[Reader-list] Necrocam : Webcam in a coffin
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Tue Nov 26 07:06:26 IST 2002
The New York Times
November 25, 2002
ARTS ONLINE
Mourning Becomes Electronic: A Final Webcast Place
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
Toward the end of "This Is Our Youth," Kenneth Lonergan's play about
disaffected New Yorkers set in 1982, the characters learn of an
acquaintance's death. The news spooks the motor-mouthed Dennis into
pondering the benefits of religion when confronting the afterlife.
"How much better would it be," he asks, "to think you're gonna be
somewhere, you know? Instead of absolutely nowhere. Like gone,
forever."
Fast forward to 2001, when the Internet has given the youths in
"Necrocam," a 50-minute film made for Dutch television, a less
conventional way to cope with death's mysteries. Christine, a
teenager with cancer, tells her friends that upon her death she wants
a digital camera with an Internet connection installed in her coffin.
Images of her decaying remains will then be transmitted to a Web page
for all to see, making her virtually immortal. The friends pledge to
install a Webcam in the coffin of the first one to die, and they seal
their pact with an oath to the computing world's highest power: "This
we swear on Bill Gates's grave."
"Necrocam" was shown in September by VARA, a public-broadcasting
network in the Netherlands. Now, the entertaining and given its
grotesque premise unexpectedly moving film will have an opportunity
to find its natural audience of online viewers. Last week the network
put a version of the film with English subtitles on its Web site, at
vara.nl/necrocam.
When one of the teenagers dies, the survivors must decide whether to
fulfill their high-tech pledge and if so, how. One stipulation moves
the story into the gothic realm of Edgar Allan Poe. The coffin is to
contain a heating element that will speed or reduce the body's rate
of decomposition. The temperature will then be controlled by online
visitors, who can adjust an interactive thermostat on the tell-tale
Web site.
Yet the film's central and rather macabre conceit may be its least
interesting element. Suffused with grief, "Necrocam" is closer to an
Ingmar Bergman psychodrama than a Wes Craven fright flick. Dana
Nechustan, the film's director, bathes her actors in a pale blue
light that deepens the sad tone. Jan Rutger Achterberg, a VARA
executive who produced the film, said it was "about people who
remember their loved ones in new times, in a new era, with new media."
The movie's accomplishment is to capture the way technology,
including the Internet, has permeated contemporary culture. This is
our youth's daily existence. The film's young people communicate
through online messages, play computer games and record their pledge
with a video camera instead of a quill dipped in blood. For them
technology is an extension of life. So it is only logical that
cyberspace would play a role in death.
This comfort with the Internet stands in contrast to how technology
is typically depicted in Hollywood films, where it is glorified or,
more often, demonized. Thus for every "You've Got Mail," in which Tom
Hanks cutely woos Meg Ryan over the Internet, there are a dozen
clones of "Birthday Girl," in which Nicole Kidman is a devious
Net-order bride. The James Bond films take both approaches, so that a
technological threat endangers the world until it can be defeated by
007 and his gadgetry.
Although "Necrocam" may seem futuristic, it is grounded in the
present. The Internet has become the home of countless memorials to
the dead. A few funeral homes have started to transmit memorial
services over the Internet so that those who are unable to attend can
participate from afar. And Webcams that have been perpetually focused
on everything from a tarantula to artists' studios dot the Net.
The notion of a Webcam in a coffin still sounds implausible, but
nonetheless it almost came to pass. At the birth of the idea in 1998,
Ine Poppe, an Amsterdam artist, was reading when Zoro, her
tech-obsessed 15-year-old son, sat down next her and said, "Mom, when
I die, I want a Webcam in my coffin, and I'm serious about it."
A week later Ms. Poppe saw a newspaper ad soliciting screenplay
ideas. With Zoro's approval she drafted a two-page proposal for
"Necrocam," a word coined by her son. Mr. Achterberg was on the jury
and liked her idea enough to want to produce the film for VARA.
As part of her research process for the script, Ms. Poppe received a
grant from the Amsterdam Art Foundation to study the feasibility of
installing a Webcam in a coffin. After talking to a technical expert
and an undertaker, she concluded that it would be possible, as well
as legal in the Netherlands. She finished the script, and the film
went into production in late 2000.
During that time Ms. Poppe learned that Zoro's father, her
ex-husband, the Austrian artist Franz Feigl, had received a diagnosis
of cancer and was given less than two years to live. Death imitates
art. Ms. Poppe said, "Franz said to me, `If you want to do a real
Webcam, you can use my body.' '` Ms. Poppe seriously considered the
idea but resisted, she said, "because it would put such a strain on
the family emotionally."
But the final decision was not made until Mr. Achterberg invited them
to a private screening of the completed film, which ends with a
vivid, horrendous shot of a decomposing face. Mr. Feigl continued to
volunteer his services, even though there were tears all around him
as the lights came up. Ultimately, his family declined his offer. Mr.
Achterberg said, "Ine told me, `With this film, I have shown what I
want to show, so why should I do it in reality?' " (Mr. Feigl died
last year.)
For the record, installing a Webcam in a coffin in the United States
is not likely to occur. Robert Fells, general counsel for the
International Cemetery and Funeral Association in Reston, Va., said
that next of kin, not the deceased, are responsible for the final
disposition of a family member's remains and that most people would
probably balk at such a scheme.
Mr. Fells added: "People have always had strange ideas either for
laughs, or morbid humor or just bizarre thinking of how they would
like the ultimate final disposition of their remains, only to be
overruled either by family members or legal authorities. This just
sounds like a high-tech version of that."
Still, there are people untroubled by total exposure of their lives,
and one would think they'd be fair game for such a morbid experiment.
But that is not true for Jennifer K. Ringley, a 26-year-old in Citrus
Heights, Calif. Ms. Ringley has spent almost seven years broadcasting
her life over the Internet, at JenniCam.com, through a series of
Webcams installed in her home. Ms. Ringley isn't interested in
allowing viewers into her coffin. "I find that watching a person
who's not performing to have a low enough threshold of interest," she
said. "Watching a person who's not even moving might be pushing it a
bit too far."
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