclosure in Japan just inches away from the adorable monochromatic bears and utterly immersed and then thought to look behind me and found a massive crowd of Japanese tourists taking pictures. And so I then started watching them. And that is exactly is what I would have done if I had been there . 360 gives you choice. 360 gives you peripheral vision just like IRL (in real life)
When I am at a gig I don’t always look at the band. I look around. I check out the crowd. I soak it all in and that is what you can do in VR. Unlike other visual mediums your viewpoint is not being dictated by someone else. The shots I have posted this week (screengrabs from the headset) do obviously not do justice to the experience whatsoever but here are a couple of clips just to give you a lil idea of what you can see, albeit within the confines of a frame that is not there if you watch in VR.
With the headset on you are not just observing, you are actually in it. You know it’s not real but your brain doesn’t. It responds as if you are present in that environment. It fills in the gaps. It connects the dots. It also does this in real life. I have quoted this stat several times before (cos I find it so mind-blowing) but your brain only gets 10% of its information from the optic nerve in your eye, the other 90% it is builds on the inside from information it already has simply because its quicker. Your brain is so fucking fast you don’t even realise it is doing it but what it effectively means is we are already living in a virtual world of our own making. So seeing life through a headset really isn’t that different.
I would obviously much rather be experiencing these things IRL but in the absence of it, this is something. I tend to ‘go to’ places of natural beauty and tranquility because it is the opposite of city living but you can pretty much go anywhere on Earth. In doing so you are transported beyond the confines of the walls that surround you. You get to see places you would never have ever gone to without ever leaving the comfort of your own home. You don’t need luggage. You don’t need to go through the hassle of airport hell and you don’t need to spend any money whatsoever on accommodation. You don’t even need to get dressed if you don’t want to. I actually ‘virtually travel mostly’ in my dressing gown. Why? Because I can.
The pandemic has proven one thing, we can live local lives. We can communicate and work via video if needsbe. It is maybe not 100% desirable but it is doable. What this enforced pause proved is what they said couldn’t ever possibly happen, happened. We all ground to a halt and life carried on. Maybe there will be a time again when travel is ok again but in the meantime we must learn to stay put. Previous generations barely left the town let alone the country they lived in their whole lives. And now the Brexit portcullis has come down, trotting round Europe, which was where most of us in the U.K travelled to, just ain’t gonna be as easy it once was. And if staycations aren’t your bag, maybe a virtual holiday will do the trick.
The reason I actually got the headset in the first place was so that I could hang out in cyber space with my brother and my nephew who both have one too. In the app Bigscreen you can ‘meet’ in an environment of your choice (lush living room, drive in cinema, mars) and interact as avatars. Within moments you feel like you are both in a shared space chatting away as if you were in the same room. It is way more connective than a phone call or a vid chat. You really get this sense that you are hanging out together.
It’s kinda nuts but once more the brain readily accepts it and you forget almost immediately you aren’t speaking to the actual person. Obvs it is not the same as being together IRL but it’s pretty damn decent. And during this period of isolation and separation it has proved invaluable. I have always been against tech if it got in the way of real life interaction but in some ways, this is an improvement because if you are talking to someone with a headset on you have their undivided attention. They aren’t distracted, they can’t look at their phone. It’s actually better.
The weirdest thing is when you take off the headset you feel like you are leaving the real world not the other way round. It is a bit of a headfuck tbh as the constructed digital world feels like an alternate realm of existence so immersive that when you are inside it you never think for a nanosecond you are actually in an environment that is made up of 0s and 1s. The longer you are in it the weirder it is when you return to reality because it feels less somewhat less engaging than what you have left. And we are just at the forefront of this technology. It is still a bit ‘blocky’ and there is sometimes a lil lag on the frame rate which can give you a bit of motion sickness but its only going to get better and better.
I have been charting the battle between digital living and the real world for years since smartphones became ubiquitous in our lives. I have seen reality slowly then rapidly lose its dominance for people’s attention and have had to acknowledge that since the world was shut down by this pesky spiky virus, the war is over. Digi won. Reality lost. So if you cant beat em, guess you might as well join em. When the real world returns as it once was it might not be so desirable to be in VR but I can’t imagine I’m ever going to get bored being in space.
