THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE PRIVATE REALM
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contents the morning show in the studio: central broadcast in the living room: private consumption the living room as studio: public broadcast the 24hr show
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the total eclipse of the private realm the morning show introduction
The distinction between the individual and the congregation can be seen in the moment one reaches the portal between public realm and private domain: opens it, closes it, and locks it shut behind. The inhabitant has entered the private domestic space; it resembles family-specific embodied memory in the tokens decorating the interior; it signifies the separation from the chaos of the public realm; it demonstrates the closure of the communication between the out and the in. Or, so it did.
Samuel Weber, in his book Mass Mediauras, defines that “television consists primarily of three operations: production, transmission and reception” (Weber, S. 1996). Through the consolidation of these three operations, it can be suggested that this is the route through which the public realm can access a communication line into the private domestic space. In this essay, reception will be reimagined as consumption. Marshall McLuhan states “really total and saturating environments are invisible” (McLuhan, Marshall. 1967) in reference to electronic realms, and so Television’s lack of visible electronic context struggles an inability for assessed reception, and results instead in unfiltered consumption. James B. Brown signifies the contemporary challenge for the individual, “for whom the urban experience is largely mediated by [the] screen. In our pockets and on our limbs, screens are all around us” (Brown, J. B. 2018) suggesting that the process of
Domesticity signified a reorganisation of spatial protocol through the adaptation of architectural scale, feature and form. The home follows a programme of domesticity: a space for eating, a space for sleeping and a space for family gathering. The domestication of such spatial protocol saw the polarisation of human activities, designating particular behaviours only be confined to the private space of the home. 3
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consumption did not wane, and has instead reversely consumed us.
Broadcasting Company began their daily transmission service, which saw a steady growth of attraction to the new technology (BBC, 2001). And by the end of the 1930s, an estimated 98% of the UK (BBC, 2001) were regularly ‘tuning-in’ to the wireless sets, often situated at the heart of the domestic collective gathering spot: the living room. In 1936, Rudolf Arnheim writes, “wireless, realm of the ear and not the eye” (Arnheim, R. 1936. p 286). His early-media reflection insinuates the single-sensorial nature of purely aural media: occupying one sense; one grasp of focus. And so it is the mediation of attentive media in Television which becomes an increasingly demanding occupation of the viewers’ senses, both aurally and visually.
In the 21st century, does domestic privacy still exist in the way it did before the introduction of media transmission receivers? Has the introduction of television reconciled the barrier between the private and public domain to one which has ceased to exist? It can be said that the walls in which protect private solitude still exist in structural form, but now they are infinitely permeable by the concession of media repositories existing in tandem with the human body and the archetypal space of the home. The television has introduced the network conglomerate of central broadcast to the home and it has individualised private consumption. Now, TV has challenged the concept of domestic privacy entirely: the contemporary individual is able to exist as a public production and broadcast entity.
The electronic circuits of transmission were called Television around 1899 by Raphael E. Liesegang (Kittler, F. 1999). Tele, in Greek, translates as far and distant (Online Etymology Dictionary, 2019). The naming of such a medium conceptualises the process of, not only, asserting ones eyes to imagery forming on a distant screen, perched in the corner of the room. But, the process of leading ones vision along the far and distant transmission route to a linked space, where the imagery was first produced. Television seeks for a total connection between the boundaries of studio and living room. Kittler writes, “The images falling on the retina occupy a considerable larger angle of vision, and telepresence can
in the studio In the 1920s, the development of the Radio allowed transmission of media to penetrate the isolating walls of the domestic castle. The wave carried information through physically bound spaces, enhancing the capacity in which domestic inhabitants could connect to unfamiliar characters outside the private boundary. Two years later, the British 4
thus be described as an invasion or conquest of the retina through an artificial paradise.” (Kittler, F. 1999). The visual connection is seized upon by the author to maintain focus, which is exacerbated by the technology itself. But, this totalitarian connective route has existed in the majority of circumstances in the same way Arnheim describes “wireless is one person speaking without hearing and
a viewership at specified times of the day. This relationship was nurtured through the development of network production sites across the globe. The BBC, in the 1960s, opened the Television Centre in White City (Kempton, M. 2019). Its promotion of the imminent building in early visuals signifies its ambition to be a beacon of transmission: a single congregation of centralised televisual production and broadcast (Kempton, M. 2019). The concept model appears as a symbolic gesture to the ruling satellite dish of the TV infrastructure (Parks, L. 2005). The BBC’s vision appears to be one that embodies a microcosm of pocketed studio moments for crafted content, which is then symbolically fed into the iconographic transmission diode situated an the centre of this televisual orbit. Sir John Reith describes the entity of broadcasting as “being represented by a golden ring encircling the globe” (Ericson, S. Reigert, K. 2010). Once the media is formalised in the eye of the Television Centre orbit, it reflects the notion of being transported from the tip of this monumental tower, and broadcast directly into each individual London home (Parks, L. 2005).
