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Saturday, 28 April 2012

Failure, balls/buckets from Koki Tanaka


Kind of makes me wonder what I'm doing with my life when i could be setting up and acting out ball/bucket scenarios. (no sarcasm here, obviously)

This video reminds me of skating videos. I have been watching them recently even though I have no interest in skating, precisely because I feel challenged to find the entertainment value in something I know a lot of people enjoy. My attitude began similar to that of watching football; why would you watch others do it when you could do it yourself? Someone very skilled performing an activity, however remarkable, that doesn't seek to communicate anything but itself, can only hold my attention for less than the length of an average YouTube video (4 minutes and 12 seconds).

The point of interest is a similar one. The aim remains constant. In skateboarding, to essentially remain on your skateboard throughout whatever you're skating or tricking on/over/through, and continue to afterwards (although this is slightly less important). In the ball/bucket scenario, it is, of course, to get the ball into the bucket.

Interest in the successes, relies completely on the potential of failure, in order to be sustained. Therefore the risks must be clearly defined.

Are we more interested in seeing failure than success? Is this some hidden schadenfraude?

As someone who has never skateboarded before, I have a limited ability to imagine the difficulty levels involved in any one 'trick'. Ditto the ball/bucket setup. I am only made aware of these when the 'failures' are included in the footage, making the potential for failure clear. This is the easiest way to reveal the failure potential.

Making use of the simplest and oldest storyline of all: you fail (can't do it), you try again a variable number of times, you succeed (can do it). The story of failure followed by success that defines our experience of being a human being. Anything you do is on some level a result of this process. Hence why it's so easily identified with.

I actually have thousands of videos documenting this. Whenever I learn a song, I always film the process.

I have never understood why until maybe just now.

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