trees are people too

Ok. It’s coming together kinda, starting with the title. My manifesto is called the Lifemap manifesto. The basic concept is that videos can, and should be used to document our lives. As we now all have access to the equipment to do so, we are obliged, as video weilders and as media practitioners, to document, record, replay and reflect upon the stories collected by video.

The objective behind my manifesto and behind this practice (in its most simple form) 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, and these stories 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.

All this means that this gets incredibly messy, of course (hurrah!!). 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 crap. The widespread (and seemingly endless) dissemination and accessibility will mean that some will be better than others, some more interesting, some more professional, but overall my manifesto predicts that it 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.

So how do you start your lifemapping, I hear you ask. No, you yell actually (you’re excited!!) 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 that’s not the end of it. That story is useless, is meaningless, unless it has an audience. Your duty is 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.

The Lifemap Manifesto will remain based on the three principles:

Everyone No one is excluded. There is no prerequisites to be 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.

Everywhere We must endeavour, with the equipment we have access to, to reproduce these stories as far and wide as possible, on every available surface, in all environments. The viewing and ‘reading’ of these stories must not be restricted to those who can afford to go to galleries or access the internet, they must be made public through many, and any, means. Guerilla tactics may be applied. Imagine if graffiti could be done in video (cooool!!) – consider this similar. Without advocating vandalism, these stories, and their accompanying messages, must be shown to as many people as possible, else the learning be restricted to the few.

Everyday Through these actions, 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.

As Socrates so eloquently put it, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’