I'm now glad to have with me one of our hosts today, Christoph Nebel. I guess many of you already know who Christoph Nebel is. He's currently head of the department called Time-Based Media. And today he will contribute with his huge personal archive of doing research on television. It's interesting I can share this moment with you. At the beginning of this week, we had a preparation talk. I was invited at his office and we were drinking coffee and he was just chatting a bit around the history of television. And there were some ideas I really kept in mind because I, for myself, didn't reflect on this like you, for instance. you for instance. And there is one description really left behind that you told me on Monday that television has fundamentally changed our life architectures. And that's, I guess, a huge question to learn more about it. And so now, Christoph, it's up to you to give us a brief overview of your results, of your personal research during a long time. And I just want to bring you up again the title of his lecture, because it's so funny, I will start in German. It's called Augenbrei mit Sollbruchstellen, ein kritischer Blick durch die Inhaltswüsten der öffentlich-rechtlichen Fernsehaltsstalt, also eine Tour de Force, in English I mash with predetermined breaking, a critical look through the content deserts of the public television stations. He prepared a lot of pictures, so remain concentrated. It will be very dense. He has also 30 minutes and I don't want to waste more time. It's now up to you, Christoph. And I'm already curiously looking forward to the discussion. Thanks. Thank you for the invitation. And I just want to be kind and come up into the front. Everything will be on here. I talk about TV and you see it on TV. Otherwise, it would be a projection. But I'm not important. It's what you see here. So sorry for that. Yes, the basis of my presentation is more than 50 years of consummation of German-speaking television. Coming from a working-class family, our first television came relatively late, a used black-and- white set without remote control, given to us by our neighbors for free, where the picture often scrolled down and you had to get up and smash your fist on it. From today's perspective, my early acquaintance with the works of John Jonas, Vertical Roll, and of course, Nacho Pike, but I didn't know this. During my years as a student, I requested for a TV cable connection at the university. This was between 86 and 91. And though the establishment of a TV archive, it was rejected. This led to my decision to build up my own private archive over a period of 30 years. So I, with a predetermined breaking points to the force, attempt to critically question the way public television works. A critical look through the content deserts of public television stations. Why do places of blandness, like living rooms, double as former centers of community and communication? Why do visiotypes, placeholders, and stand-ins suggest complexity in the battle for the economy of attention? Addressing viewers by involving them in a culture of debate was never planned. Instead, a manual of obligatory glances into the off of the media space was developed over decades in endless repetition. So how it all began? Let's go to Africa and South Africa. And one million years ago, the first fireplace made by humans discovered where it all began with the fire discovering through mankind and the handling of it. But I have to stop at this point my story and start again how it all began with the first regular worldwide implemented TV program. It was the Fernsehsender Paul- Nipkow, Berlin, 1934. And as you can see on the test card in the center of the swastika, and called Deutscher Fernsehfunk. The announcer, attention, attention, television Paul Nipkow, with the typical greeting of the Nazi regime, which I don't repeat. It was consumed in so-called Fernsehstuben for watching television together in the early days because the apparatus was much too expensive for private households. And let's just see inside a program from 1935. It's either youth-ban or youth-free. Unmittelbare Sendung Nachrichten, immediate broadcast news, aktueller Bildbericht, breaking news picture. Was sagt Turnvater Jan dazu? Gymnastik gestern und heute. What does Gymnasticsvater Jan say about it? Gymnastics yesterday and today. Belauschte Natur, ein Naturfilm. Eavesdropping Nature, a nature film. Ingeborg, Komödie. Ingeborg, a comedy. Varieté für Instrumente. You could say wood will for instruments or cabaret for instruments. Die leicht geschürzte Muse. Medien folgen durch Operetten. The lightly abhorrent Muse. Melody sequences through Operettas, tänzerische Improvisationen, dance improvisations, Frohe Fahrt, ein Kulturfilm, Happy Journey, a cultural film, an ending with a kleine Nachtmusik, a little night music. So the starting point of television is based on a propaganda machine, it's based on the ideology machine, and it's based on a manipulation machine. Not to forget how it all began. With mankind discovering the fire and the handling of it, as you can see here in one image. And developing techniques of control from the fire and mostly it's the last thing standing if the building is built out of wood, as you can see in this image. 