It was great to get a comment from the elusive MadV after my recent post about his new video – “We’re All in This Together”. I asked if he’d do an interview and he has. He talks about the inspiration behind “The Message”, what motivates his collaborative work, and why he re-staged his 2006 YouTube hit in HD. Here it  is.

On Wednesday I was lucky to be at a Paris screening of the seminal documentary – “Chronique d’un Ete” (“Chronicle of a Summer”) which was being shown, almost fifty years after it was made in 1960, to a gathering including the co-producer Edgar Morin and two of the original participants – Marceline Loridan-Ivens and Nadine Ballot.

I was in Paris for a conference, Le Projet Jean Rouch? (The Jean Rouch Project?) which looked at the legacy of the pioneering French anthropological film maker Jean Rouch, who died in 2004. (The conference papers I refer to later in this piece are available as pdfs on the conference website).  Rouch is a figure I’ve been interested in since the ’80s when I was alerted to his work by Michael Eaton who wrote the first English language Rouch study . I interviewed Rouch in ‘91 for a BBC Late Show special about documentary, and his ideas have influenced the way I’ve thought about work I’ve produced since – in particular BBC 2’s Video Nation.

Rouch started making anthropological films in West Africa after the Second World War, having gone there before the war as an engineer, and embarked on a body of work which, while it drew on the past – Rouch sited film makers Vertov and Flaherty in particular as influences – was highly innovative and still feels fresh today. Imagine a film in which two young men from rural Niger enact their own story of trying to survive in the unfamiliar modern urban surroundings of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, narrated by one of them – in the persona of Edward G Robinson. That’s “Moi un Noir” – 1958. Or picture an African on the streets of Paris conducting an anthropological study –  persuading passers-by to let him measure their heads and inspect their mouths. Not “Meet the Natives” – 2007, but Rouch’s “Petit a Petit” – 1969, featuring Rouch’s long-time friend and collaborator Damoure Zika.

Rouch is interesting for a number of reasons. In terms of content, he took anthropology into the African city, pointed to the contemporary content of ritual, and to the growing influence of American culture in everyday life and fantasy in post-war West Africa. But he saw filming not as some kind of documentation but as a form of engagement in which the camera is a catalyst, a player. He wanted to get right inside the world he was filming – “to get rid of one’s own systems of thought, to better understand other peoples’ thoughts” – and this is expressed in his films through first person, subjective narration. Film-making for Rouch was a collaborative process in which film-maker and participants jointly create meaning, a project he called ‘shared anthropology’. I was in Paris because I’m interested in how this idea of shared anthropology might be deployed in the development of collaborative documentary practice today. I was also there because I’m taking Jean Rouch’s 1960 film “Chronicle of a Summer” as the starting point for a collaborative piece I’m going to be producing half a century later in 2010.

At the screening on Wednesday, Edgar Morin described how “Chronicle of a Summer” came about after a conversation in which he proposed that Rouch turn his anthropological eye on the people of Paris. (Morin’s account brought to mind the genesis of the British Mass Observation project which similarly arose out of a dialogue about ‘bringing anthropology home’ – in that case between anthropologist Tom Harrisson, filmmaker Humphrey Jennings and journalist Charles Madge. This parallel was explored in a conference presentation by Elena von Kassel Siambini the morning after the screening.)

The film that emerged from Rouch and Morin’s discussion involved one of the first uses of 16mm handheld camera and sync sound. This technology was by no means off-the-shelf. The filming was very experimental technically and it took a development process across the shooting period to achieve reliable sync, as Vincent Bouchard and Severine Graff explained in their conference papers. Rouch’s ’50s films were shot silent with narration added afterwards. What he was striving for was a handheld set-up flexible enough to film spontaneous speech in real-life settings. As subject matter Rouch and Morin settled on the everyday life of “the tribe of people living in Paris”, their brief; “What is your life? Are you happy?” Their film unfolds as a disparate group of people consider those questions from different perspectives during the course of the summer of 1960. The film reveals French society in a process of change – divided over the repression of the independence movement in Algeria, living with the legacy of the Occupation, with class, race and identity in debate. At the same time the film is an investigation into this new spontaneous filming method, a reflection on the ethics and aesthetics of documentary still  relevant today.

