Seeing Presence Reality Podcasts. The Future circa 2033 in 2022.
Sitting in a studio with one of the world’s iconic musicians he makes a devastation revelation. The multi-million dollar genre he created was a gimick. He says this with an air of mischief, executing a grin from ear to ear as he begins to light up a massive joint.
Today Afro-beat that Nigerian superstar Fela Kuti pioneered and then dissed is a multibillion dollar industry, driven by Femi (son), Burna Boy (Ye) et al. The viewer toggles his fingers and moves to other studios replete with stars who set the bar high for others to follow.
Less a headset, more like a modified pair of headphones and remodelled google glass, presence reality has come a long way in 2033. Think Fortnite on quadruple speed. Podcasts as an auditory, even fixed personalised video experience, has been usurped by an immersive visual-audio haptic.
Historical trends provide the empirical evidence for how this came to be. Marconi’s sound invention provided Edison the impetus to go a stage further — visual. And every innovation once it achieves saturation, someone moves the dial. Remember how each platform, like the aching Twitter, went from 140 characters to moving visual stimuli. It is the way. We pay good money for visual experiences e.g. cinema. Podcasts just became cinematic experiences, but with a twist.
Virtual, augmented, applied then presence. It’s like going through a portal and you’re there in the present in a podcast interacting with the material. Archivals were the most sourced for walk ins. These were actual historical recordings remodelled to suit human forms.
180991’s portal was actually taken from an actual physical location from when I was asked to train young Syrian filmmakers near the border in 2012. Once you enter you’re surrounded by dark space.
Cut to 2022, and whilst one eye’s on presence reality, next week at a conference celebrating 100 years of the BBC, I shall be playing Fela Kuti’s interview. Yes it actually took place.
Kuti’s interview was part of a find that with other celebrities lay undiscovered in a garage for some thirty years. The question I asked now was what were their value. I’ve lived in innovation as a disruptor for several years, so can trend extrapolate the future, but what about now?
What is the value of archive like this, right now?
