Today in class we talked about interactive videos – strangely in other languages they are called very differently: web documentaires in French and Web-Dokus in German.
If you want to check out what is going on other countries I compiled some examples in English produced elsewhere:
Highrise: an interactive project about people living in highrises around the world (in English), National Film Board of Canada
The German-French broadcaster arte pushes cross-plattform narration (TV, online, mobile) to the next level in Europe. They have some excellent interactive videos. For example about the 10-year anniversary of the Iraq war. Unfortunately all the web productions as they call them only exist in German and in French.
The Spin Doctor: DJ Esquire Competes at DMC 2013 – by Elly W. Yu
DJ Esquire heads off to Hartford Connecticut to compete for a spot in the U.S. finals. It would be his chance to play on the world stage – a chance to represent the U.S. against the world. Last year, he placed second, but does he have what it takes to make it to the top this year?
I am always nervous when I perform. I always have some sense of like ‘man, what am I doing up here.’ I’m going to suck. Ughh… this is going to be awful.
John would not be a DJ. John needs Esquire in order to be a DJ. John would prefer to listen to music on his iPod and be in his own world. Esquire would want to be on the stage.
The Esquire came about in college. I was working at a law firm, And actually, it came to me in a dream one night. I was on stage performing in my dream and I heard the name Esquire chanted in the background and that’s how it stuck.
In the beginning, I was really unsure of what this would become so I didn’t know if this was going to be like just a hobby that John was into before this whole new persona was invented but it’s now become bigger than that.
This competition is the beginning of the 2013 DMC Battleground.
I really wanted to win last year, like that’s all I wanted to do was win this competition and I got second and I was totally disappointed.
I want this really bad. This year, I feel like my attitude is just a little bit shifted. I feel like a little more comfortable about my confidence.
MC: Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention. I have all the results. This was a very close battle between first and second. Now the 2013 Hartford Champion… DJ Esquire from Brooklyn.
If I was doing anything but this I would be very unhappy. I have no regrets about any decision to make this my life.
John Chavies, 35, likens himself to the nutty professor. One minute he’s a soft-spoken guy who loves Charlie Brown, the next, he’s a fierce competitor who will not be afraid to go to extremes on stage. John – also known as DJ Esquire – is battling to compete in this year’s DMC competition to compete on the world stage. But as much as he loves the limelight and what he does, John also wants to settle down and have a family. He explores the possibility of doing both.
Esquire quit his 9-5 job at HBO a couple years after to college to pursue the 5-9 game. He hasn’t looked back since. He’s been on the world stage before, performing in London, but he wants to compete on it once again. Last year, he missed getting his chance when he landed second place at the Hartford, CT competition. This year, he’s ready to make it.
Nikki Romanello is a fine artist, who creates art pieces using science knowledge. Lately she has been working with a Kombuch (tea-mashroom) to create a “living paper.” She believes that by using once living materials in her work, she gives them a chance for a second life.
[00.03]To understand death, you have to understand where you came from.
[00.08] There is a lot of amazing stuff happening right now in science. And I really want people to know about it. And I think, the only way I know how- is to communicate through my work.
[00.20] I work with natural beast remains. Things left over from animals mostly like bones and shells, and teeth. I usually take those and make molds of them.
[00.33] Every artist work, there is always a personal story that comes behind it.
[00.38] I had adapted a Grey Hound and she died of bone cancer. And I was looking…and during that time, when we were trying to figure out what was wrong with her, I was looking on a lot of X-rays. And that image burned in my mind and that’s when it started showing up in my work.
[01.02] I brewed my first Kombucha. So it is yeast and bacteria together who are super happy and they are producing this thriving culture. Then I layd it over an epoxy plate I have made a skeleton embossing in it. And it picked up all the details. And that’s when I started being like- ok, this could actually be an amazing art material.
[01.28] The idea of the show was to introduce bio-art. People who are very religious or very conservative tend to be fearful of the progression in science. Everyone else seems to be pretty interested in it. Bio-art, you know, is not something to be feared.
[01.50] You are living and then you slowly dying and then you die. But all the cells in your body go into something living.
[01.58] So it is like dealing with my dog’s death.
Sound bite: [02.02] This was my childhood dog, this is Lily. She was a Toxirn, she lived for 18 years.
[02.10] You don’t actually die. You know, you give something else life. And that is also a really amazing thing.
Nikki Romanello, 27, is a fine artist, who uses science to create an art pieces.
She believes that by using once living materials in her work, she gives them a chance for a second life. The “life after death.”
Romanello grew up in suburbs of Taxes. Being close to nature, she developed a strong passionate interest for the remains of organic life. She started from collecting bones, shells, animal and plant remains and later used that in her work. She graduated from Maryland Institute of College of Art in Baltimore, where she was experimenting with metal sculpture. Later, she continued pursuing her sculpture passion at Pratt Institute in New York.
Now Romanello again works closely with a science aspect of her art. She casts real animal and even human bones in glycerin, creates soap bones and puts together hybrid skeletons.
Romanello’s bones obsession explains by the loss of her dog—Willow. The dig had a bone cancer and Romanello had to deal with a lot of Willos’s X-rays, that forever stuck in her mind and later showed in her works.