I didn’t understand much of the Q & A at the Paris screening as my French is rudimentary, and there wasn’t any translation, but I did make out Edgar Morin relating that a young man who’d recently seen “Chronicle of a Summer” had summarised it as;“…a reality show, with a critical dimension.” It was an apt observation. The unfolding of events and feelings on camera, the “pro-filmic event” as Rouch called it, that was key to his film-making, is these days a crucial ingredient  in reality TV, with Big Brother acting as the catalyst to ensure that something does happen. You can see Rouch as the provocateur in this clip from “Chronicle of a Summer”. It’s not my favourite sequence – Rouch’s interventions seem heavy-handed out of context and without the “critical dimension” that is crucial to the film. But the sequence does give a flavour of “Chronicle of a Summer”, and it’s the only clip available on You Tube. So here it is.

In 2010, on the fiftieth anniversary of  ”Chronicle of a Summer”, I’m planning to revisit the questions that Rouch and Morin posed in their film, to try and start a conversation about contemporary life and values. I’ll use the web as the platform, and want to involve diverse participants from around the world, bringing together distributed responses – in video and stills, combined perhaps with some form of data visualisation. While Rouch and Morin’s 1960 film investigated the potential of the new handheld sync sound filming, “The Happiness Project” (working title) will investigate the potential for participatory online documentary. There are lots of challenges, and issues to work through regarding how to go about. At the heart of my investigation is the question of how to combine peoples’ recordings to tell a larger story – in a form that works on the web, and is editorially satisfying.

I’m not the first person to be experimenting with collaborative documentary by any means – there have been some really interesting creative responses already in this space – including work by Kutiman and MadV on You Tube, and Brett Gaylor’s “RiP! A Remix Manifesto” - an important, entertaining feature documentary that’s currently winning lots of prizes at Film Festivals (and will be the subject of my next post). In producing “The Happiness Project” as practice-based research, I get to build on what others have done, experiment, and share my findings. I’ll be posting here about the project as it develops, inviting people to get involved, and and reflecting on what works and what doesn’t.

Rouch didn’t see the explosion of non-professional video content that has happened on You Tube – he died just a few months before the service launched. But he did anticipate the age of participatory media. Back in 1973 he wrote; “Tomorrow will be the time of completely portable colour video, video editing, and instant replay… and of a camera that can so totally participate that it will automatically pass into the hands of those who, until now, have always been in front of the lens.” I hope that “The Happiness Project” might contribute a new dimension to shared anthropology, by developing ways for those who have “always been in front of the lens” to tell their collective stories.

Postscript ~ Rouch is a contested, at times contradictory figure and if you’re curious about him I’d urge you to read beyond this brief introduction. As a brief overview Michael Eaton’s terrific obituary piece is a must. The diverse perspectives of “Building Bridges” open up the complexity of Rouch’s work.  Rouch’s relationship to Africa has been subject to critique by, among others, Manthia Diawara in  “Rouch in Reverse” . Steven Feld’s  “Cine-Ethnography” which I’ve drawn on here, is a rich resource of Rouch’s own writing.  A new book - “The Adventure of the Real; Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema” by Paul Henley sounds promising.

Akkurat no: Possibility – Lykke Li
(refrenget er berre eit stort elsk)

Thomas Moen gjer det same som MadV; Mitt bodskap til verda. Sjekk innlegget hans her.

“I desember 2008 publiserte en som kaller seg MadV ut en video hvor mange mennesker fikk mulighet til å dele én setning med verden. Jeg elsker budskapene som komme frem og har lyst til å se om norske bloggere har lyst til å delta i noe lignende”

MITT BODSKAP:

No er det din tur!

Nov 5th saw the  release of the latest video from MadV – the anonymous producer of the original “collab” hit.  Back in 2006 he was already a star on YouTube –  popular for illusions, which he performed in a Guy Fawkes mask. Then he posted a brief video – showing the words “One World”, written on his hand – and offered “an invitation, to make a stand, to make a statement, to make a difference. Join in. Be part of something. Post your response now.” He received over 2,000 replies – the highest number on YouTube to date. The piece he created from those responses is The Message – a four minute montage of webcam recordings of mostly teens and twenty-somethings, showing their own messages, written on their hands, accompanied by a track by Mugwai. “Respect, Compassion, Integrity, Honor, Altruism, Union…” the messages read. It’s an outpouring of yearning for positive values which culminates in ideas around human connectedness – “Together as one, United as One, We’re all in this Together… One World”.