fig 1. the BBC Television Centre draft idea (Kempton, M. 2019)
all the rest listening without being able to speak.” (Arnheim, R. 1936. p 272) The entity of the public space now had temporary access to the private realm. One studio, one production set, one control. The central production and broadcast of media saw the permeation of the domestic wall by media channelled through a schedule of programmes (Parks, L. 2005). The unfamiliarity of the immaterial media was reformed under the facade of shared connectivity between the private viewer and the media conglomerate. An extended, particleformed hand was offered within the transmission of aerial data, coaxing in
This image was broadcast on television ahead of the build of the Television Centre (Kempton, M. 2019), a gesture to the public which invites the anonymous mass of viewers into the formulation of the public urban 5
landscape, from the comfort of their domestic space. In the background, Tower Bridge and St Paul’s is detailed, suggesting the BBC’s intention for the new centre to be a similar monument on London’s urban skyline. The inclusion of the general public in the BBC’s decisions suggests an immateriality of the media, making the viewer feel included in the decision making process.
Scope of Social Architecture’ claims “television has been blamed for the disintegration of community in America because it isolates us from the public realm in a cocoon of privacy”(Hatch. R 1984). Yet, despite a disintegration of community, television did not create a ‘cocoon of privacy’, it simply perpetrated a suggestion of privacy while it engaged you through its own intimate-publicness in the domestic space. The intimacy of Roanoke Design ‘79 central broadcast could transmit immediacy of media directly through the walls of the private domain, no longer as a prerecorded scheduled event. Instead it was now held as an identity within the domestic space, existing side-by-side at live speed with the rest of the family. The breeze-block walls between the conglomerate’s public entity and the individual’s private space had been stormed.
The creation of an immaterial intimacy between the central conglomerate and the private individual was similarly adopted in the live, phone-in television show Roanoke Design ‘79. Charles Moore and Chad Floyd hosted the design-a-thon (Hatch. R 1984). Moore believed “if we work under intense public scrutiny and with
in the living room The implementation of the television box within the home not only dissolved the boundary of private sanctuary, through a steady flow of aerial particle globules, but the box was the family’s translation device. It was the newly situated family member who’s conversation of content became their source of information. It encouraged its host family to reformulated the private, collective living space around itself, in
fig 2. Roanoke Design ‘79 (Hatch. R, 1984)
massive popular participation, we might be able to set free the inertia of public opinion and produce design that the broad spectrum of citizens would rise up and support” (Hatch. R 1984). Richard Hatch’s retrospective ‘The 6
which it would capture, detangle and regurgitate particle data into media for consumption. It was “the new family hearth through which love and affection might be rekindled,” (Spigel, L. 1992) describes Spigel in regards to 1950s TV society.
Open University’s radiovision lectures highlights the capturing of content to be watched at the whim of the individual (Open University (1975). Media’s access to memory created a new realm of space in which content could be continuously existing, permanently archived within the home. This suggested a form of private consumption, perpetuated by the ability to chose when and where and through which medium to access the immaterial media. Yet, to have stored media existing continuously in one’s private domain is a form of opening the private threshold to a public space. The home became a space in which both the individual and the conglomerate lived.
Media was fed right into their home, onto their TV-tray-dinners. Fast-forward, and the span of the transmission route between production and broadcast has become increasingly short. Through the mediation of the media, a greater sense of intimacy has fused between viewer and content. The immaterial TV substance spewed immediate intimacy through content into the domestic home. Arnheim aptly foreshadows consumption as he writes “with the coming of the picture, broadcasting loses its peculiarity as a new medium of expression and becomes purely a medium of dissemination.” (Arnheim, R. 1936. p277). It is through this movement of reorganisation of production and broadcast, that media intake became a decentralised flow of standardisation. Subsequently, Television protocol converted the collective viewing of central broadcast content into a user-controlled, intimate private broadcast once media had access to memory (Ernst, W. 2012).
It is at this point that the production conglomerates edged in closer to the sanctity of the private domestic space, allowing for a monetisation of ones’ individuality. And such monetisation came when media had access to memory, for example in the streaming of recorded content. This is now the most popular form of private consumption of public content seen in the contemporary period, for example Netflix, which boasts 130 million customers paying for its archive material (Kafta, P. 2019). Specifically as network conglomerates now produce media to retain the existing immaterial qualities of live TV and media intimacy, now accessible in an entirely randomised schedule.
