Buffers and Temporality

Arguably, the greatest distance one can ever achieve is the distance between truth and fiction; of reality and illusion. This is the distance that the boundary of the interface / aporias create. Media are based on the mediation of information across space and time. As such, they naturally possess the highest objective buffers of any vehicle. There is a great distance in spatio-temporality between the video camera’s footage capture and the projector’s reproduction. With modern storage and broadcast technologies, this distance can expand an almost limitless amount across space-time. Yet despite this distance, the subject can still experience some of the speed that the driver experienced. On the other hand, broadcast technologies also are transmitted at the speed of light, decreasing the spatio-temporal distance between action and perception.

Simulations allow stored virtual environments to be recreated and re-experienced at ‘realtime’ speeds of intermediation. The simulation is the medium which can not only recreate environments and events at an entirely different moment in space-time, and yet never objectively age. The only way that simulations age is their situated relativity to newer technologies. The temporal distance that media imposes between capture, storage and recreation poses a question. Would it be possible for a spectator to experience a greater sensation of speed than the original driver experienced?