“The Message” became a major YouTube hit – promoted on the homepage and nominated as “Most Creative Video of 2006″. It’s been much analysed and discussed. There are commentaries about the messages, and intense debates about whether there are contradictions between the statements. “The Message” has also been seen as a breakthrough work of participatory media. In “Wired” magazine Clive Thompson described it as a “curious mongrel form…a new language of video.” In his lucid “Anthropological Introduction to You Tube” Michael Wesch talks about MadV’s piece in the context of “cultural inversion”, a helpful framework for thinking about YouTube content. In everyday life, in our atomised, consumer society, we express individualism, independence, commercialism. We “crave connection, but see that connection as restraint”. YouTube, Wesch argues, offers the possibility of connection without restraint, and a space in which to express treasured alternative values of community, relationships, authenticity. Wesch’s commentary – which I wrote about back in the Summer – makes sense of “The Message”.

MadV’s latest video We’re all in this together returns to “The Message” – in high definition video. The call to action evokes the previous video, using the “One World” slogan again, adding, “This year, say it clearer”. The montage MadV has created is very close to the 2006 piece – though the high definition quality makes the young faces even more vivid, disarming. There’s an environmental theme, which though present before, is foregrounded this time.  The title, “We’re all in this together” – a quote from the 2006 contributions – underlines our inter-dependence. The video builds towards a final sequence that reads,” Hope, For our Future, You can change the world.” There’s a hand with a recycling symbol, a young man holding a globe, spinning slowly, close to the camera, and a last ambiguous message -” Wish You were Here.”

The piece is powerful, but something troubles me about this remake. The format begins to feel a bit like a party trick. MadV puts out a call, and his devoted community – there are 42,00 subscribers to his channel at this point – do as asked. They know what’s required now, and they’re playful with it – but still… MTV called “The Message” a ‘cultural shift in media’, but there’s a familiar dynamic at the heart of this – between star and fanbase. The content may be crowdsourced, but MadV calls the shots.

As many already know, YouTube has quickly become one of the most popular and most visited sites on the Internet. Everyday, millions of videos are viewed, and thousands are uploaded. There is no denying that YouTube has a very large following and a constantly growing and expanding community. A community now dedicated to producing a large range of content. From pure humorous videos, to sociopolitical and how to videos, YouTube has a large following that is not just confined to teenagers and children. This community is not a stagnant one either. The community that YouTube has fostered is in fact so large, it has the ability to shape people’s point of view, and has the ability to allow mass participation.

This community that has been created is most evident in videos such as the MadV’s message video. A video in which a popular YouTube creator, MadV, has his viewers write one word on their hand, video tape it, and send it to him. MadV then made a compilation video featuring many of the viewers who sent in videos.

It’s apparent that this video would not have been made possible if not for YouTube’s large community, and MadV’s large fan base. Furthermore, the ability of MadV to create a compilation video solely based on replies to his video is a true testament to the strength and resolve of the YouTube community. Without such a strong and supportive following, that video would never have happened, and would never have even been conceived.

This is where the strength and success of YouTube lies, not in its popular videos or interesting site design, but rather in it’s community. Because YouTube is not merely a site in which people share hilarious videos of their cats, but is rather a place to share ideas, and cultivate a new kind of culture. A culture not determined by the media or the popular voice, but instead a culture driven by ideas from everyone, allowing mass participation and a national voice that encompasses all walks of life and gives everyone an equal voice.

Ham som lavede tryllekunstner (selvom vi vidste hvordan han gjorde det), så blev vi alligevel forbløffede. Han tog internettet med stor storm med over 2 mil. af seere, da han uploadede sin “one world” video. Mange lavede en video respons og nu begynder han nu med HD versionen, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7a9xCIAdDU. Jeg har selv postet en men den må i så selv finde …

Awhile ago, this YouTube video was posted on a site I went to and it was one of the most powerful short clips I’ve ever seen. It changed the way I viewed the world around me for the better. Instead of just “viewing” a landscape, an image, or a movie, instead of just listening to a song, I would always think “What could I do with this image? In what ways could I change it and use it in a new creative image?” It makes for an interesting experience and is a constant mind excerise. The video is simply a reminder and the simplicity of it is beautiful.

