webponce rants

Great news over at the disposable memory project. I’ve had the first response from someone who found a camera in Berlin. They took it all the way to Lisbon, Portugal, and then passed it on to someone else to carry on the chain. The original camera was dropped off back in May, so it shows that this isn’t a quick response mechanism, but I wasn’t expecting anything quicker - so I’m just really chuffed that we’ve had a camera check in.

I blogged this over at the Disposable Memory Project, but I think its neat idea, and I know the founders of the festival would love as much coverage as possible, so I’m reblogging with a bit more gusto this time. Eric Slatkin and Carlton Evans started the Disposable Film Festival in 2007 to celebrate the ‘artistic potential of disposable video’:

“Everyone has become a Disposable Filmmaker: directors of Saturday night cell phone videos, actors under the eyes of security cameras, and narrators before their webcams. Let’s face it - we live in an age of disposable film. Now it’s time to do something creative with it.”

I couldn’t agree more, and I love it! This new world in which we live of such throw-away-able technology is truly awful - I can’t remember the last time i got something repaired over just buying a replacement, but the low cost of these devices (and increasing quality) also brings with it a generative side which is wonderful, and projects like the Disposable Film Festival bring the more talented homebrew film-makers to light. Being disposable and often low quality (in terms of their technical capability: grainy, blocky, jerky, poor zoom, poor focusing) often forces the producer to abandon all hope of making their work glossy and polished, and focus on the content and narrative. Whilst the ‘realness’ of the format has always given this sort of content a voyeuristic feel, which often seems to engender a certain type of story to be portrayed, increasingly talented people with nothing more than just a great idea or narrative they want to capture are doing just that. I think it helps bring forward the soul of the story. Surprise surprise, simplicity creates something special, yet again!

I went to listen to Clay Shirky yesterday afternoon, who very kindly signed my copy of ‘Here Comes Everybody‘ and I managed to have a brief chat with until Bill Thompson careered in and gave Shirky a bearhug. The majority of his discussions were over topics covered in the book, of how the cost (in pure economic terms) of creating groups or group activity has been so substantially lowered in recent years, that projects like this are bound to spring up. The rule for most is failure, perhaps only a half baked idea, or even just a great idea which doesn’t reach the audience it deserves, following a rough power law that only a tiny percentage of these generative and collaborative projects will succeed. Well, here’s hoping for success for the Disposable Film Festival, and any of its film-makers.

In other news, its the second week of my underemployableness. Last week was intentionally empty and devoid of activity. I took delivery of my new coffee machine (yom), played hours of XBox, watched all of the first season of Arrested Development, even went for a swim and ate copious amounts of food (in that order). This week, I shall mostly be doing ’stuff’. I was planning on taking a trip to Brighton (ice-cream, The Werks, the beach, and I like being on trains) this morning, but the weather is looking a bit crappy. Oh, and my iPhone needs charging after only a day of use. Lame.

Three more cameras have gone into the wild today - one on the southbank, one in central london’s oxford street, and one handed to Peter from the Fifty Quid Danger Fund so he can put it somewhere of his choosing. You can find their location on the camera tracker.

I was walking along the southbank as my wife and I wanted to go and check out O2’s The Memory Project - nothing to do with our little site, but a really nice idea nonetheless. Basically, they have created a 360 view timelapse of the southbank, which is taking images right now. Inside the installation, you can view old images from the panorama’s last few days of capturing. Walking closer to the screens shows you newer images, further away, older (or vice versa). I’m not sure when its there until, but check it out - its a nice concept.

And finally, we’ve had our first request to make a DIY camera bag - all the way from Boston MA, in the US of A. Woo! Thanks Tom. Hopefully we’ll be seeing his camera location pretty soon.

For those of you not following the disposable memory project blog, we sent the first two camera bags into the wild today. Squeak!