2014, at the Architecture Biennale in Venedig, Reem Kohlhaas had an exhibition, Elements of Architecture, as you can see the situation here, and that's a reference to Gerhard, with a beautiful diagram from the development of fire being on the ground, getting into the floor, into the wall, into the chimney, going to the candle and so on. And you see also it ends by a coal power plant, atomic power plant, microwave, and of course, down below you see the TV. So, as of today, you could say fire is the starting point of what we call today climate change also, because it implements all the machines, steam machine, industrialization, combustion engine, coal planting mines mines and everything. So, just a little tiny cabin in cold regions where the fireplace was the cozy place. It was the place to sit around and telling stories, telling news from today, exchanging each other's information, as it is shown here in an upper-class situation, of course. But it got competition from the television, moving into, again, an upper-class living room. As I said in the beginning, as a working- class family, we couldn't afford it quite early. Also, the living room table as a center in the living room. And that's a European viewpoint because I said in the beginning, I talk about German television. So it's Austria, Germany, Switzerland, where I come from. It's Austria, Germany, Switzerland, where I come from. Also, the living room table as a center in the living room and a place for storytelling and information exchange got competition from the television. As you can see, just a normal situation in a kind of living room. The TV is moving in here in the corner still. And as early as 1956, Günther Anders wrote in his book The Antiquity of Man, The World as a Phantom and Matrix, it had been possible to observe that the social symptom furniture of the family, the massive living room table standing in the middle of the room, gathering the family around, began to lose its gravitational pull. Only now has it found a real successor in the television set. This does not mean, of course, that TV now has become the center of the family. On the contrary, what the apparatus represents and incarnates is precisely its decentralization, its eccentricity. He wrote this in 1956 and as you later will hear, that's quite early at the beginning of TV as a mass medium or a leading mass medium. So the arrival of the television set in the living room fundamentally changed living room set design and it's accordingly advertised by furniture stores. As you can see here, out from the 60s with no TV included, the TV moves in already in the advertisement, but it's on the side somehow. Here, a typical German living room, still in the corner. But nowadays, as advertising for interior design mentions, this would be our best way to see movies and watch TV. Or in this way, or here in a kind of loft situation, of course. And it can't be big enough. So where have the living room tables migrated to? Into the TV studios. As you can see here, talking about politics. Here, talking about journalism. Here, Alexander Kluge, the filmmaker, discussing about society and film. A quite famous broadcast because it was interrupted. There was one paper handed out to the moderator that Alexander Kluge, the filmmaker, talks too much. And they should shut him down. The camera people and the working people in the studio went on a strike. But the image went off, but they recorded the audio. So please check this out. Of course, talks about society around the table. Talk in community TV about sociocultural phenomena. Talks about philosophy talks about politics again talks about journalism and fake news, TV directors talking to each other and here musicians and record company management talking about the other music between protest and market and attention here at the table got attacked so this was the manager of the anarchistic rock band Tonsteine Scherben and it was the end of the broadcast. But you can see here, also politicians destroyed studio tables. An unresolved question. Where do the office desks suddenly come from? In all the late night shows, talk shows, comedy formats, studio designs, Austrian formats. As you will know, Willkommen Österreich, Stiermann and Grissemann. Here, the situation with guests and interviews. This was the only format which was quite interesting during the COVID lockdown, because they switched to a double screen video conferencing system. And I think it was the best they ever produced. As soon as they have been allowed to go back into the studio, but without audience, they split the table in half, split the studio design and divided the studio with a plate of glass. Also nice. And at the end the, I think, three weeks old new news broadcast studio of the ORF and a UFO like table as a center focus point. But why do living room sofas dominate certain TV formats? As you can see here in the famous Club 2 of Austria, talking about what's going on with youth culture, with Nina Hagen, very famous, talking about different things. Always you have sofas, sofas who are decentralized in the living room or focused on the TV set, about women's issue programs, cultural programs, and even web-based formats, still use sofas as a kind of major focus point in their studio sets. So, why do living room