Intimate Relevant Moments 11 collages of scenes from the 1974 World Cup final The Netherlands-Germany 11inch by 7inch board, colour prints and oil pastel

In the 'old days', I recall soccer on TV looked like a few blobs, divided into two colors running over a green field, with a white dot moving in-between them. Like “watching pong” a friend commented. The filming angle was predominantly from a bird's eye view above the stadium, and one watched the ball being passed around. There were a few close-ups of goals, almost goals and faults.

"The revolutionary originality of techno-images is not that they move themselves, that they are "audiovisual", that they shine in light of the cathode ray, and so on, but that they are "models", the image  of a concept of a scene." from The Codified World by Vilem Flusser (1978)

Approximately 4 Billion people watched the 2006 World Cup Soccer on television, about a quarter of the world population. When taking into consideration that the broadcast is not a neutral and objective view of the match, but a constructed dramatization of this real-time event, it becomes important that questions are asked as to the underlying narratives constructed through the editing and camera techniques.  These choices the television directors make determine, for a part, how the viewer experiences the matches. With this project I want to ask questions regarding the current style of broadcast and create awareness. What does this the current style propagate? How has the technological enhancement changed how televised soccer is experienced?

A simple computer application that analyzes the footage from the 2006 World Cup, France-Italy according to the amount of green in the image. Click on image for slide show

Intimate Irrelevant Moments                               The World Cup 2006 was the first World Cup using all HDTV-cameras with each stadium having a 25 camera set-up. Due to the HDTV quality of the cameras the image on TV was  a crisp image consisting of bright-saturated colors and sharp contours. The close-ups were very clear, and showed detailed pictures of emotions and the physicality of the game. I noticed lots of tattoos that I had never noticed before. They are images that don't leave much hidden for us viewers and are meant to draw the viewer into the game, 'as if you are part of it'. The editing was different with less overview shots, more close-ups, and slow motion of emotional moments.  At times, what happened between players was more important then the ball. Often I felt I wasn't watching soccer but a reality T.V. show that played on very basic emotional level within me.

A Single Cappuccino a story of a place in Vancouver during the World cup, 2006 SSix sound-portraits of a coffee shop on Commercial Drive in Vancouver, Canada during the World Cup soccer, 2006. Each sound piece portrays the unique atmosphere in the coffee shop during a match. The sound was recorded through the internal microphone on my laptop and controlled by a simple computer application. Netherlands-Portugal Germany-Sweden Sweden-England France-Togo Mexico-Argentina

Watching the World Cup in the 'old days' of the 70's and watching it in 2006 was a very different experience. The first was was more analytical, was about strategy, and the game that the team played. The accent in the recent broadcast was on the individuals achievement - from their technical ability to their appearance, and less on the team as a whole. The whole experience seems more real as if the HDTV image is closer to reality, but this is an illusion, an illusion sometimes very difficult to break. The HDTV image left an imprint in my mind that I can't get rid of. It's very persistent and branded in my memory. It's as if the image pushes away the stories of the social moment and repeatedly presses on my perception. It screams and is difficult to ignore. In time, will I have a story to tell about the place I watched this World Cup in or will I be left with a slowly fading screaming image in my brain and then nothing, or will something else emerge?