Barack Obama
A single career can often combine qualities typical of two separate professions. For example, Barack Obama is a savvy statesman but also a consummate actor. During his presidential acceptance speech in 2008, he projected leadership while identifying with the common citizen. This experiment is about separating the statesman from the actor, simply by reducing the frame rate of the video.
Christoph Blocher
Christoph Blocher has distinctive rhetorical skills. He captivates an auditorium by very deliberately creating a certain eye level connection with his audience and by delivering emotionally charged words in a pastoral swiss dialect. This experiment is about eliminating this rhetorical aura to better focus on the substance of his words. By providing a more neutral rendition of his orations, the aim is to bring out the incoherence of his phrases and to emphasize the absence of comprehensible arguments. When the observer isn’t influenced by his way of speaking, the lack of content becomes apparent.
The intervention is solely technical, no further content was added.
To adhere to his original speech and thus to ensure authenticity, the experiment was conducted in german.
Disturbance
This experiment consists in adding a disturbance to the video. The viewer interprets the reaction of the speaker to a noise, which gives the speeches a comical allure. The focus of the viewer moves from the substance of the speech to the body language of the speaker.
Military Parade
By changing the music of the footage, the entire atmosphere of the parade is altered. The movements seem synchronized to the soundtracks of movies or video games. It gives the ceremony a new appearance: the serious event is stultified and becomes unreal, as if produced in Hollywood.