You know, you can learn a lot from the movie ‘Office Space’: How to bilk your company out of thousands of dollars by skimming pennies a la Superman IV, where your stapler is, and how to beat the crap out of office equipment in slow motion set to a gangsta beat. It was also the first time I had heard of the ‘Oh face’…

[flv width=”340″ height=”210″]http://heyitcouldbeworse.com/media/office-space_-_oh-face.flv[/flv]

The reason that I bring this lovely cinematic moment to light is because I stumbled upon boingboing.net’s post on Video of people watching porn, which pulls the basis of it’s story from a Wallpaper* article called “Immersion: Porn by Robbie Cooper“.

You might not want to watch that at work.

In a film of startling power and unsettling intimacy – produced exclusively for wallpaper.com – video artist and photographer Robbie Cooper shoots back at active porn aficionados lost in ecstatic release and hears how their passion developed. Be aware that this is not easy titillation and some of you may find the footage shocking. But the film does throw up any number of questions about voyeurism and exhibitionism and makes clear the incredible nakedness of the solo sex act.

When it comes down to it, the ‘oh face’ isn’t the most pleasant thing to look at and yet it is also intriguing. Think about it: There are websites dedicated to this expression such as Beautiful Agony [NSFW] which has the tag line “Facettes de la petite mort”, translated as “Faces of the small death”. According to WikiPedia

Beautiful Agony is an erotic website featuring head shots of user-submitted videos showing the participant having orgasms, without providing any visual description of what technique is being used or revealing anything below the neck and upper chest. Both men and women are featured on the site.

Which pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? You can’t really tell if the person is at the height of their pleasure or right at the moment of having a pot of boiling water poured on their crotch. What amazes me is that there’s also a paid member section to that site meaning that, yes, there are people who get their jollies seeing that particular moment.

Coincidentally, this juxtaposition of pleasure and pain reminded me of Nikolai Markus ‘Bushes’
[flv]http://heyitcouldbeworse.com/media/nikolai-markus-bushes-remix.flv[/flv]

EDIT: I love the women at 1:05 and 3:19. 🙂
BTW, for an good read (and much more safe for work) you should check out Robbie Cooper’s other works on his website.. One of the most interesting is the ‘Immersion: Video Games’ series

  • go to http://www.robbiecooper.org/
  • click on Simulations
  • click on Immersion
  • on the lower right click ‘Photos’ and then play the video

It’s an absolutely fascinating look at the expressions that children make while watching video games. Makes you sort of want to tell them to go put on their play clothes and run around outside.