Having said all that I have always been, and will always be of the opinion that there is no experience in the digi world that even comes close to its real life counterpart but as we need to drastically scale back flying around the planet in order to reduce carbon emissions. We must do this. We just cannot continue as we have been and so, VR might just be our salvation. It could be just the thing to help us wean ourselves off jetting across the globe at the drop of a hat.
If it significantly cut down aviation then all we would then need to do is cut down meat consumption and cut out fossil fuels and we can ensure that future gens have a liveable planet. Life will not only go on without these things, it will go on…which is more than it will do for our species if we don’t make these adjustments. Remember, not saving the planet, saving ourselves..
P.S You can also be a jedi and shoot zombies on this thing. Like fa real. Just sayin’
P.P.S I should mention this is not a plug, I ain’t getting paid to say this shit. Sadly not on the Occulus payroll but I bloody well should be.
And so concludes our virtual trip to Ibiza circa 2019..when dancing was still a thing. A time when massive groups of people were not only allowed but extremely willing to be crammed together on the dancefloor, breathing each other’s breath, sweating each other’s sweat. These things might seem fairly undesirable right now but that was kind of the point. You were packed in so tightly together that all barriers between individuals were broken down. You were no longer separate entities. You became one gi-normous amorphous blob of rhythmic motion. And yes, that was considered a good thing.
The pandemic has proven categorically one thing..we need to interact with each other. It is imperative. We cannot properly function without human to human contact which is why having to keep away from each other is proving so friggin hard. We are mammals. We are designed to be close to one another. That is why we are so hot. (37 degrees on the inside to be precise) It’s so we can keep each other warm. Physically and metaphorically.
How do we cope with being apart from each other like this? In all honesty I don’t know but it is evident that we are failing to do so. Certainly not enough to stop the spread of the virus which is the whole point. We should be able to but clearly it is having a very detrimental effect on us all. And the longer it goes on the more it is going to grind us down. I have spoken to a lot of people this week and everyone seems incredibly despondent which is hardly a surprise as we are now six months in and it might as well be day 1 because we have made zero progress.
And as depressing as that is I urge you all to stay strong and keep your chins up. Let’s be honest, this ain’t going anywhere anytime soon so we are gonna have to settle in for the long haul which requires a deeper level of acceptance from all of us. We must endure this. And it will pass. The 2nd world war lasted 6 years and that was endured. This is like a war situation only difference is the enemy is invisible. I’m not saying its gonna last 6 years but we need to start thinking about it in those terms, for our own sanity.
We keep expecting this to end any day and it just won’t. And that sucks to high heaven but all we have to do is survive this. No more, no less. And that includes not losing our shit. We need to keep ourselves together for as long as this lasts and we’re gonna have to toughen the fuck up, just like previous generations did. We’ve had everything handed to us on a plate. No-one has ever said no to us. We have done what we wanted when we wanted. Well, now we can’t and we are just gonna have to pucker up and deal with it. No way round it I’m afraid.
I will be back on the streets of London as of Monday but it has been great to have got away from it for a few weeks, even if it was only virtually. And, now, as I walk past the masses in masks and wonder how the fuck this came to pass I will cast my mind to a time and a place when it hadn’t happened yet and pray for the day when it returns…
We stayed at an apartment right on the playa del bossa and every evening we sat out on the balcony and watched as everyone decked out for a night out strolled down the sidewalk/catwalk, preened and poised for action. It was like Ibeefa Tv and extremely captivating as we saw the daylife disappear and the nitelife begin…
Getting dressed up is half the fun of going out and I have not really had much reason to do so since lockdown..my ‘going out’ clothes stare at me forlornly from within my wardrobe, wanting to know when they will be back in action…I have nothing to tell them other than what I tell myself..be patient, your time will come again. And much as I have been enjoying a more ‘casual’ approach to life (back in combats for the 1st time since the 90s ;) I really wanna get suited n booted again – if things don’t improve soon, I’m gonna wear my 3 piece down Tescos and rock out under the faulty fluorescent in Aisle 7. ..fuck it.