sofas dominate certain TV formats and mirror bourgeois living rooms? certain TV formats and mirror bourgeois living rooms. Here, the oldest program about arts and culture in German TV since 1965, Aspekte. The central focal point is the Chesterfield sofa and the moderator on it, and they also have this for interviews. So in advertising, you see also this kind of furniture but let's now mirror the studio with an advertised living room and you will see it's exactly the same and who choose a colonial-style British empire sofa as the main focus point of a culture and arts program in Germany? Back to the year 1952. In the Federal Republic of Germany, ARD's German television started in 1952. There was a broadcast title 10 years later, Television Fever, 1963. Signs of the Times, Remarks about the mass medium and its audience. Let's listen. Und man sollte sich damit auseinandersetzen. Niemand scheint dazu so berufen zu sein wie die geistige Elite. Welche Einstellung fanden wir nun bei den Studenten vor? Wie bezeichnen Sie den Besitz eines Fernsehapparats für erstrebenswert? Für erstrebenswert erst bei einem bestimmten Alter, würde ich sagen. Warum? Weil solange ich mich als geistig beweglicher bezeichne, als Student und geistiger Arbeiter, würde ich es nicht für notwendig halten, sich mit einem Fernsehapparat auszustaffieren. Ich versuche das zu übersetzen. Let's ask the intellectual elite students, is TV ownership desirable? And the answer from the student is, only from a certain age, as long as I call myself mentally mobile, as a student and intellectual worker, a TV is not necessary, because it brings passivity and comfort, which you don't need to afford as a young person. Was Studenten fürchten, das bestätigen die Werktätigen der Ruhr. Dem Bildschirm kann man verfallen. Wie oft sehen Sie durchschnittlich fern pro Woche? Jeden Abend praktisch drei Stunden. Jeden Tag möchte ich sagen. Jeden Abend. Jeden Abend. Also jeden Tag von sieben bis Schluss. Jeden Tag sehe ich. Jeden Abend. Von acht Uhr ab bis elf. Jeden Tag sehe ich. Jeden Abend. Von 8 Uhr ab bis 11 Uhr. Jeden Tag. Ich sehe jeden Abend fern. Fast jeden Abend. Alle Tage. Heute jeden Abend. Täglich. Ich sehe jeden Abend. Wie viele Stunden sehen Sie ungefähr? Bis zum Schluss, bis alles. Okay, let's remind us to the 8-hour day that was one of the oldest demands in the labor movement by Robert Owen. Eight hours work, eight hours sleep, and eight hours leisure and recreation. And 1963, the workers and their family used half of their leisure and recreation time watching TV. It was not 24 hours, 7 days broadcasted. The broadcast started only at a certain time and ended at 12 at night with the national hymn. So, who looks at us? I choose four images, four paintings from Jan van Eyck out of the 15th century and as you can see they are all the ones I choose look into the off. The year 1433, a milestone in the history of portrait paintings. The sitter's gaze turns out of the picture and directly towards the viewer. The sitter's gaze turns out of the picture and directly towards the viewer. For the first time in this genre, the sitter attempts to make a direct contact with the viewer. And one painting, which is in Vienna, the portrait of Jan de Loofe, the picture appears to be speaking. The portrait addresses the viewer in first person singular, as art historian Till Holger Borchert says. But back to public television and the fact that nobody looks at us and addresses us over all these years. Not here, not here, not here in no discussion they sit again on a table they watch at each other they gaze at each other they talk about philosophy but I'm not included and you could go on forever like this in different kind of formats or I see the back of the interviewer, etc. But in web-based user-generated formats we are addressed by direct eye contact about politics, about beauty, about film, filmmaking and film consuming, about beauty again, about science, about survival, about social politics, about music, about products, about beauty, about vinyl, vinyl recordings, and of course also different kind of influencer topics. So my conclusion. In public television, nobody looks at us and addresses us. Never had and still don't do. In web-based formats, we are addressed by direct eye contact. Now let's go to the optimum distance from TV for the TV in the classical living room setting. As for an old tube TV, the ideal viewing distance is five times the screen diagonal. As you can see here in an instruction television broadcast, how you sit right in front of the TV. Let's go to an illustration about the ideal distance from TV sets. As you can see, the smallest one, you may not read it, is like two meters distance. It's then three meters distance up to above three and a half meters like the optimum distance for your classical living room TV set as it's mentioned. Now let's jump to psychology and the distance between people who is studied with the so-called distance zones. Distance zones into personal ranges of distance that we perceive as pleasant or, if exceeded or undershot, as unpleasant. As you can see in this illustration, there is the so-called intimate zone up to 0.5 meters, the personal zone up to 1.2 meters, the social zone up to 3 meters. Now let's compare this with the classical