'A text is [...] a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations [...] The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them' - Roland Barthes1

A web cam, like many other entities, ranges from simple to complex. Its myriad functions include: traffic surveillance, intruder alerts, bank security, video conferencing, video e-mail, weather watching, nature observation, voyeurism and, most notably, "curiosity killing." If one of the numerous functions of a live web cam has here been left undisclosed, certainty permits that sooner than later a web cam will be pointed in "its" general direction too, shedding light and enlightenment wherever a USB port can be found.

It can be argued that the web cam's functions appear disparate and plenty when looking at the simple surface snapshot - the end result, if you will. But, if one were to examine the experimental purposes of an early web cam, one might begin to see the holistic similarities inherent in "web camming," despite such varied results. An earlier application of a web cam involved the broadcast of the coffee maker in a faculty room at Oxford University. The black and white close-up of the coffee pot was monitored not only by members of the faculty concerned with coffee availability, but by tens of thousands of people around the world2. And so what concerned a few humans in an immediate space, quickly became an internationally filtered hot topic for web cam surveillance. Even the University of British Columbia boasts that the UBC Wireless Network is one of the largest campus Wi-Fi (802.11) networks in the world, with over 1200 access points (APs) deployed in over 150 buildings, covering most of the 1000-acre campus3. This fact lays caption to an image displayed via Campus Cam, which moves locations periodically.

The need to frame an environment, to physically enclose it in four "graspable" corners is a fascinating one. A need so unattainable, and yet, frustratingly plausible due to human imagination and technological expansionism, still pulsates within the very core of raw human desire. Surely it is a mystery that deserves further exploration. And Brooke Knight's, "Every Environment is Text Rich # 4," is an enigmatic space within which one can attempt to frame such a discovery.

Footnotes:
1Barthes, Roland (1977): Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana, pg. 146
2"The Web" URL:http://ghscomlab.genevacsd.org/theweb/webcams.html
3The University of British Columbia Campus Cam URL: www.ubc.ca/campuscam/index.html