Jennifer Ringley, a regular American girl studying at a university in Pennsylvania, started a live feed of her college dorm room when she was 19. The webcam set up in her room would send an updated image every 3 minutes onto the web. It attracted millions of visitors, as back in 1996 Internet was still new, and this kind of live exhibition into personal life was not yet a common occurrence on the web.
When asked where she got an idea for this on her website’s FAQ section, Ringley quotes
Initially I bought the camera to update portions of my webpage with pictures of myself. A friend joked that it could be used to do a FishBowl cam, but of a person. The idea fascinated me, and I took off with it. Initially the JenniCAM had an audience of half a dozen of my close friends, and it spread like wildfire from there.
In recent days, the live stream of animals are still common – showing deer trails, pandas, dogs, in their habitat. Ringley took an idea from live streaming of fish in their habitat, and applied it to her own life.
Of course, many concerns regarding this conceptual art was the pornographic element to it. Ringley did not censor anything, and nudity was very common. Ringley was considered an exhibitionist, although there were many sociological interests on her relation to the internet through the webcam.
Screenshot of JenniCam Gallery
Victor Burgin suggests in his book The Remembered Film, that while the JenniCam served as a window to Ringley’s privacy from audience’s perspective, for Ringley the webcam was a mirror. She was not concerned about seeing who was watching her, and she replies as follows when asked about why she is giving up privacy:
Because I don’t feel I’m giving up my privacy. Just because people can see me doesn’t mean it affects me – I’m still alone in my room, no matter what.
This concept of solidarity while connected to thousands of people via web, is still present in our current society. In fact, it has become increasingly prevalent, especially with rise of social media, and our communications with others have been dominated by the Internet.
Although I am not sure how I personally feel about Ringley’s conceptual art, I could somewhat relate to her when I watched her interview with David Letterman. Creating a window for others to view your personal life can somewhat emphasize your presence, and assure your existence. In fact, we do this almost everyday now, whether through Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook updates. Ringley’s extreme example of live streaming of her life can give us an insight to compare our own social media exhibitionist tendency to.
Excellent. You are right, she put herself on exhibit like some animal in a zoo, except she is a person, so you have to ask yourself, why would she want to be seen in this way? Clearly, she was curious to conduct the experiment, particularly since it hadn’t been done, she pursued this project as one pioneers a new trail, or a scientist discovers new bacteria. Not that she had an analytical approach, but nevertheless she knew she was exploring new ground when so many people began to watch.