Room Rater!
Imagine being thrust into a brand new world – a world that is totally foreign to you. You would find your senses on high-alert as you try to figure out what the heck is happening. Clues! Give me clues!!! Well, the pandemic has denied us many of our usual navigation landmarks so we grab onto any clues we can find.
Enter Room Rater! We humans like to think we don’t miss a trick! Just like we “read” people we meet – their backgrounds, their trustworthiness, their intentions based on how they present themselves to us, we try to discern authenticity – or compassion – or – you get the picture. We want to know who a person is.
At Art in Real Life, we explore how we send and receive all the obvious and subtle cultural signals about our identity. Zoom seems to have opened up a totally new avenue of information – sneak peeks into our personal lives. Contemporary or more classic? Opulent or more humble? What books are on the shelf – especially those facing the camera directly (message sent and received). Dogs? Yes – dogs are always a good sign.
The downside of this is our tendency to judge – and then criticize. We have discovered a new way to ridicule and bully. If these remote meetings continue after the pandemic ends, I’ll be looking into a roll out background. I’m thinking of palm trees. Perhaps I will be playing an audio of seagulls squawking in the background. Steel drums …. Okay, I’ve gone too far.