Zoom Meeting Between Two Skies
In 2020, we retreated into socially distanced spheres. There was a need to bridge our relationships with one another from afar. Technology in the form of Zoom meetings stepped in to be that bridge. Our image and gestures were carried through technology and proximations of ourselves were displayed in the material of light. Zoom structures these relationships in a rational way, through corners and straight lines, even as our real lives require that we rationally resist the emotional need to be with one another in physical proximity. Zoom meetings opened a four-cornered peephole into the noumena of someone else’s residence or private space. It is a neat framing of their likely chaotic life in the wake of the pandemic. In the duration of the meeting, with our proximate image displayed and personal background revealed, we attempt to find congruence during our conversation. Congruence is a psychological term used by Carl Rogers to describe the process in which engagement with our inner world, the ideal self, and the outer world, actual experience, are consistent while keeping in touch with those around us.(Grafanaki, 2013)
In this video, one panel displays an image (right panel) of the sky being recorded in actual time from twilight until dark. The other image (left panel) displays a sky that is being filmed from a video monitor. This sky was recorded the previous night and is played backward on the screen. Both skies are transitioning, one from dark to light, the other from light to dark. Each struggles to capture the fullness of the colors in the sky, the left panel shows more distortion since it is recorded from the display of a monitor. At one point in the video, the skies are closest to matching, but is there any significance in seeking that particular point of closeness compared to any other point in the meeting?