Project Hyperessay 1

I have experienced several conflicting thoughts when thinking about this project. Firstly, just like during my experience with Periscope, I feel a rather overwhelming responsibility as a creator to broadcast something that will appeal to the majority. I know that this is not possible, but I just get the feeling that my ideas are not good enough to create a broadcast that people will want to watch. In addition to this, I have also spent a considerable time trying to think of ways in which people can interact/respond to my broadcast. As of now, I feel that I do not have a very solid and cohesive idea, but rather several disparate ideas which, if I could somehow combine them, might be a good project idea. I will share these ideas and my thoughts/doubts below.

My current idea is to do a review about the soccer boot. However, this review would not just simply be me talking about the boot. The twist is that there would also be subtitles, but they would not reflect exactly what I was saying. Rather, they would act as my thoughts or the ‘truth’. I felt that with the right script, I could make this into a rather entertaining, maybe funny and a not-so-typical review of a soccer boot.  However, I could not think of a way to better utilize the third space to allow for viewer interaction.

As a solution, I thought about allowing viewers to access the raw footage used to create my review. In this way, they could remix my video and create their own review, without having the need to have the boot itself. In this way, perhaps there could eventually be a playlist of reviews about the same boot, creating a sort of collaborative review. Another alternative is that users can simply use the video clips to extend my video, thus also creating a collaborative review. This idea of collaboration is, of course, inspired by Douglas Davis’ “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence”. I feel that this also allows people to feel some sense of ownership of the boot and that by making my videos available for everyone also highlights the benefits of open source.

I also have an alternative solution to get people to participate in my project. The idea is to use the hashtag #UltimateSoccerBoot on Instagram to allow people to create collages of photos that represent their ideal soccer boot. Using the hashtag, I would first post photos of elements of soccer boots to create a database of elements that people can handpick from to ‘create’ their ideal soccer boot. However, I don’t have a good idea about what material I can broadcast following this idea.

Another separate idea that I was toying with is the idea of being blindfolded in front of the camera. This thought came about when I was thinking about Jennifer Ringley’s “Jennicam” and the notion that although the audience is aware of the presence of her, she is totally unaware of them. I feel that being blindfolded and perhaps performing some kind of action will serve to highlight this idea. Once again, though, I feel that there is not much room to allow for viewer interaction.

The last thought I want to share is inspired by the ‘Exquisite Corpse’ exercise we studied and tried out in class. Using the auto-complete feature of Google, I could essentially write a whole story just by typing the first part of the sentence into Google and choosing one of the auto-complete options. I like this idea because I feel that it ties in closely with the ideas of Glitch and random chance composition. I think it could perhaps also allow for viewer participation to create a collaborative story. However, in regards to broadcasting a video about this, I feel that it wouldn’t be particularly interesting.

Overall, I think that I’m still having some trouble trying to figure out what exactly will work for this project.

2 Comments

  1. Hello Esmond, I particularly like the idea of you being blindfolded. In fact, this is a good way for viewer participation actually! Okay here’s an idea, imagine you are blindfold, there are list of items in front of you or even soccer boots. Make a platform where viewers can send you a message live and instant, most probably a voice message, so when they send a message, it will be played live in your location and so you can hear it. Viewers can send instructional message to you to tell you what to do with those items since you are blindfolded. Allowing the viewer to take control of you has the idea of being vulnerable which has been tackled by many artists and I thought that you should try something like this, through live broadcast!

  2. Thanks Kamarul for the interesting idea!

    I also like the Google doc, because the idea of a collaborative writing experiment might be fruitful. It’s possible that you can invite people to write a story in 10 minutes collaboratively via a shared Google Doc, and you can broadcast the doc as it is being written to share and record the results, both as the final doc and as a video that would record the writing itself, kind of like automatic writing, which was a technique the surrealists also used. We’ll discuss further!

    Also, after we meet today, you should rewrite your essay with an idea you want to move forward with, and be sure to include media and references to readings, since right now the essay is all text and all process. I think it’s good that you did this so we can use this first draft as a starting point.

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