Where Webcams dare to tread

There’s a nesting box on the verandah outside my study, and every year a couple of Blue Tits use it to raise a brood (much to the interest and disgust of our cat, who watches their comings and goings with sinister intent). Last year I thought of installing a webcam in the box, so that we could unobtrusively observe the growth and development of the chicks — but other things intervened and by the time I was in a position to do the installation the nest was already in use. But it made me think about the ways that webcam technology has opened up observational possibilities. Even so, I was taken aback by this report in the “NYT” about Necrocam, a striking new Dutch film in which “a teenager with cancer, tells her friends that upon her death she wants a digital camera with an Internet connection installed in her coffin. Images of her decaying remains will then be transmitted to a Web page for all to see, making her virtually immortal. The friends pledge to install a Webcam in the coffin of the first one to die, and they seal their pact with an oath to the computing world’s highest power: ‘This we swear on Bill Gates’s grave.’

‘Necrocam’ was shown in September by VARA, a public-broadcasting network in the Netherlands. Now, the entertaining and — given its grotesque premise — unexpectedly moving film will have an opportunity to find its natural audience of online viewers. Last week the network put a version of the film with English subtitles on its Web site, at vara.nl/necrocam.”