TV setting designed. All the distances in the first illustration, starting with two meters and going up above three and a half meters, are in the social distance zone or in the public distance zone. What does this mean? or in the public distance zone. What does this mean? The social zone is defined by it's the most neutral and comfortable zone to start a conversation between people who do not know each other well. The social zone is the distance you keep with strangers with whom you have a more impersonal communication. And it's also the public zone. This zone is also suitable for general observation of other people without really interacting with them. A neutral zone, so to speak. But now let's go to smartphone, tablet and notebooks. Because they operate in the intimate zone when you compare this. And what is the intimate zone? Obviously, this is the space reserved only for those who are most trusted and loved in our social circles. Partners, family, siblings or good friends. So my conclusion. Due to the shift in the distance zone when using PC, notebook, smartphones and tablets compared to the living room TV and the fact that no one is looking at us or addressing us directly, the formats of classic television never worked and no longer work. The web-based formats, which are generated by internet user and influencer factories start directly in the so-called intimate zone and address the user through the direct gaze. Now let's go to information in the television picture. And I start with the completely new news broadcast studio of the ORF. It's called Zeit im Bild. And I think that's the only thing you see here. 1930. It's called, translated as Time in the Picture. It's the most important news broadcast running since 1955. And this is the new setting. And again, the UFO-like table as you know it. So what parts of the image contain information? I had to choose last week the debates about financing of the ORF which was also mentioned today and this was the start of the sequence where they talk about. What do we really see? This. That's my decision what is information in the image, in the picture and what is the rest. in the image, in the picture, and what is the rest? Of course, the diagrams, the statistics grow during the sequence about the ORF financing. But again, if you cut out all the rest, I think it's a quarter of the image used for information and all the rest is blank space. of the image used for information and all the rest is blank space. Now a statement from 1st of March from the ORF about the new news studio. Graphically the broadcasts are modernized including 3D technology that can convey complex content to the audience even more vividly. And just see the image with what technological effort these broadcasts are produced. So I conclude that TV news studios are designed to make information supposedly more interesting through effects, inserts, color schemes and glossy surfaces. Now information in the TV picture and what information could enrich the existing empty space of the news broadcast for example. And now be kind with me, I just show you what I thought about. So that's again from the German television, a news broadcast, and the starting point about the United Nations World Food Program. It's from 2017. So, these are now my mentions. I would include the title of the broadcast, the time when it starts, and the date when it was transmitted. I also would include the place where it's placed, the studio, in which part of Germany or Switzerland or whatever, and in the down corner on the right a real-time clock. I would also introduce other world times because to have a context what time we have here, what time is it on other places on the world, these are just substitutes so don't take them for granted. I would include from the Austrian press agency or the German press agency or whatever the source where the information came from and where the journalists work on for the TV format. So I don't need to see the speaker from head to toe. I really don't. In this way, I just use his head as the speaking person and cut him out of the image. Instead, I replace or add on Austrian sign language interpreter or German sign language interpreter to enrich the possibility how to get the information. The images in the background, if there are people interviewed, I bring to the foreground and also add on the place, where did the interview happen and at which time and on which date. which time and on which date. I would also include geographics, maps, where they talk about statistics, of course, again, geography from other places, and also the teleprompter text the moderator is reading because I think then I could also get the information without hearing or listening. So, of course, you would say it looks like a multitasking screen of an IT nerd just working on 10 different projects. Yes, yes. But just remember how I started and with what effort these no-information images since years and years are produced with the newest kind of technology. So what to do? Suggestions and a glimmer of hope. And now I address directly Dorf TV, community TV, wherever they will grow. Instead of tables and sofas as decoration or whatever, broadcast from real living rooms. Or go to retirement and nursing homes, workplaces, and so on. Why not