Watch the clip after the jump.
The music is “Music for a Nurse” by Oceansize. The speaking voice is that of Naom Chomsky.

I’m not certain what story videos like these tell.  A similar infectious viral is “Where’s Matt?” There’s a sense of association, a sense that we will prevail.  The cuts from person to person rhyme in theme. It cannot be denied: the messages written on each person’s hands are vapid. And yet, because of their context, they nevertheless create some charge.  Not always, but some of the time.

In November of 2006 a YouTube user known as MadV decided to make a call for everyone to participate in a community video project. His idea was simple: to draw attention to the things that really matter to us and which, unfortunately, we sometimes forget. The idea was to write a message on the palm of your hand and post it as a video response. A final compilation of highlights from thousands of responses was then made.

This 2008 we look back at that undoubted historic event, and we decided to once again take up the same initiative. We are launching “1globe1world”, and we invite everyone to take part in the following way: Write a message on a balloon, and post your video response on Youtube. Show us your message, and then either ‘free’ it if it is a positive one, or ‘pop’ it if it is a negative one that you would like to see rid of this world… or you can do whatever your imagination brings. What would you like to see become reality in 2009, or disappear?

There are no commercial or political forces behind this initiative, only the creators (PixelyDixel and LaComuna.tv), and everyone who wants to is welcome to participate.

Although we will not be back a school for another month, this is a great idea for our students to try. I  think that a class (perhaps Personal Development, or RE but any really) could also put together a short video as a response to the challenge. MadV have quite a few videos, on YouTube, worth looking at.

En noviembre de 2006, un usuario de YouTube conocido como MadV, se decidió a realizar una convocatoria para que todo el mundo participara en un vídeo colectivo. Su idea era sencilla, el reto era llamar la atención sobre las cosas que realmente nos importan y de las que, lamentablemente,  a veces nos olvidamos. Se trataba de que los participantes escribieran un mensaje en la palma de su mano, para grabarlo en forma de vídeorespuesta. Con todas las respuestas se confeccionó un video final.

Este 2008, año sin duda histórico por la magnitud de acontecimientos ocurridos, hemos decidido retomar la iniciativa. Para ello lanzamos 1globe1world, e invitamos a todo el mundo a que haga algo parecido a lo que os hemos contado: Escribe un mensaje en un globo, y graba una vídeo respuesta a este vídeo de YouTube. Puedes mostrar tu mensaje, liberarlo si es algo positivo, o pinchar el globo si es algo que quieres que desaparezca de este mundo… o lo que tu imaginación te diga. Lo que te gustaría que fuera realidad en 2009, o desapareciera.

No hay ningún interés comercial, ni político detrás de esta iniciativa que hemos creado entre PixelyDixel y La comuna, pero a que partir de ya pertenece a todo el que quiera participar.

Esperamos tus vídeo respuestas.

(Gracias a Emilio García por el logo y el diseño de la página. El tema musical es “Discusión Implícita” de Slam Ballet, gracias a Inti Pérez)

Another video challenge for 5 November from my favorite masked man:

Light a candle and tell the world what you remember. Post yours now. Together we can light up the world.

A video challenge for the world from the great MadV:

What does it mean to be human?

Take part in The “Humans” Project, a community effort to pin down the elusive description of human nature and what humans are.

Post a video response with your original spoken sentence.

Examples:

All spoken responses will be considered for the final video project.

It’s called “The Humans Project” and it makes me cry to look at it, because a project like this might just save the world.  It reminds me of a book my mother had when I was a child called “The Family of Man.”

The Family of Man was a traveling photography exhibit curated by Edward Steichen and you can read about it here:

http://www.moma.org/research/archives/highlights/06_1955.html

When I worked as a therapist for the homeless I began to understand man’s inhumanity to man at core levels.  I asked one of my clients the same question that MadV is asking the world.

I asked her to write an essay on “What it means to be human.”

Because you see, she no longer felt like a human being.

