trees are people too

I may or may not have a touch of the SADs. Winter has been comparatively mild this year, but oh how I wish it would end. It’s not that I have anything personal against you, August, but the grey, wind and rain can fuck right off. It’s hard, I find, in the muted colours of winter to find perspective, hope, humour and light. And so it was fortunate that this came to my rescue.

The passive-aggressive (and just plain aggressive) notes website is run by Kerry Miller, with examples contributed by readers worldwide. Many are simply enchanting, especially at a time when my own relationship with work places (and the outside world in general) feels a little strained :cough:

To top off this brighter day, via her website I also discovered some fine apostrophe abuse, the thoughtful Ironic Sans and the outstanding cake wrecks (which I had forgotten the wonders of). Thank you Kerry, and the lovely We made this, for the fix.

Here it is. It’s been real.

for reflections on the final product, please see my previous post here.

Or download the zip file.

What did I try to do?
I wanted to: convey my propositions, give examples of them, demonstrate what they might entail, and in doing so inspire involvement in video recording and publishing. I wanted it to be simple and straightforward, but also for it to look appealing and for it to showcase my own skills and increased knowledge on the practice of video and the opportunities the technology offers.

My manifesto propositions were quite broad and basic, so the manifesto project itself was laid out quite simply. I included the propositions themselves (albeit in simplified form) as text, as I did not feel I could depict them through the actual videos. Perhaps I was wrong, but because the concept entailed videos of everyone, everything, everywhere, everyday etc, it all got a bit noisy, and really needed to be given some shape and direction. To do this I implemented text and linearity – a bit conventional, I know, but i felt it necessary (and complementary) to the design of the piece.

The design of the project has come so very far, and has ended up miles away from where I first conceptualised it. This has been enlightening and enjoyable, and is something I could only learn doing a project such as this and learning to use tools such as ezedia. The process of shaping the project as I worked on it has been another experience of creative process that I have never had before and have thoroughly enjoyed.

Whether my manifesto speaks its propositions loud enough, I am not sure. I wanted it to be an inspiration for involvement in video, and I think I have achieved this with the aesthetic, although I am not absolutely sure I have conveyed the reasoning and passion behind the propositions enough. At the moment I feel so entrenched in it it is hard to be objective, but I will come back to it in time and reflect further. My idea has been reshaped so many times, and refined to fit the media and the creative tools I was using, but overall I am happy with the outcome.

In conclusion:

I am still not sure whether both the messages and the navigating tools on the piece are obvious enough. I may have been too presumptuous about my audiences knowledge/interest/attention span.

While this project looks pretty, and demonstrates technical ability, if I did it again I would have liked to develop the videos more, to further reinforce the propositions I was trying to convey. At times I also felt limited by the capabilities of ezedia, so in future would love to work with more developed software (on its way, I am sure), allowing a broader scope of options (i.e. stop and start an automatically started movie).

I have gone from loving this project to hating it, I have questioned the relevance of it and wondered if I ever really got it, I have been pleased and dismayed, but in the end I have again found the process of creating it very rewarding, regardless of whether I ‘got it’ or not. Somewhat selfishly, if this is all I have achieved with my manifesto, then I am pleased with that.

Everyday
By practicing the propositions of the Lifemap Manifesto, our ambition is to make video a familiar tool, an incredibly easy and ordinary way of speaking. We need to harness its strength as a tool for the masses to communicate. No longer just reserved for those wealthy enough to afford a video camera, or those professionally trained in how to man them, video is now common, regular, universal. Video has been ‘everyday’ in terms of viewing for some time, now it is time to make it everyday in producing as well. It is the natural progression, and as such the medium must feel natural, feel usual, and must be mutual and public.

Everywhere
We must endeavor, with the equipment we can access, to collect maps of every location, in as many places as possible. We can then sreproduce these map as far and wide as possible, on every available surface, in all environments. The placement, viewing and ‘reading’ of these maps must not be restricted to those who can afford to go to exotic locations to film, or who can get into galleries or access the internet. They must encompass all areas, and they must be made public through many, and any, means. Guerilla tactics may be applied. These stories, and their accompanying messages, must show and be shown to as many people as possible, else the learning be restricted to the few.

Everyone
No one is excluded. There are no prerequisites to being involved, except that you possess a video recording device. Every race, colour, creed, education, persuasion can and must be involved. The stories told mean nothing if they are not coming from all walks of the lives we are trying to map. No bias. The more the merrier, as they say.

The Lifemap manifesto.

The basic concept? Videos can, and should, be used to document our lives. Most of us now have access to the equipment to do so, so we are obliged, as video wielders and as media prosumers, to document, record, replay and reflect upon the stories collected by video.

The objective behind this manifesto and practice is that we must use video’s reflexive properties to better define and develop ourselves (humans). It is only upon reflection – after the action, after hearing the story and after watching the replay – that we can work out what we have done wrong or right. In order to develop and move forward as a society, it is absolutely essential that we start to analyse where we have come from, how we got here and how we can do better. This is done through the telling and retelling of stories, stories that are now told through video.

Art has always been considered a reflection of a society, of their values, their issues, their wants and desires. But instead of capturing this in a still painting or a song, we can now do it through moving image and sound. The medium of video is as close an art form as we can get to reality, to what actually happened, to actually being there and watching the story unfold. These stories can then be further edited, chopped, mashed to add more meaning, more emphasis, or change the meaning all together. The technology allows us to do that.

This will get incredibly messy. Super dirty, super messy and outstandingly noisy. They estimate you need about 700 terrabytes to record your entire life on video, and a whole lot of that is going to white noise. The widespread (and seemingly endless) dissemination and accessibility of video recording technology will mean that some stories will be better than others, some more interesting, some more professional, but overall will find a balance, an equilibrium between what we want to see, what we want to learn about, and what is just ‘noise’, exactly as has occurred with UCG. The democratic nature of the medium will mean that the people will choose and promote the quality, and the rest will fall to the side… Collaborations will be great and plentiful, and the more information, the more stories we can collect, the better our understanding of ourselves will be.

