1 00:00:03,320 --> 00:00:06,359 Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 2 00:00:10,360 --> 00:00:13,200 Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is the artifact, 3 00:00:13,440 --> 00:00:15,720 Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, 4 00:00:15,800 --> 00:00:24,239 Speaker 2: focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time. It's 5 00:00:24,280 --> 00:00:27,040 Speaker 2: all too common these days to encounter people who choose 6 00:00:27,080 --> 00:00:30,360 Speaker 2: to experience something of the world through the filter of technology. 7 00:00:30,760 --> 00:00:33,880 Speaker 2: Instead of experiencing a rock concert as a pure spectator, 8 00:00:34,240 --> 00:00:37,800 Speaker 2: one might focus on an audio and or visual recording 9 00:00:37,960 --> 00:00:41,479 Speaker 2: of the event that one is making. Various sites and 10 00:00:41,560 --> 00:00:46,080 Speaker 2: destinations become mere background for a selfie or a short 11 00:00:46,120 --> 00:00:50,280 Speaker 2: form online video. And we have probably all caught ourselves 12 00:00:50,320 --> 00:00:53,680 Speaker 2: focusing not on the in the moment experience of a thing, 13 00:00:54,040 --> 00:00:56,240 Speaker 2: but either the media we hope to get out of 14 00:00:56,280 --> 00:00:58,880 Speaker 2: it or and this is key to what we're discussing today, 15 00:00:59,240 --> 00:01:03,400 Speaker 2: a media based understanding of the experience. Now, I want 16 00:01:03,400 --> 00:01:05,560 Speaker 2: to stress that I'm as guilty as anyone in my 17 00:01:05,600 --> 00:01:07,920 Speaker 2: own ways when it comes to this. When I really 18 00:01:07,959 --> 00:01:10,000 Speaker 2: like a piece of art at a museum, I inevitably 19 00:01:10,040 --> 00:01:13,280 Speaker 2: take notes and, if permitted, photograph the work and the 20 00:01:13,400 --> 00:01:15,880 Speaker 2: little information plate so I can refer back to it. 21 00:01:16,240 --> 00:01:19,440 Speaker 2: But I sometimes then have to remind myself to actually 22 00:01:19,520 --> 00:01:22,840 Speaker 2: pause and take in the work, to experience it and 23 00:01:22,880 --> 00:01:25,880 Speaker 2: put aside everything else for a moment, and inevitably sometimes 24 00:01:25,920 --> 00:01:29,280 Speaker 2: I forget to do that. I've also walked ruins and 25 00:01:29,400 --> 00:01:33,080 Speaker 2: imagined myself within a gothic horror film, that sort of thing. 26 00:01:33,720 --> 00:01:35,360 Speaker 2: It's easy to think that all of this is a 27 00:01:35,400 --> 00:01:40,280 Speaker 2: product of media technology and to assume that, prior to smartphones, 28 00:01:40,360 --> 00:01:44,080 Speaker 2: cinema and photography, travelers and concert goers simply absorb the 29 00:01:44,160 --> 00:01:47,600 Speaker 2: experience on a more honest, open level. I mean, there's 30 00:01:47,640 --> 00:01:49,720 Speaker 2: probably still a case to be made for that to 31 00:01:49,800 --> 00:01:53,680 Speaker 2: some degree, but claud Glass gives us a little added 32 00:01:53,720 --> 00:01:57,520 Speaker 2: perspective to consider here. I was turned onto this topic 33 00:01:57,600 --> 00:02:01,000 Speaker 2: by Yes, a short form online that my wife sent 34 00:02:01,080 --> 00:02:05,720 Speaker 2: me via the National Gallery London, hosted by Joanna. She 35 00:02:05,800 --> 00:02:09,720 Speaker 2: describes Claude Glass as a nineteen hundred's Instagram filter, and 36 00:02:09,800 --> 00:02:13,959 Speaker 2: that's pretty accurate. Instagram filters, of course, are a popular 37 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:18,160 Speaker 2: and sometimes controversial innovation of the smartphone age, allowing any 38 00:02:18,240 --> 00:02:21,600 Speaker 2: user to at least roughly apply some semblance of higher 39 00:02:21,600 --> 00:02:26,040 Speaker 2: photographic style and or technique. It's no replacement for actual 40 00:02:26,040 --> 00:02:29,680 Speaker 2: photographic talent and skill, but it generates the semblance and 41 00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:33,520 Speaker 2: experience of the thing. In this the comparison to Claude 42 00:02:33,520 --> 00:02:37,960 Speaker 2: glass is solid. We're talking about a small, folding compact 43 00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:42,640 Speaker 2: that contains not a traditional reflective mirror but a black mirror. Yes, 44 00:02:42,760 --> 00:02:46,160 Speaker 2: much like the ritual obsidian mirrors of the Aztec god 45 00:02:46,480 --> 00:02:50,720 Speaker 2: Tees Catholic PoCA, the horror anthology series on Netflix, and, 46 00:02:50,840 --> 00:02:54,519 Speaker 2: as Joanna points out, the reflective surface of a sleeping 47 00:02:54,639 --> 00:02:59,200 Speaker 2: or de powered iPhone screen. British tourists of the nineteenth 48 00:02:59,240 --> 00:03:02,440 Speaker 2: century would bring claud glass with them on travels, and 49 00:03:02,600 --> 00:03:06,120 Speaker 2: when faced with a particularly evocative landscape, they turned their 50 