Until we can address issues on the humanist level, we are doomed as human beings.

Bless you, MadV.

As our regular readers know (at least, those who read the blog, not the feed, and can watch our discerning and brilliant assortment of YouTubes) we around these parts are big fans of the mysterious, magical MadV. A pseudonymous agitator and artist of the very best kind, he has evolved from a simple kid doing magic tricks in his bedroom into a true thought leader. Naturally, in the current, prank-laden and Anonymous-heavy atmosphere, we take the below announcement with a grain of salt; it could be that he’s been hacked; it could be that he’s playing an elaborate, multi-partite game on us; it could be that the Thetans have got the better of him.

We don’t know.

Nonetheless, we present the following video for your analysis; think of it as the Dramatic Prairie Dog, for Anarchists.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Check out this kid!!

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Watch MadV perform the Mercury card trick… ***Cheap Magic Card Tricks Onsale Now — Click Here ***

This video reveals how MadV peforms the Mercury magic card trick…

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I wanted to post so many things in my first post. But I have decided to leave you with this one thing to look at, and maybe it will inspire something inside of your heart and mind. Even if it’s just to tell some one you love them or maybe it will inspire you to be the spark that changes something that you don’t like in this world

Like the rhyming title? You better. I took me a full three seconds.

Yup. I’m back. Did you miss me? Did you even notice I was gone? Probably not. The internet is big, this blog isn’t.

It seems the last time I posted was in November, so I decided to give my blog the kiss of life it deserved and actually pick up the keyboard and write something. So here it is.

first order of business, is that I got a comment on my Remember piece. A real one. This is a big day for me. My first ever comment. I’m over the moon. Really I am. Wow. The comment was by raincoaster and said:

“Well? He posted his.”

(Yes I know you can go see the comment for yourself, but this is a big deal for me, leave me alone.) I assume by “Well?” raincoaster means “Where’s the response?” which is a good question that needs answering. When I saw the MadV video on Youtube, the thoughts that ran through my head were “What a fantastic idea, I’m going to respond. Even though I do hate the sound of my own voice.” The response date drew nearer, and I had prepared a short speech to deliver to the Youtube masses. I had recorded and re-recorded, and the response date drew nearer still. November 5th came and I decided “I’ll upload it later,” by midday, “uploading it later” was still the intention, and by the evening, later was still when I would upload it, and by the time later had passed, I hadn’t uploaded it, and November 5th had ended. I didn’t want to be the person that everyone makes fun of for wandering in late, so I didn’t upload it on November 6th either, eventually, the video file for the response eventually got lost in the shadowy abyss of deletion, never to rear it’s ugly head again. Now that I’ve lost what little credibility I had, I can get one with the rest of the post.

Fast forward to December. BANG! It’s exam time. My mock GCSEs which I had been revising like crazy for. I’m one of the unlucky few that gets to take my exams in the Special Needs department of school, because I am entitled to extra time (which I hardly used.) There isn’t really much I can say about the exams, except they were easier than I thought they would be, and it was so cold in the exam room that a few of us were declared dead, and the room got turned into a cryogenics lab.

Then before I even had time to collect my thoughts, it was Christmas. A time of giving and receiving. Mainly receiving. I received an Xbox 360 core system, with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Saints row, Call of Duty 3, and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (reviews for those later.) New Year zipped by, and the rest as they say is history, which is a good job really because this post was starting to get a little long, and I find that for some reason people don’t like reading on the internet.

On YouTube, there is a user known as MadV, who joined the site on April 11 2006. He posted a series of videos showing incredible feats of illusion, including flying cards, turning pages of a book without touching them, and causing a ball to float in midair. Then on May 09 2006, he posted a final Goodbye video, and left Youtube. Six months later, he came back, with his famous One World video, which people responded to in their thousands. He then disappeared again.

Now, the legend that is MadV has returned, with a video entitled “Remember.”

The video invites the public, on November 5th, to respond with a video “about what encompasses you as a person, what inspires you, what brings you hope, and most importantly those little things that you may have forgotten.”

Here, for your convenience is the full video:

I will be participating in this celebration of the past, the present and the future. I will post my response here, as well as a transcript of what I have to say. I urge you to respond also.