Lifemapping can be practiced individually or as a collaboration, as that is how life takes place. The objective to is map (aka record, journal, document, capture) as many stories as you would like, as many as you deem necessary. There is no limit except that presented by you. But a story is useless, is meaningless, unless it has an audience. Your duty is also to publish, to disseminate that video as far and wide as possible…. ‘as virtually all architecture and surfaces become potential screens’, it is your mission to find them and use them. we must use whatever means possible to produce vivid, vital and informative (entertaining is good too) maps of human life.

after inadvertently finding out that he was listed on the United States of America’s terror watchlist, media artist and professor Hasan Elahi was surprised to discover he was the subject of extensive surveillance being carried out by the US government.

Elahi decided that the only way to contend with the slightly irritating issue of being an FBI target and the daunting prospect of an all-expenses-paid trip to Guantanamo was to take surveillance matters into his own hands. The result has been the documentation of Elahi’s entire life online, with nearly 20,000 photos of everything that takes place in his life, from the food he ate today to the toilets he has used. Elahi speculates that the swamping of the online space with personal data may one day undermine the abilities of dear big brother, and meanwhile has rendered surveillance upon himself completely useless and valueless by practicing it extremely publicly (and comprehensively) himself.

His statement is both intriguing and inspiring. Dig it. As as for all my babble about lifemapping? it seems it’s already here.

Feeling slightly intimidated by the activity on mog. People seem to be developing quite sophisticated and profound ideas for their manifestos while I flap around struggling with the most simple of concepts. Reading others blogs it is clear many are in the same boat, but how and where does it end? I shall take faith in Adrian’s assurance that we will learn by doing, that it will become clear only as we start to create. By defying the control freak in me, this creative process is an excellent learning curve… but i feel trapped! (Like a moth in a bath!) With two other major major assignments due, all I can hope for is to give this my best shot. Post submission of other work I will be able to focus on this a bit more (I know, whine whine shut up etc.)

Meanwhile, I thought I would do a bit more research into emergence, as I feel it will be valuable to link out to this topic from my manifesto. Wiki has a good entry to start me off. It outlines the concepts of systems and patterns, but it all gets a bit scientific. Other interesting reads are ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem‘ by J Naughton, and ‘The future of Marketing Communication: Towards an “Ecosystem of connected experiences” in a multi-channel, connected world‘ via Nyenrode University, but none of these are as simple or as elegant as Adrian’s explanation in class. The search continues, and will inquire with Adrian too.

Manifesto scenario.

I have realised I need to add one more proposition to my manifesto to make this scenario feasible (the need to tag videos in order to sort them), but this is very helpful in formulating reasons and background to why my manifesto is. This is just a short and extremely basic scenario – as my manifesto is very broad and general, the scenario could be completely different each time, and idealistically would be much more profound than this.

But this is the first time I have tried ‘scenario-ising’ as a creative process, so you’ll have to forgive it its rudimentary-ness. The point, the value of these videos becomes the experience they offer – a scenario is a perfect way to depict this.

Lifemapping

I leave my house for the day, and as I am walking down the street I take a short video to capture the mood of the day: the weather, the light, the wind, the time. It’s jolty and amateurish, but I want to capture the neighbourhood in this state – quiet, empty and grey. I record it on my phone – I don’t have my camera handy – and the quality is low, but I only need a few minutes to encompass what I am trying to portray, to say.

I travel to work, and when I arrive I am again perplexed by the state of my desk – I always leave it in this state and I always regret it. But I have devised a system for organising it as quickly as possible. I decide to record it – it’s banal but useful method of arranging things first chronologically and then in order of priority, and includes both physical and online documents and proposals. I set up my camera next to me and leave it recording for the next half hour as I pander to the needs of my workspace. When I am content with my new arrangements I stop recording.

That evening I am cooking for my dad and sister. I am trying a new recipe and it is somewhat ambitious, but I enlist some help from my housemate and we get to working fithying up the kitchen, using a recipe video we have downloaded from lifemap.com. I record it for reference – we love to share recipes with friends and family, and the visual format works well for us – we can play it on the screen on our fridge while we work in the kitchen. Halfway through I realise I have forgotten a crucial ingredient, but a quick check of similar recipes shows that other people have had the same problem – and provide suggestions for alternatives. We finish the recipe Ad Hoc and dinner is a success. I record dinner, and the fat, happy and full responses, as a finale to the mapping of my cooking, so people know how good it was.

That evening I sit down and logon to lifemap.com. Over 1500 videos have been uploaded today alone, and the subjects are extensive – I can look at videos from all over the world featuring any subject I can think of. But tonight I am looking for local neighbourhoods – we are thinking of moving. A quick search via tags and images finds a park a few streets away from us that I haven’t visited before. It’s a quiet recording of a summer’s day in the grass and the park looks well established and inviting. A few more searches and I have found a video of someone’s jog around the same park – now I start to get a feel for the whole area. I share this with my housemates and she agrees it’s got potential. We’ll visit it tomorrow.

Before I go to bed I upload my videos for the day – I know the cooking one will be particularly popular, people love to share their cooking experiences. I tag it ‘cannelloni’, and then as an afterthought add a couple more tags: ‘impromptu’ and ‘improvised’. The speed of my broadband means it only takes a few seconds to upload the videos (they are tiny, already compressed thanks to my camera and phone) and within 5 minutes I can see someone has already clicked on the video of my morning walk down my street, perhaps another potential renter scouting out the area.

Tomorrow I’ll document more.