00:03:06,160 --> 00:03:08,960 Speaker 2: backs on the natural vista and instead gaze at it 51 00:03:09,400 --> 00:03:14,320 Speaker 2: literally through a glass, darkly in the reflection provided by 52 00:03:14,360 --> 00:03:19,160 Speaker 2: their claud glass. The idea here, as Ameliasoff explains in 53 00:03:19,200 --> 00:03:22,400 Speaker 2: a twenty twenty one j Store Daily post titled the 54 00:03:22,440 --> 00:03:26,280 Speaker 2: claud Glass Revolutionized the way people saw landscapes, was that 55 00:03:26,360 --> 00:03:30,880 Speaker 2: reflection in the glass would transform the natural world into quote, 56 00:03:31,120 --> 00:03:35,040 Speaker 2: a vision of painterly charm framed and set apart from 57 00:03:35,040 --> 00:03:39,120 Speaker 2: the rest of the landscape color palette, simplified, bathed in gentle, 58 00:03:39,200 --> 00:03:42,720 Speaker 2: hazy light. Soft points out that some tourists even had 59 00:03:42,840 --> 00:03:47,080 Speaker 2: multiple claud glasses of different shades that, much like Instagram filters, 60 00:03:47,280 --> 00:03:50,360 Speaker 2: allowed the user to play around with the various ways 61 00:03:50,640 --> 00:03:53,640 Speaker 2: that their reality might match up with a more interesting 62 00:03:53,720 --> 00:03:57,200 Speaker 2: bit of media. As the title of Soft's article indicates, 63 00:03:57,200 --> 00:03:59,680 Speaker 2: the idea here is that the craze occurred in the 64 00:03:59,680 --> 00:04:02,480 Speaker 2: wake of a quote sea change in how the British 65 00:04:02,480 --> 00:04:05,720 Speaker 2: thought about landscapes. For hundreds of years, many had long 66 00:04:05,760 --> 00:04:10,240 Speaker 2: derided various British landscapes as being chaotic and uninteresting. Why 67 00:04:10,240 --> 00:04:12,480 Speaker 2: would you want to travel and look at these places? 68 00:04:12,880 --> 00:04:16,520 Speaker 2: But suddenly the popularity of landscape portraits such as those 69 00:04:16,560 --> 00:04:20,200 Speaker 2: by French painter Claude Lorraine, for whom the glass is named, 70 00:04:20,560 --> 00:04:24,800 Speaker 2: changed expectations of the natural world. Note, however, he did 71 00:04:24,839 --> 00:04:28,679 Speaker 2: not invent it, nor even necessarily know of it. Soft 72 00:04:28,680 --> 00:04:31,080 Speaker 2: stresses that the key to all of this is the 73 00:04:31,120 --> 00:04:35,000 Speaker 2: picturesque quality of the ideal landscape painting, and in this 74 00:04:35,040 --> 00:04:38,279 Speaker 2: we mean a perfect balance of the sublime and the beautiful, 75 00:04:38,680 --> 00:04:41,839 Speaker 2: the awesome and even dangerous, with the comforting and the suite. 76 00:04:42,440 --> 00:04:46,320 Speaker 2: In appreciating this in landscape paintings, people began to look 77 00:04:46,360 --> 00:04:50,400 Speaker 2: at landscapes themselves as if they were landscape paintings, and 78 00:04:50,800 --> 00:04:55,800 Speaker 2: when the reality inevitably struggled in comparison to deliberate skilled 79 00:04:55,880 --> 00:04:59,599 Speaker 2: artistic rendition. The claud glass allowed the user to augment 80 00:04:59,640 --> 00:05:03,839 Speaker 2: their perfe, framing it, simplifying its color palette, and casting 81 00:05:03,880 --> 00:05:07,000 Speaker 2: it all in a hazy artistic light that resembles the 82 00:05:07,120 --> 00:05:11,040 Speaker 2: artistic style they craved. Even then, Plenty found the craze 83 00:05:11,120 --> 00:05:14,480 Speaker 2: kind of ridiculous, and poet Thomas Gray wrote in seventeen 84 00:05:14,520 --> 00:05:17,919 Speaker 2: seventy five about falling backwards into a ditch while trying 85 00:05:17,960 --> 00:05:21,480 Speaker 2: to view a landscape through the glass. We cast similar 86 00:05:21,560 --> 00:05:24,960 Speaker 2: judgments about modern technology today, don't we? But what about 87 00:05:24,960 --> 00:05:30,080 Speaker 2: the future? Ai generated images, writings, video music, and now 88 00:05:30,080 --> 00:05:35,760 Speaker 2: even podcasts. AI generated conversations between two non real entities 89 00:05:36,080 --> 00:05:40,640 Speaker 2: are in many ways distorted inhuman reflections via scrape and 90 00:05:40,720 --> 00:05:44,480 Speaker 2: pilfered data. In many cases, that gives us the alternative 91 00:05:44,560 --> 00:05:48,440 Speaker 2: to the real and the genuine, a dark mirror of 92 00:05:48,520 --> 00:05:53,800 Speaker 2: personalized longing. As we back closer and closer towards the ditch, 93 00:05:54,880 --> 00:05:57,599 Speaker 2: tune in for additional episodes of The Artifact, the Monster 94 00:05:57,640 --> 00:06:01,040 Speaker 2: Fact or Animalia Stupendium each week. As always, you can 95 00:06:01,080 --> 00:06:14,560 Speaker 2: email us at contact as Stuffdwlow your Mind dot com. 96 00:06:14,680 --> 00:06:17,240 Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. 97 00:06:17,560 --> 00:06:21,560 Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 98 00:06:21,640 --> 00:06:23,440 Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.