Sunday, November 11, 2007

The Speed of 24

Over the weekend I have been reading Interface://Culture - The World Wide Web as Political Resource and Aesthetic Form (so far a great introduction to the subject that would suit a mid to uppper level undergrad course as a text, the Introduction is online). One of the essays in Interface://Culture is A Hard Day's Work: Reflections of the Interfacing and Transmedialization and Speed of 24 by Bo Kampmann Walther. The article argues that "the television series itself is structured according to a logic of games, which revolves around speed - speed could even be considered the the main character or "I" of 24." (205) In light of this idea the video 24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot: Jack Bauer saves the world with AOL 3.0. is a brilliant manipulation of the concepts of speed used in 24. The question being, could it work if Jack was relying on a dial-up modem and 0.1 Ghz? For me it also provoked ideas about Fan Fiction and remix and the proximity between the two forms. Here is the video:

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