Flowing Static

I was recently asked to invent a buzzword that described trends in today's media. I came up with "flowing static".

Since the arrival of camera phones and the internet, advertisements are no longer confined to the physical spaces agencies place them in. A billboard or magazine ad can easily be photographed and shared across the world instantly via text messaging and email. A TV ad posted online can be watched anywhere at any time, rather than at a specific time on a specific TV channel. This means distribution is no longer entirely in the hands of the producer.

This is flowing static, the digital flow of something that is physically static and bound. Ripping out an advert from a magazine is not as effective as online sharing because you can only ever have that one copy that you ripped out. Scanning, on the other hand, is tedious compared to snapping a picture with your phone. Recording a TV ad on videotape is also time consuming since you have to record it in real time for its whole duration. With online videos you can just copy the link and paste it anywhere you like.

For the first time, audiences are distributing adverts by creating thousands of digital copies of the same ad using many different devices and platforms. Ad agencies can now track flowing static in real time to see how ads are shared and discussed. It also allows agencies to follow how their ad will impact individuals’ decisions to purchase goods being advertised: for example, how likely people are to buy something if an ad for it was shared with them by a friend versus if they saw the ad simply posted on a website

This trend is not confined to mass media. It is also happening in people's personal photographic practices: family photos can now be shared all over the world with every family member (as long as they have some sort of digital device to access them from), for example. I believe the digital reproduction of photographs (be they old paper ones that have been digitised or recent ones that have many copies on many different platforms and devices) is having an effect on our sense of temporality and place: I'll discuss this in more detail in a later post.