trees are people too

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.