Units of Cultural Transmission explores the documentation of community culture and identity in relation to the restriction of photography at club venues. This is not to imply that there is no reason for photographic restriction. Rather, the project suggest that the reasons for it have moved away from the interest of the community and more towards a form of encrypting cultural expression. In the current digital period the photographic image is a carrier of personal experience. The entanglement of social media with marketing allows people or businesses to capitalise not only on the image but now on the personal experience as a commodity. Restrictions on photography allow venues to control and curate their outward image to sell to a larger audience. Unfortunately, they often disregard the ability of marketing methods to misrepresent the culture that exists in these spaces. Due to society’s placed value on visual media, photography, in some form, may still be a valuable method to document the culture’s community values. The question is whether this can be done without directly compromising the identities of an unsurveilled nightscape – for which the provision of is a key characteristic of authenticity in these venues.

The opaqueness intrinsic to the cryptic and alluring qualities of the club scene is epitomised by the restriction of photography and the heavy curation of online images. The difference between a raw documentation and the carefully constructed image portrayed by large scale event organisers to sell tickets, makes it an appropriate boundary of encryption for investigation within MS3. The project embraces the Media Studies theme of Failure, The Impossibility and The Unknown through its aim to document an ephemeral culture. It aspires to do this through the use of photography and textual cataloguing, both of which aim to exhibit an ironic failure at directly capturing club culture.

By using tape – emulating the stickers put over phone cameras at club entrances – the photographs of club interiors are distorted. Angling the camera away from people, a photographic series of blurry details strives (and fails) to exhibit club culture through capturing architecture, atmosphere and ephemerality. Units of Cultural Transmission is presented through a photobook with specific references to the design and layout of a ledger. This format acknowledges the commodification not only of photographic images but also personal experiences within nightclubs. Furthermore, it explores the forced transformation of a subculture into a mainstream source of capital. As a traditional means of chronicling and taking stock of daily expenses, the ledger in this project features not monetary but photographic transactions.