Memory is the access to flow of transmission, the point at which media was captured and its schedule reorganised (Ernst, W. 2012). The example of the
Jean-Francois Lyotard’s work Octave 7
aux Pays des Immatériaux in 1985 conceptualises the performance of media memory through a video taken around the exhibition (Les immatériaux, trente ans après (1/3), 1985). With a child on roller skates, he is recorded listening to an audio-guide which has pre-recorded information for each object (Les immatériaux, trente ans après (1/3), 1985). The fascinating concept of ‘sequence’ is challenged by Lyotard as the young viewer glides from object to object, breaking any formalisation of designed sequence, and only consuming the media he wants. Media memory in this instance provides the individual with a bespoke experience. Yet, the internalisation of experience has similarly broken the concept of definitive public and private space, as the young viewer is able to be within both realms; coexisting.
which provides privacy and publicity, is the moment in which private and public space eclipse one another.
the living room as studio The eclipse of the public and private realm has led to a shrinking distance between studio and living room; point of production broadcast and point of information consumption. Media intimacy and immediacy have been fused (Spigel, L. 1992). In the growth of decentralised, privatised media access, there has been a reduction in scale of the transmission portal, to the size of a hand-held chunk. Technological consumption has seen the private space convert into a new public broadcast point. Here, the original viewer is now production, transmission and broadcast orchestrator of a their own social narrative.
Raymond Williams, in ‘Reading B: Mobile Privatization’ in 1983, describes “private and deliberately self-enclosed individuals [with] unprecedented mobility of such restricted privacies” (Williams, R. 1983). The reorganisation of flow of media through the archive of content memory created an insulation of media consumption, but with highly public content. This idea of a mobility of restricted privacies suggests the movement of public media within the private domestic domain. And similarly the movement of the private domestic domain in the public realm. The inclusion of technology in both public and private spaces, specifically technology
‘Tiny TVs’ were a brief craze in the 1980s (NBC News, 2016), which recognises the transformation of televisual technology through a reduction in scale, and a reorganisation of accessibility. Lynn Spigel writes that a less visible television-set was “a privileged figure of conspicuous consumption” and was a form of “commodity inhibitionism” (Spigel, L. 1992). Spigel’s description suggests that the reduction in scale was a way for the individual’s to 8
voluntarily reduce their consumption, yet the process of reduction does not
domestic lives and social lives to be clear cut and distinct entities” (Spigel, L. 1992). Now, the media authority has not only been invited in through the the television set; through the permanent collection of memory media stored at home - but also through the binding of the network conglomerate with the human body.
fig 3. NBC 1980s segment on Tiny TV (NBC News, 2016)
The once private solitude of the domestic living room is now a fully connected network of transmission from the inside to the out. Social media has become the new network channel for an inversion of the central broadcast to a public broadcast from the private space. Still embodying the pseudo-sanctity of the domestic domain, the private living room is now the contemporary network studio. The cumulative reach each individual can garner through their bite-size production and transmission tool, a mobile phone, is vast. Instagram is a social media app with over 300 million active users, who regularly post snippets of their life to their “Stories” (Amâncio, M. 2017).
fig 4. Apple Watch 2019 (The Inscriber Mag, 2019)
limit consumption, it only limits information scope. But nonetheless, it created the ‘private mobility’ of a consumption commodity, seeing the control of one’s private and public space as carefully manipulated by the individual.
There has been a rapid growth in appetite for reality TV, the most insidious of which is through the transmitted content of average people to their ‘followers’ (Amâncio, M. 2017). Youtube was a pioneer for the concept of an individual’s own ‘channel’ (Amâncio, M. 2017). And now, Instagram offers similar features to a ’24-hour news cycle’ with the users’ broadcasted Story content disappearing after one day; it
In the orchestrated control of the private and public balance - the private consumption of individually stored public content - consumption tools like the mobile phone or the Apple Watch (Apple, 2019) has seen to the total obliteration of private domestic space. Spigel describes privacy of a post-war generation who saw home as “a retreat and that people understood their 9
offers ‘IG-TV’ which allows the private individual to create their own network channel of pre-recorded content; and it further offers the immediate intimacy of Instagram Live, a feature which broadcasts the individual instantaneously to their followers (Lee, K. 2019). Instagram has capitalised on the immateriality of television production, transmission and consumption through the development of media technology, but with the addition of immediate response. In 1936 Arnheim described the televisual medium as one which only allowed one-way communication: the public broadcasting entity to the private domain of the individual (Arnheim, R. 1936. p 272). Instagram’s social media formulation has blended the lines between the broadcaster and the consumer by promoting two-way communication. The private realm was eclipsed once the individual had instantaneous access to memory media. But, private space has been further suppressed since the introduction of televisual media production, transmission and consumption features were permanently accessible to individuals, on their bodies, in their phones, any time they have access to the internet.
