Cheddar gets a real-time spotlight
In lieu of watching a typically apathetic Gen-Y'er bare all on reality television, witness the perhaps meaningful development of a large cheese wheel in Westcombe, England. Critics may balk but the site, Cheddarvision.TV, has already served over 950,000 viewers.
The Westcombe cheese sits aging in a work farm owned by Tom Calver, who asked Dom Lane of the West County Farmhouse Cheesemakers to help him set up a webcam, the New York Times reports.
Lane confessed, "We were thinking, 'How can we demonstrate to people just how long it takes to make a really good cheddar?' And then we thought: 'Let's film it from start to finish. That's really funny because there's nothing to see.'"
A loyal audience seems to disagree. The cheese has become a muse, inspiring a deluge of poetry and songs. It receives gifts and cards on occasions like Easter and Valentine's Day, and was even invited to a wedding.
Its appeal is more than skin-deep, however; it also moves the intelligentsia. Debates presently thrive on the metaphysical significance of its mold patterns.
The Cheddarvision phenomenon is only the most recent in a slew of webcam sites watching grass grow, so to speak, with Spartan concentration. From 1993 to 2001 Cambridge University hosted video of a coffee pot in a computer lab. Even earlier than that, a Dartmouth Kiewit computer center webcam kept track of the Coke inventory in a vending machine. One site kept a cam on an empty side street in England's Neilston. Yet another focused on a pile of decomposing waste in Sussex.
The sites have been known to spark something unexpected and strangely zealous in Web-surfers who stumble upon them, perhaps because their mundanity moves against the tide of bright-colored, fast-moving and endlessly stimulating Web 2.0 and television offerings.
Calver argues that "Microscopically, you would see a lot of action" coming from the cheese. In the digital world, a microscope isn't necessary: an available time-release film on the website empowers users to witness the aging process in high-speed. A cheese-naming contest is also taking place on the website.
The cheddar is expected to reach maturity in December. While slow-going on camera, the rate is arguably speedier than human maturation. Once fully developed, it will be sold for charity.
