Jamie Brisick observes "how the omnipresent camera has affected surf style…"
There’s a scene in David Egger’s dystopian novel The Circle where an exec from a fictional Bay area tech giant is pitching a new gadget to his adoring disciples.
It’s a Steve Jobs trope. Ear mic. Black skivvy. The whole show.
But he’s also a surfer, and his breakthrough innovation is a pocket-sized, mass- produced camera that can be placed on any beach to live stream surf conditions. You can keep it as your personal feed. Or you can hook it into the network of millions of others of cameras
It’s the ultimate surf cam. Nowhere needs to be secret, anymore.
Of course, like any good sci-fi, curly questions are posed about omnipotent technology, the public’s right to know vs the individual’s right to privacy etc
But the thing is, this sorta tech is already here.
The writer and former pro Jamie Brisick has written a story in The New Yorker, and published today, riffing on this very topic.
Read, Surfing in the Age of the Omnipresent Camera, here.
He opens his scene with a new VAL toy called Surfline Sessions™. It’s an app that recognises subscribers and records their every wave, if it’s in front of a Surfline camera. You can have your videos cut and ready waiting for you by the time you get back to your car to dry off.
The video guy for the everyman.
I saw another one recently that is a camera you leave recording on the beach that follows you around the surf using a GPS tracker.
Never miss a wave, anywhere, anytime.
On Mikey February: “His hand jive, soul arches, and toreador-like flourishes play to the camera in a way that breaks the spell of the itinerant surfer in far-flung solitude. His style is as self-conscious as the duck-face selfie.”
It all makes for great marketing hooks. But isn’t also sorta fucken …lame?
I quoted Parmenter recently when he said surfing is the ultimate selfie sport.
In The New Yorker, Brisick takes it further.
On Mikey February:
“His hand jive, soul arches, and toreador-like flourishes play to the camera in a way that breaks the spell of the itinerant surfer in far-flung solitude. His style is as self-conscious as the duck-face selfie.”
He then quotes Slater.
“Style should be natural, and not perfect. I really dislike watching someone, anyone, who seems to be trying to look a certain way.”
Is it true style when it’s just for the camera?
Even Al Knost’s biggest fan would say no. (Though I’ll still watch him and Feb errrr’ damn day)
But what if constant recording can help you improve your surfing?
Is it still narcissistic then?
Already, surf dads sit for hours on beach capturing their kid’s every move for feedback. Surfing Australia do adult camps out of their Cabarita high tower “for all levels of surfer”.
Even I did it recently with our Ments trip photog. It was the first time I’ve seen proper video of myself surfing. It wasn’t pretty.
But it did help me pick up on a few things I already felt I might be doing wrong. I’m not about to go and hire Martin Dunn to follow me around with a drone and a clipboard. But I will open my shoulders a little more through top turns.
Surely that’s not a core crime?
Anyway, all argument is academic at this point. The future is already here. In Egger’s Circle, the tech bro’s grand reveal is that his cameras aren’t just capturing surfing. They’re also in Gaza, and Chechnya, and inside politicians offices.
It’s full transparency, whether we like it or not.
The revolution will be televised.
And it can help you with your roundhouse cutties.