Strathclyde Associates-blog: Say “plank”!

By Author: Strathclyde Blog
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Posted on August 22, 2011
Plank, based on a dictionary definition, refers to a piece of wood usually elongated and varies in thickness. A plank is usually used in industrial construction serving as walls, floors and ceilings of houses and buildings. But in most recent web-based phenomena, the humble piece of wood takes center stage as it becomes a viral bandwagon movement that caused millions of people around the world to lie down, face down in the most unsuspecting places one could imagine. The plank, in popular culture has been extended to planking, a verb or a gerund that requires a person or group to be photographed face down on the floor or anywhere or anything their imagination might take them.
Although many lay claim to have conceptualized this sport or mode of expression (as early as 1994), it has only been in the recent years that such practice in art and photography has caused a worldwide following. Perhaps due to the integration of social networking into people’s schema of belongingness that planking thrived. Without the internet, there would be none of such. The idea of being able to recreate the self ...
... (sometimes an illusionary manifestation of the id) forces people to exhaust all means to be an individual or be one of the group. So individuals or people involved in such activities may have found it a medium by which they can express individuality by having a peculiar spot or location photographed in or secure a sense of belonging by merely participating in such an interaction.
The manner that “plankers” mimic a wooden plank is also a matter of artistic taste. Looking at planking photos that are all over the net, one can get a sense of displacement or experience a disturbance in the natural aesthetics of photography. Humans, since the invention of camera have always been photographed in the profile of the face, standing. The mere fact that photos try to capture life, planking in a sense disrupts the norm of a picture of a smiling face. Others might question why people would want to look like a piece of wood? What have the present generation been reduced to?
Believe it or not, the world of planking has grown into a cult with an international following. Be it a form of art misunderstood by some and enjoyed by few, the real test of its being an art form lies if it will survive the test of time or remain an inanimate object facing down, in defeat.