Two cool things happened yesterday. I’ve finally seen Dziga Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera, a movie I’ve wanted to see for a long time now. Actually it was Lev Manovich’s great book The Language of New Media that brought my attention to it a few years ago. Manovich writes extensively about Vertov’s movie drawing parallels between the common characteristics of the movie and the today’s new media. Now that I have actually seen it, I can finally understand what is so hip about it.

If I didn’t know when it was made, I’m pretty sure I would have guessed wrong. Sure, it’s done in black-and-white and it’s without sound (the music accompanying it in contemporary version was done just recently according to Vetrov’s vision), both of which give it vintage look and feel. However, everything else about it is contemporary. Everything from (then) experimental editing, to length of cuts, dynamics, even topics it covers (technology).

This just a bit over an hour long film praises technology of it’s day. In 1929 that mostly meant machines and Vertov shows many in a truly poetic way. The film immediately reminded me of Godfrey Reggio’s quatsi trilogy, especially the first two films Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi. While the other story it tells is the story about a cameraman. Camera following camera, an issue which resurfaced in the last decade when there has been a lot of talk about remediation (Remediation: Understanding New Media by Bolter and Grusin is just one such example). So again, the movie is right on the spot.

While Vertov was fun, the other cool thing of the day was more educational. It was a lecture about lockpicking titled nothing else but “Locks, Lockpicking, Security” held by Mateusz Pozar at Valand School of Fine Arts. There’s really a lot about this topic out there on the Net, but it is so much more fun to hear someone talk about it in person.

Pozar covered pretty much everything from the historical development of locks to the very basic mechanical underpinnings of different kinds of locks. It was interesting to hear that locks have not changed much over the last two centuries, which I found to be rather surprising given all the other technological advances and how much we rely on locking up our stuff on every step. However, Pozar actually spared his audience from actually showing how to manipulate and pick locks, which I had expected to see with anticipation.

But what was really cool about the lecture were the tidbits. For instance, that already Egyptians were using wooden locks, which were opened with really large keys. That the guards at the Tower of London have been for the last 700 hundred years locking its doors every single day at exactly 7 minutes before ten o’clock in the evening encapsuled in just as old ceremony that looks more like a sketch today. And among other things also that the city of Detroit gave the keys to the city to no other than Saddam Hussein himself. I don’t know if I am really surprised by that.

Anyways, the lecture was more about the social aspects than the actual act as our speaker was still perfecting the skill. But for all you budding enthusiasts out there, here’s where you can start:
- The Open Organisation of Lockpickers
- Sportenthusiasts of Lockpicking Germany
- Lock Picking 101

Knowledge is power. Have fun.

Mladen

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 10:09 am and is filed under Books, Education, Movies, Sweden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.