And they both end up helplessly standing in front of each other in bombed streets, realizing they cannot think of a way that would make people elsewhere understand how she feels. The camera will not bring us closer to her misery or to grasping the situation and its human consequences.

I would have been satisfied with a bombed building as an explanation, but (fortunately) never having been confronted with such a reality, what does bombed building really tell me?

The concept telepresence entails being 'present' in a distant location with means of telecommunication devices, while the distant location is part of our environment too when we are observing the remote place (Campanella, 2000, p.27).

What if we apply this concept to television and conflict reporting?

We are present in conflict areas in distant places and they are present in our environment at least for the 2 minutes that the report lasts. But how real is this presence?

How comes for instance that I can tell the difference between a report about Africa and the Caribbean even without them mentioning the name? And I have only been to few African countries and I have never been to the Caribbean. I have seen pictures of Africa and the Carribean and they always follow similar patterns making it recognizable even if they might not have much in common with the reality of being there. (Unless it is about Haiti that might look like Africa sometimes).

How much does the camera reality, which is selective concur with our assessment of reality?

Sometimes the media is (fortunately) the only channel though which we experience war, hunger, problems and situation assements in foreign countries, like a vicarious experience.

Does media reality in this case replace reality as it is our only source and hence it is hyperrealist, pure simulacrum?

I know this leads me back to Baudrillard again. I have been trying to think of the other theories but it seems that I always end up with Baudrillard, maybe because it fits well to our present situation.

In an interview Baudrillard (1988) explains that the moment an event exists as media content and is disseminated as such it looses its reality principle. It is impossible enquire about the original reality or unreality ( Baudrillard, 1988, p.146). That is surely true if we only know the place and the problem via the media. We cannot check if it is actually the way it is represented.

Media knows how to report on certain events even before they happen, which is why I recognize the report about Africa without the reporter telling me where it is. (It might be about wildlife or poverty and war.)

How much are we influenced by these visual stereotypes about war and certain regions and what does that really tell us about the impact?

This question could be explored by using a case such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as Renzo Martens is making an artwork about that and I expect it to be equally provoking as Episode 1. Then I could analyse coverage about DRC in contrast to the points the art work makes with critically looking at reality and hyperreality and its consequences.

References:

Baudrillard, J. (1988). The Work of Art in the Electronic Age (interview). In : Mike Gane (1993) (Ed.). Baudrillard Live. Selected Interviews. London: Routledge, pp.145-151)

Campanella, T.J.(2000). Eden by wire. Web cameras and the telepresent landscape. In Ken Goldberg (Ed.), The Robot in the Garden. Telerobotics and Telepistemiology in the Age of the Internet. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.