Libby Sk8er Girl

Libby Sk8er Girl

Libby Sk8er Girl




No. 161: “Caught in Tape”


Libby Sk8er Girl, Issue 161

Created by Brian T. Sullivan
March 27, 2024




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Check out the Libby Sk8er Girl Collection at Ye Olde Starry Knight Shoppe!



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Libby’s Scribb1es

'Sup, Dudes!?

If you're wondering how I ended up in Anna Log's Archive of Outdated Technology…I don't know how to explain it…I mean, she definitely wouldn't ask me to organize it for her. She's way too anal for that. And she probably wouldn't let me be in here unsupervised, for fear that exactly what happened would happen…It's quite a puzzlement, then…

Okay, fine, I snuck in here!

You see, I was hanging out with Siobhán and her brother, Séamus, and we realized that we didn't actually know what kind of analog stuff Anna Log actually had. Like, she talks about her archive sometimes, and she's obsessed with all things non-digital to the point of being obnoxious…So what was it? It turns out that a lot of it is really boring. Some of it is "classic" stuff, while some of it is weird, artsy-fartsy, avant garde shit. Weirdly, there's also a lot of videos about lumber processing…I guess that's interesting to members of the Log family…

Something that this misadventure did actually make me think about, though, was how recording works. Like, there are different mediums (or "media," as Anna or Brian would probably say) for recording the same type of thing. For example, motion pictures can be stored on things like film, analog tape, or digital anything. An interesting thing about that, though, is that the capturing medium is sometimes the same or different from the recording/storage medium. Like film is both the thing that captures the light in its camera and the thing that stores that "information." Meanwhile, electronic video (analog or digital) has a sensor that captures the light, but then the camera records that onto a different thing for storage—sometimes a thing that is in a completely different room! And the thing that's interesting about analog versus digital (but don't tell Anna I'm thinking about this) is that with analog, the nature of the storage medium imparts features onto the information itself. Different types of tape will make the video look different, as would film. But with digital, the storage medium doesn't matter! You could store a digital video file on a magnetic tape, an optical disc, or hell, even on pieces of paper with holes punched into them, and as long as you have something to read from that physical medium, the video will look the same, no matter what. Isn't that wild!?!

Honestly, I think there's something pretty cool about digital recording too. Sure, there are some things that make it generic across the board, but it's still interesting, and even though analog stuff is neat, digital maybe is too?

What do I know, though? I'm just a fictional character who usually gets drawn onto a sheet of paper with a pencil, then scanned into a computer, where my lines are turned blue, at which point I'm printed out on a new sheet of paper, where the blue lines have black ink brushed over them, and then I'm scanned back into the computer and prepared to be distributed to whatever computational devices ask to see my comic on my website. (Or, when it's book time, my digital files get sent to the computers at Amazon, who will then print it all onto paper again and send it to you, wise person who bought the book.) It's not like I have any real experience with methods and uses for both digital and analog technology in creating and sharing art…I'm just a dumbass who rides a skateboard and gets tangled up in her crazy friend's video tapes.

Anyway, I've gotta sk8! Make sure you don't tell Anna anything about what you've seen here today!!!

L8er Sk8ers!
Libby