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rel:The Dialogic Imagination - M. M. Bakhtin
With Chronotype, in my head, I was thinking about all of that data that is being stored. I forget the exact fact but it comes up occasionally there there are millions of videos uploaded a day, constituting an equally staggering archival of fragments of human experience and creativity.
For some reason my thought went to if a project, of a completely simple scene, such as plain room, being continuously filmed would have any value in time, just by virtue of it being continuously filmed. Capturing literally the dullest subject. Would any value come from this, just because it was capturing data for such a long (ideally the longest) period of time.
Obvious there are long running webcams of mundane scenes, or of particular places (like when a hurricane comes and a thousand eyes bombard the webcams off associated impending catastrophe zones, often seeing tourists idly taking selfies).
But what is the longest record of these? What is the longest running, uninterrupted livestream but also just more generally what is the longest running data recording.
What is the longest running record, as in an object continuously producing data? Say even a thermometer that outputs a type of printed continuous graph of the temperature for a single room for thousands of years.
Sunspots
Astronomers have access to a continuous set of observational data of the sunspot number (number of sunspots on the Sun), dating back to 1750. It is the longest continuous set of any science observations in the world.
Records
In writing this, I’m noticing that “recording” data and what I am seeking “records” (as in Guinness book of) have a connection.
Look at the etymological roots of record.
Middle English: from Old French record ‘remembrance’, from recorder ‘bring to remembrance’, from Latin recordari ‘remember’, based on cor, cord- ‘heart’. The noun was earliest used in law to denote the fact of being written down as evidence. The verb originally meant ‘narrate orally or in writing’, also ‘repeat so as to commit to memory’.
I love that it involves the heart. -gram also means to record.
Just taking a look at the records for longest phone calls, I have questions (each record seems to be attached to some nuance or rules that allow the game to played.)
A feat recognized by the Guinness World Records took place in Riga, Latvia, where a phone conversation lasted for a whopping 56 hours and 4 minutes. This happened back in 2012 at an event organized by Tele2 communications and SponsorKing. The record was set by two teams, Kristaps Štãls paired with Patriks Zvaigzne and Leonids Romanovs participating together with Tatjana Fjodorova, who talked about anything from aquariums to social dynamics to mind power.
rel:’No Pause
What are the challenges here? Imagine a system of continuous livestreaming with an attempt to keep the longest record of recording, without lapses. This would be reliant on the stability of the individual, along with infrastructural stability. I suppose that’s why these records tend have sponsorship, as in “here is a record, as a testament to our performance in aiding this performance.”
Regarding livestream records
The longest live-stream (video) is 624 hr 37 min 55 sec in duration, and was achieved by Zhejiang Luyuan Electric Vehicle Co., Ltd. (China) in Jinhua, Zhejiang, China, from 16 August to 11 September 2022.
Upkeep
I like how it seems that with all of these records there’s a subtask that spawns around it. Basically beyond observation, there is maintenance towards the task. You have to keep the attention and connection, or the observation falls to disarray. The livestream record requires that constant flow data. If we are recording to rolls of paper, we must ensure that there are no jams and that the process for paper replacement doesn’t impede the printing itself. We cannot run out of paper.
Imagining a multi-year long DJ set as mentioned in DJ Set Breakdown
A DJ set that is constantly breaking down, requiring constant participation by the dancing crowd to repair while the DJ continues to play. Wires being restrung, people under the decks performing soldering. Components being replaced. But all support this structure of sound.
Secret webcams
I recall back in the day you could scan open public webcams. Generally stuff that was unsecure, or just publicly (but also intended to be private) web hosted cameras. Most often it seemed people didn’t care. But I remember dropping into a random one and it was a room, seemingly like a mechanical room in a facility. It was a webcam that focused on this room, without anyone or anything in it besides this digital LED clock and some numerical output presumably from instruments. It must have served a practical purpose for the person that setup the livestream to run continuously.
Record
I guess we can also think of the longest extant records in the physical space. The oldest forum post. The oldest website.
The oldest digital record, where does it exist? We are eventually replacing the drives of the servers that post it. There is a copying process.
The “oldest website”, might not be the oldest data of a website. Site 1 exists first, it is on an old server and it is replaced. Site 2 existed after, it still spins the old disk though since day 1.
Say we have an old book, or clay tablet. Whatever is physical. There’s an entropic wave that will always make the record of the oldest object fall upon newer objects. The oldest surviving isn’t the same as the oldest, just as the oldest piece of clothing that I own is slowly being replaced (in a record sense) by something newer.
Similar in these digital cases for the record to be maintained we have this apparatus of industry surrounding it that is somewhat unrelated to the task itself.
Our Record of Records
Our record of records is under a sense of this recording decay. You and I have a race. You win. We die. Nobody knows.
Our book of records (Guinness book), a tome of human achievement or pointless recording, once we lose this we lose all the records it contained.
Audio recording
I was looking for a microphone to capture field recordings. I was doing this because I could recall these tapes I had made when younger, and wanted a pure audio capture (I understand that my phone can do this, but I specifically wanted a dedicated device that would capture only audio - not video, because the experience of just listening would be different, even if I simply closed my eyes to a video recording that also had audio.)
What I learned was that some of the high quality recording equipment is actually valued because of how silent its operation is. If you want to capture the sound of a moths wings fluttering, I suppose you must be a quiet as possible. I also found gear that for whatever design reason, would capture bits of the recording structure like an audio version of Bug on Sensor. So you would hear the start of every recording, with the sound of the tactile switch from which the recording process started depressing “click.”