Transcriber: Jonathan Hernandez Rondon Reviewer: Denise RQ
It turns out that one thing
that fish know nothing about is water.
Because they're immersed in it,
they don't know what it means to be dry.
Similarly, we are immersed in our media,
and we don't understand the impact it's having on our lives.
I would argue that not only have we entered the digital age,
[but] the digital age has entered us.
The way we act, the way we think,
the way we socialize, even the way we make love,
has changed drastically in the last 10 years.
I have a hypothesis as to why.
I think there are two reasons.
One, we are exposed to such different realities.
I mean, it's so different from the life that I grew up in,
or pre-Internet.
And what's interesting is we're lost over there,
and we're constantly recording our lives,
and trying to participate in this media heap.
But before we record our lives using media,
we need to understand media.
I'm an artist and I'll tell you something tricky about media.
Every form of media, drawing, painting, film,
photography, music, every form of media,
always began mimicking or representing truth,
but it only matured after it transcended
the need to represent truth.
So, for me, a motion picture is not a galloping horse,
but a galloping fantasy.
Now, if this is the case,
the media-endrenched generation [is] living two lives,
where reality is only a reference point
in the real lives we now live.
If this is the case,
then why do we open the New York Times
and look at the photographs to see what's happening in Syria?
Why do we look at Facebook photos
to see what's happening with our friends' lives?
Here's another hypothesis.
I think it's because of judgement.
Earlier, God was the ultimate witness,
and God was replaced by the eyewitness,
who is then replaced by the camera or the photograph,
and nothing has come to replace the photo since.
But, can the photo ever tell the truth?
This is a question I want you to think about.
I'm going to take you to one
of the most famous iconic photos in American history.
This picture sparked an antiwar sentiment in America;
what we do know
is that gentle, mercylessly shot point blank
in front of all the journalists, -- that innocent Viet cong prisioner;
but what we don't know,
is that innocent guy had just massacred a whole bunch of people.
What we don't know is that photographer Eddie Adams said
that he "actually killed the general with his camera."
What we don't know is that Eddie Adams said,
"The photo is lying."
It is the most powerful photo we know.
Now, look at this photo.
It's virtually impossible for the naive eye
to distinguish this as a fake.
One of the most viral photos after 9/11.
I want to take you to a more recent photo, and this is really sad.
It's a photo that's happening now, it's going viral now.
It's a Syrian orphan sleeping next to his parents.
What we don't know
is that it's actually an artist and his nephew doing an art instalation;
nothing to do with Syria.
Now, can we depend on the photograph to tell the truth?
I think not.
We're now even performing for the camera.
I think that we're now not only just recording the life we live,
we're also starting to live the lives we record.
And this could be both dangerous and exciting.
And I'm guilty as charged, because on my Facebook
you'll find the most cute, beautiful photographs of my babies.
But what you don't know is that could be a hell hole back home.
(Laughter)
My wife's not listening, not Julian?
The truth is these photographs have nothing to do with the truth,
they have more to do with the father I want to be.
So, maybe, just maybe, if we start imagining a world that's a little better,
we may start living it.
My hypothesis is that the photograph is not about truth;
we need today to relieve it of that burden.
We need to see photographs as someone's point of view on life,
where the photograph is not important,
it is actually the person taking it,
it's his point of view that actually matters.
This is something I've been feeling very strongly about as an artist
and I've used this in my art work.
But then, I have an announcement to make,
I actually have taken a sabbatical from art, when things are going well,
and I've decided to become a technologist
and work with brilliant people to try and start something called Flipsicle.
What we're doing over here is re-imagining the future of the visual web.
And the future of the visual web
is not about the photo, as a unit of truth.
It is about photo as a unit of empathy.
I have children who are now little fish
who've never known what it means to be dry,
and I think about what kind of bubble do I want to bring them up in?
And I cannot promise my children a life without vice,
-- I'm Indian, we're viced; we're all viced actually --
but the truth is I can vice my children with as many perspectives as possible.
So, what we believe is, the filter is not really sepia or 1977...
(Laughter)
... it's you.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)