Real Bespoke Television: the Absurd Zenith of Nature Webcams

A finch scarfs sunflower seeds off the counter at Java, a storied Oslo coffee joint. Another male eats off the floor. Only a moment ago they were engaged in a furious bar fight over the attentions of the female perched on a stool, but they seem to have forgotten her now. They've trashed the place. Bar stools lie scattered. The tv, which normally runs a slideshow of bird pics, shows the blue screen of death. Somebody has shat on the drinks menu. We've entered a new era of television. Shows develop layered characters and complex story lines against a backdrop of stylish visuals. Television writers grapple with contemporary issues and break boundaries. All in vain. They will never exceed this: a tiny, birdseed filled replica of a coffee shop left in the woods with a 24 hour camera broadcasting it live over the web. In fact, I'm pretty sure the Norwegians have ushered in a golden age, not just of television but of human achievement, with Piip-Show.

For a good five years I watched no tv. Yes, I'm aware that marks me a philistine. It's no longer the quintessential yippy humble brag it once was.

A Finch on a Stool

After years of Real World spinoffs and a roommate who ritually watched Jerry Springer, after the endless scramble to keep up with the references that had replaced conversation and a few hours of closeups of weepy, baby-faced WB stars, I was done. Television tired me out. I had other shit to do.

The decision freed up a surprisingly large block of time. I got a lot of writing done. Learned to bake and cook. Trained for a couple of marathons. Read and read and read. Quintessential yippy stuff

But over those years tv changed. We entered into the age of 'bespoke tv'. I forget who said that, but it stuck with me, not because I find it a terribly accurate label, but because it's one of the few correct uses of bespoke I've encountered. Ever. Stop bespeaking people, folks. Bespeak a bicycle - that's the new yippy quintessence.

Just this preoccupation with words drew me back to television. Good writers read a lot. More specifically, they have frequent contact with well told stories. These days a great deal of good writing and story telling takes the form of tv scripts.

So now I'm catching up with Sexy Bloodbath (Vikings) and Southern Misogyny Police (True Detective) and The Yelling Show (Six Feet Under). While I'm aware that the elements that inspired my personal names for these shows are often conscious, ironic or culturally interrogative stances, they still tire me out from time to time.

Even when catering to a niche, television aims at a broad audience and is made on a schedule. Ideas are re-pre-chewed. Tropes are relied upon. The machinery of story creaks. Of necessity television is still largely factory quality, nothing bespoke about it. Not that this differs from a great deal of written fiction, nor does it necessarily hinder a certain level of enjoyment. At the same time, there's an omnipresent sense of the hand of the show creator turning your head this way and that, whispering hints in your ear, and occasionally shouting, "Did you see THAT. Did you get it? Did you? God, I'm amazing."

There's charm in lack of blatant cue and catharsis in abandonment of human concerns. However one might personally interpret that, there's a webcam for it. That's real bespoke television for you. Which brings me back to where I began, nature webcams.

Back in 2006 some friends and I shut ourselves up in a computer lab trying to finish our first theses. As I hacked out a theory of marginal spaces, a friend crunched numbers for her emotional mirroring study, or so I thought. Suddenly she squealed, "Piggies!" and did a seated version of her overflowing happiness dance. A glance at her laptop revealed a snuffling family of wild pigs drinking from a muddy hole next to a couple of StatView data tables.

"Guess where this is," she demanded in a dramatic whisper. "Botswana."

And so a watering hole cam in Botswana's Mashatu Game Reserve got me through my first thesis. When the reading got rough, I put it on in the background. Nothing contextualizes intellectual endeavor like watching a couple gazelles trying to have a drink without getting eaten. The camera's still running, though a change in programming allows randos on the web to control it. The result is dizzying and unwatchable.

The point, after all, is to break with the scripted, self conscious, and human centric. If I need assurance of animal amusement, I can always go to the panda cam where you're guaranteed to see a panda clutching its own feet and staring into the middle distance, for hours.

Piip-Show hits a sweet spot between the watering hole and the panda cam. I've never watched for more than a couple of minutes without somebody showing up. The tiny coffee shop is an active place with a roster of amusing regulars. Piip-Show doesn't tell me what to think. It doesn't try to stimulate. The only tits are blue tits. It's transfixing.

A fat, little squirrel waddles up to the bar, leans on her forepaws, and stares with mysterious squirrel feeling at the espresso machine. I could not invent a more perfect instance of the absurd as a mirror.

Of course, the really absurd thing about this is that it's a gorgeously sunny day and there's a park full of trees and birds and squirrels two flights of stairs and 20 meters away.

Go check out Piip-Show or its domestic cousin, Fuglekasse. There's grody-looking babies there now!

The Absurd Squirrel