has led to a total eclipse of the private domestic space. The structural form of the domestic architecture stands as a pseudo-private vessel. Yet, since the inclusion of the TV set in the home, network conglomerates have progressively permeated the domestic sanctuary through a reorganisation of transmission. The decentralised standardised flow of content led to a monetisation of the domestic space, with each home being of quantifiable value to the network conglomerates. The centralised production in the network studio and the decentralised transmission of the content led to a growth in media intimacy. As it stood in the 1950s, the inclusion of public space in the private domestic realm was sporadic; either allowed by the domestic individual at a scheduled, programmed time when a show would be broadcast. Or, simply when the TV was switched on. The TV became a fundamental entity in the programming of family life as its role of transmission-particle translation was the family’s route to privately access the public. And so, it was situated as a beacon of focus in the living room, just as the BBC’s Television Centre was a beacon of modern life in 1960s London. But back at home, there was an ability to regulate the portal between the public domain and the private one, until media had access to memory and could become a permanent feature of archived content within the home. Stored public content in the home was
the 24hr show conclusion
Since the reduction of technological devices and the development of media memory, society’s ravenous consumption of televisual content 10
guised as individually-controlled private consumption. The public space of the network conglomerates outside the home was no longer at the mercy of a schedule or subject to the switching-on or -off of the TV. The transmitted content existed as a permanent feature within the home and the overlap of public and private had completely eclipsed one another, they now existed symbolically - the only difference being the guise in which the individual regulated their consumption. This was done through the disappearance of the materiality of the media, as McLuhan described the “really total and saturating environments are invisible” (McLuhan, Marshall. 1967) which was the mark of the total saturation of private space in publicly-derived media.
The incremental movements the network conglomerate has taken in order to permeate the valuable domestic space has led to a contemporary role reversal in the mediation of material. It has led to not only the blend of public-private space through the inclusion of public-broadcast technology on the body of the private individual, in the home and in the urban fabric. But, it has completely obliterated the notion of private domestic space as untouchable. The private space now exists as a fully-operational, publicly-accessible network studio.
With a greater sense of immediacy and intimacy produced through a reduction of media’s material obstruction in the individual’s private life, the opening of the private space to public medium would have felt safe and natural. And so, through this new sense of control for the individual, there became an inversion of televisual principles (production, transmission and consumption) right in the comfort of their home. In the contemporary era, the individual has become the provider of content and can transmit it globally across a network, through the entrenched matrix of transmission routes founded in their private space since the inclusion of the TV set over 70 years ago.
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Journal 1. Amâncio, M. (2017) “Put it in your Story”: Digital Storytelling in Instagram and Snapchat Stories. Masters thesis. Upsala Universitet. Available at: URL (Accessed: date). Websites 1. BBC (2001) How Did Broadcasting Begin?. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ entertainment/1146543.stm (Accessed: 16 Nov, 2019). 2. Online Etymology Dictionary (2019) Tele-. Available at: https://www.etymonline.com/word/tele?ref=etymonline_crossreference (Accessed: 04 December 2019). 3. Kempton, M. (2019) BBC TV Centre. Available at: http://www.tvstudiohistory.co.uk/tv%20 centre%20history.htm (Accessed: 04 December 2019). 4. Lee, K. (2019) The Complete List of Instagram Features for Marketing Experts. Available at:https:// sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-features/ (Accessed: 04 December 2019). 5. Kafta, P. (2019) Netflix is finally sharing (some of) its audience numbers for its TV shows and movies. Some of them are huge. Available at: https://www.vox.com/2019/1/17/18187234/netflix-viewsnumbers-first-time-bird-box-bodyguard-you-sex-education (Accessed: 04 December 2019). 6. Apple (2019) Watch. Available at: https://www.apple.com/uk/watch/ (Accessed: 04 December 2019). Images Fig. 1 - Extract from Kempton, M. (2019) BBC TV Centre. Available at: http://www.tvstudiohistory. co.uk/tv%20centre%20history.htm (Accessed: 04 December 2019). Fig. 2 - Extract from Hatch. R (1984) ‘Giving Form in Prime Time: Roanoke Design ‘79’, in The Scope of Social Architecture. World: Van Nostrand Reinhold International. p 286-299. Fig. 3 - Screenshot from NBC News (2016) 80s Flashback: When TV Watches Were All the Rage. April, 25. Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/video/80s-flashback-when-tv-watches-were-allthe-rage-673223235605 (Accessed: 04 December 2019). Fig. 4 - Image from The Inscriber Mag (2019) Apple’s Smartwatch Still at the Top | The Series 5 Review. Available at: https://theinscribermag.com/apples-smartwatch-still-at-the-top-the-series-5review/ (Accessed: 04 December 2019).
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