Capturing the essence of a digital age
It is a hot and sunny day in Lumpini Park, the site for a NIVEA advertisement shoot, which will feature UV cameras. This is technology that has been utilised most famously by British-American artist Thomas Leveritt, an adviser flown in for the shoot. Last year, his short film How The Sun Sees You went viral on YouTube (nearing 15 million views), and it shows how the UV camera, with its ability to capture nuances of light invisible to human eyes, can reveal the hidden damage caused to skin by the Sun.
Leveritt is an artist who grew up in Texas before being sent to boarding school in England. At one point he was heading for a career in the British Army. But after a volunteer aid mission to Bosnia, he realised that it was not a viable career path. He then became an oil painter, paid on commission by British families who didn’t want to give up their family’s history of being on canvas. But the world began to change in unpredicted ways.
“Unfortunately the world changed around me. According to my calculations, I could have made as much money as someone who worked in finance if I worked hard,” he said. “But then finance changed and they now make huge amounts of money. I was left holding my paintbrush. Like most people I got a bit cross at how society got reprogrammed.”
Leveritt’s early career took place at the crucial moment in the history of artistic development. Before the digital age began — exemplified by his viral video — the creative world was shaped by the industrialisation of the past two centuries. Art was once influenced by the combinations of a temporal form of photography and painting with the mechanical production of film and film projectors. Film became the dominant art form of the 20th century.
Now the industrial revolution and its constructs are quickly disappearing from the world. The digital world is beginning to take hold and shift the dynamics of how we communicate, work and look at the world, and we now live in a very different era from the one which existed 100 years ago.
Can the digital world reshape the one that we live in as much as the industrial age did? What came next in Leveritt’s career began to shape his understanding of the current trends in the artistic world, and he wrote a book entitled The Exchange-Rate Between Love And Money, which did not have the impact he expected.
“Writing a book is like looking at the stars, you get a perspective on how tiny and insignificant you really are,” he said.
But then the dynamics of the industry began to change.
“Writing used to be a very guarded palace, where you were only allowed in if you went to the right school,” he said. “Now you can wake up and start tweeting pure gold and you’ll get 100,000 followers. It’s completely rebasing the writer’s currency. All the critics can hate you but if you have followers on Twitter you can get a publishing deal.
“It is happening now. Companies who used to give celebrities money now just give it to the stars of social media. There are kids on Instagram who have 2 million followers. You don’t need to buy a TV ad anymore, just give them a pair of shoes. It’s definitely happening. We are in the zone where it is fully meritocratic now.”
Coming through the experience of writing a novel, painting and penning the screenplay for the 2011 film Tonight You’re Mine, Leveritt’s art finally broke ground with his viral short film How The Sun Sees You.
It took Leveritt a year to work out the best way to deliver information that he had discovered from his UV camera. He had to spend that time figuring out how to turn the images into a short film which would have the impact he wanted. The result was a belief in the work that he had created. “I expected it to go viral,” he said. Before releasing the video, Leveritt pitched it to many skincare companies and media outlets who turned down his proposals. Eventually receiving an offer of only US$500 (16,300 baht), he released the video himself, resulting in his current partnership with NIVEA after they saw and admired his work.
The transition to an age of user distribution has changed the way that artists can reach people with their work. Online media is quickly becoming the space where people spread and share ideas.