use solar-powered floodlights and switch to battery-powered floodlights or candles when the sunlight is not available? Seek collaboration with language interpreter and sign language training centers to increase your language diversity. The establishment of an editorial group is of enormous importance because the option to find something stands and falls with the indexing of the content, especially in the web-based take or media take. Use the generated image for information instead of blanks. Develop broadcast formats and studio concepts with direct eye contact. And I could go on for many more time, but that's the end. Thank you for your attention. Yeah, thank you very much, Christoph Nebel, for this brief, but at all very interesting, running through the history of television. And I would like to begin the discussion just to let you know that interestingly, some of your points of recommendations are already on the agenda at Dorf TV. So we are already working on it. Yeah, I was thinking about what you were saying and I tried during your talk, I already tried to summarize it for myself and then this idea came up that obviously the history of television is a history of hijacking sofas from our living rooms and as we are discussing future options of the non-commercial TV, probably there could be this one option to bring the sofas back to the living rooms and broadcast from there. Would that be an idea? Yes. Because this was one experience I had as a consumer of watching TV when Octo in Vienna, the community-based TV station, started around 2005. And I saw from the artist group Monochrome the so-called Taug Show in the Brut Theater at the time. And I thought, everything is dark, dark, black, black, black on the screen. There I realized that when I go back to public television and, of course course private television, I see colors, colors, colors, shiny, glossy surfaces, but nothing else. And again, I don't see formats and broadcasts about work so much, about daily life, things like this. It's all made up for a certain kind of purpose on different aspects on TV. And I think it's important to think about like there's one program where the interview is in the streetcar. And I think that's very interesting and I have to go to Alexander Kluge and his development company for television production bringing in the one culture percent into private TV in Germany that he liked to do broadcasts on real places like in a cinema foyer where there is also disturbance around people moving and doors opening and closing. So that's some kind of bringing something in with the knowledge that it's maybe also disturbing the broadcast or interrupting it. And I think it's so important to, without so much money, because everything I showed you is made with hundreds and millions of euros. That's why I don't criticize community TV, although I had many things to say. But with low money, think about innovative concepts to get on the move and change the kind of way people are talking to each other get in contact with people who open up their living space for talks for topics you would like to talk about go to the working class people in the first and talk to them go into the Sch in the first and talk to them, go into the Schrebergarten and talk to them because you are technically equipped and mobile to do this. I know it's an effort to do this, but I think it's so important because I miss it on regular public TV all the time. Dorf TV, for instance, is in a particular situation and I hope that we will keep it even in the future that the station is, our non-commercial station, is closely embedded to the arts university. So our approach has always been a bit arty to whatever we are doing, you know, and probably just to contradict a bit. Probably we can consider our productions as some sort of an artwork where we are not obliged to justify how we design information. We're just doing it because it's art. Would that be an explanation for you to get a bit more, I don't know, calm or a bit more? That's really critical. I got it. How we waste resources, communication resources, just for such a little information. But how we deal with screenings, how we deal with designing information that could also be communicative enough. Again, one example by Alexander Kluge and his TV formats. He used really ugly typography because he said he doesn't want to be compared to other culture and arts programs with high glossy style or the private TV. So it hurts if you see this, it really hurts. But when I accidentally jumped into the program of Alexander Kluge, I always was astonished, shocked somehow also, didn't know what happens here. But it was maybe also the first time I saw people thinking and only people, no design, no studio, just black in the background so I think the most important is that you know what you have to talk about and what's your interest and trying to get in contact with other communities trying to get in contact with other communities trying to handle somehow also the diversity of languages that you can work with people and I saw today there was a immediate translation in one lecture especially for you and I thought yeah that's so important that's why I mentioned university programs or so for translation, that they have a kind of experience and come