Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Artifact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time.

It's all too common. objects, ideas, and moments in time.

It's all too common these days to encounter people who choose to experience something of the world through the filter of technology.

Instead of experiencing a rock concert as a pure spectator, one might focus on an audio and or visual recording of the event that one is making.

Various sites and destinations become mere background for a selfie or a short form online video,

and we have probably all caught ourselves focusing not on the in-the-moment experience of a thing,

but either the media we hope to get out of it, or, and this is key to what we're discussing today, a media-based understanding of the experience. Now, I want to stress that I'm as guilty as anyone in my own ways when it comes to this.

When I really like a piece of art at a museum, I inevitably take notes and, if permitted,

photograph the work and the little information plate so I can refer back to it. But I sometimes

then have to remind myself to actually pause and take in the work, to experience it, and put

aside everything else for a moment. And inevitably, sometimes I forget to do that. I've also walked

ruins and imagined myself within a gothic horror film, that sort of thing. It's easy to think that

all of this is a product of media technology, and to assume that prior to smartphones,

cinema and photography, travelers and concert goers simply absorb the experience on a more honest open level.

I mean, there's probably still a case to be made for that to some degree,

but Claude Glass gives us a little added perspective to consider here.

I was turned on to this topic by, yes, a short form online video that my wife sent me via the National

Gallery London hosted by Joanna. She describes Claude Glass as a 1900s Instagram filter,

and that's pretty accurate. Instagram filters, of course, are a popular and sometimes

controversial innovation of the smartphone age, allowing any user to at least

roughly apply some semblance of higher photographic style and or technique. It's no replacement

...