in and bring other languages to your program already existing. But to be artsy on TV, and there are quite a lot of formats, and I was sometimes also responsible for it on Dorf TV. Yes, be free. There should be no border of trying out and experimenting and doing things. But I think it's also important to just say, if I talk about culture and arts, I don't wear Gucci, sorry. I don't wear Calvin Klein, it's from a cheap warehouse. I think that's what people hold off of the programs. They know exactly what they see. And why do I have to appear on TV as a full person that they see what kind of shoes I'm wearing? It's also not necessary. I don't have to have jewelry or anything, whatever. And the same with the design, the setting in the studio I think you can signal so much if it's not like the Nieren Tisch from the 50s out of how you say this, second hand place and in the beginning of TV announcers how you say this, second-hand place. And in the beginning of TV, announcers or the announcement was often made okay on a table, but you couldn't see the table in the format. It was just down below, and you just saw like the upper half of a person directly talking to the viewers and announcing what you will see later. So this disappeared. Why? Because of commercials. Commercials took the time for announcing TV broadcast programs and introduced the viewers into what they will see. And sometimes they said, attention, attention, you will see art. Your TV is not destroyed. It is not dysfunctional. It's the intention of the artist you will see later in the program. But it was important to talk about this. There are no announcings anymore. But they started with a direct eye contact, sometimes up to 10 or 15 minutes of a culture and arts program, as I have in my archive. So they are really reducing, minimalize, think about what actually the viewers are going to see. Yeah, I'm looking into the audience. Are there any remarks? Is there anything needed to be said? No. So probably I come back to you, Christoph, for a last question. Once again, probably more concretely looking forward to our future. We are reflecting a lot on it. to our future. We are reflecting a lot on it. You won't believe, but we are spending a lot of time to discuss where can we go and which street can we take. And yeah, probably from your point of view, your talk was some sort of a summary of, I don't't know 40 years of television give us just a brief idea how can Dorf TV make television history you may already doing it because it's regional it's regional. It's not about anything and everything and everywhere. It's about Upper Austria, it's about Linz, it's about the countryside. Maybe sometimes it's about politics for whole Austria Europe, or the world. But I think you are already producing content which is so important for future scientists. Discovering the material as you go to a flea market, find a box of photographies, like 100 years old, and see how architecture changed, how the living of people changed or things like this. So I think you are already doing this and you have really to be self-confident about it and get rid of the tables and sofas. I stick with it. I stick with it when you allow me this in preparing this lecture and talking about direct eye contact of course if you use the camera on your smartphone and the notebook in the intimate zone you produce in the intimate zone and it's consumed in the intimate zone. You produce in the intimate zone and it's consumed in the intimate zone. NVIDIA, the graphic card maker, announced, I think it is a month ago, a feature on their NVIDIA computer card which allows through artificial intelligence to make you look into the camera although you even not are looking into it so just that you know how they work with influencer and web based formats because they know how important it is that people address us directly and talk to us and everyone and not like we are doing this, we talk to each other and you are off. And so it will be, this will be the other future that even the computers, you just push a button and everyone looks at you. Yeah, thank you very much again. Quite a brief interruption because I'm wondering normally it's my experience wherever I am in the tramway or else even in the auditorium with the students everybody is not looking to the audience but into the smartphone. Sorry for that. One again? Make the microphone, with the microphone. Because on the TV philosophy of Dorf TV, we are like Naferswerger, and we call Dor, like Village TV. But I always try to force our buddies that if they have a talk, they don't talk each other, they talk directly, and I very seldom can convince them that they are able to sit right next and talk to the audience, even if they talk to each other. I try to force this, but it's heavy to do it. But we stick on it. Yeah, anyway, Navaswagas mean like a local provider. Okay, thank you very much again. Great talk. I don't know, do you stay with us again? So there are a lot of possibilities during the break or what else to talk to our lecturers. Now we are having a coffee break for about, I don't know, 30 minutes, 40 minutes and then we will welcome our last speaker, Liana Tobusch, she already arrived and yeah, feel free to take a coffee and we will see each other a bit later.