She recently started taking an interest in fermentation. She created a “living paper” from brewing a tea-mushroom –Kombucha. Romanello used this leathery substance in her tubeworm sculpture and skeletal imprints created for a Cut/Paste/Grow art-science show at the Brooklyn Observatory.
Romanello takes a great interest in death and all processes accompanying dying. She believes that nothing really ever dies, but just changes forms and continues a life cycle. Through her art, Romanello denies the fear of death and praises life.
I think the thing that gets people is not just the fact that it’s a bubble, but the size of the bubble. I mean, if you’re walking along, just minding your own business and you see this giant bubble floating past you – what’s the first thing that you’re going to do? You’re going to investigate. Where did that bubble come from? And why is it so big?
Most people in the park, most of the guys who know me, consider me to be the first. I was the first one to bring this to Central Park.
I do have a secret recipe which I’m not at a liberty to divulge.
Before I started with the bubbles, I was at a toy store. Shortly after I finished working at FAO Schwartz, I was looking for a job. At the time I was operating on unemployment, which was kind of tough.
I started just going around the park at random, just making bubbles and entertaining the kids, making people smile, and people responded very well to it. That’s when I realized, “I think I’ve got something here.”
It’s a passion. It’s something that stirs your soul. Something that gets you up in the morning.
It’s not like Stephen Duncan planned on making a living as a “bubbler.” After all, he is young, college-educated (a few credits shy of a sociology degree at Brooklyn College) and a New York City resident; opportunities abound.
But after losing his job at FAO Schwartz in 2008 and living off of unemployment benefits for awhile, Stephen fell into the art – and job – of creating large soap bubbles for passersby in Central Park, making him the first known bubbler in the area. His interest was initially piqued by a vendor who sold him a small bubble toy for $5. After garnering interest from adults and children alike, he created his own bubble-making contraption that is made of some string and sticks. Simple enough – but the resulting bubbles are stunning both in their size and whimsical beauty.
Although his mother covers the majority of his bills, Stephen can make up to $160 for about four hours of work in the park. And while he is passionate about making bubbles and entertaining people, especially children, Stephen is serious about his chosen career path and views it as a viable business. Generating bubbles of a high quality, according to Stephen, is a science; it involves trial and error before settling on a soapy formula (which is kept under wraps, so don’t ask).
One might think that with all the street performers concentrated in Central Park, there is a lot of competition among the entertainers, and among the bubble artists themselves. But Stephen insists this is not the case. “I’m not out here to compete with anyone. Everyone brings something different, something unique to the park.”
About seven years ago, Vladimir Geresimosky, 36, left his native Macedonia for New York. He found work as a doorman in midtown, and lives in the same building as his brother and sister-in-law in Astoria. About two and half years ago, he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in his eyes. Since then, he has slowly been going blind. Despite the fact that he is now legally blind, he’s resumed playing handball, a sport he started playing as a teenager in Macedonia that isn’t as well known here. It’s similar to soccer, except the goal is to throw a ball into a net. Due to his work schedule, Geresimosky didn’t join NYC Team Handball until this past September. He didn’t view his disability as an impediment; he figured if he can get around the city on his own, he can play handball. In fact this time around he won’t let anything but death prevent him from playing. Though losing his sight entirely is a possibility, he hadn’t given it any thought. “Basically I don’t want to find out how my life is gonna be if I’m completely blind,” he said. However, his doctor told him that surgery to repair his sight might be an option at some point, and in the meantime he maintains a positive outlook on life. His family and teammates have also been supportive.
I started handball back in my teenage years, so basically you can say more than 20 years. And recently I started here in NYC from September, so we’ll see how it’s going to go.
My name is Vladimir Geresimosky, I’m from Macedonia, former Yugoslavia, and currently I live in NYC and I’ve been here like almost 7 years.
Handball is fast-paced sport which involves playing with ball and most times ball end up seeing my face because I cannot get a good grip on the ball.
I can see the ball when it’s right exactly in my face. So you have to have good reflex about that.
My eyes are looking like you’re looking through red flare.
Two and half years ago I was diagnosed with autoimmune disease. Problems are blurred vision during the day and night blindness, basically that’s the diagnosis of this type of disease.
My immediate reaction was basically like everybody, now what I’m gonna do, but it took me couple days and finally I pick up myself and say I’m gonna fight with this disease and I’m gonna make it.
It’s kinda difficult to do normal activities with that kind of vision, but I’m trying to do the best I can.
Moving around the city was really difficult, so I had to learn basically every corner in city, every trashcan, every post, every traffic light, b/c basically when you’re blind you hit everything. And it’s really, really difficult, especially in a city like New York.
If I can walk through NYC streets I can play handball too. Which is also like basically a square.
Nobody mentioned that I shouldn’t play because they know that I’ve managed to get around the city so they know I was going to be able to to this due.
My biggest supporter is my niece, my 2-yr-old niece, she’s my brother’s baby, she’s my biggest support. Every time she’s cheering, she’s saying “yay, bravo.”
I think everybody who has disability should take participation in sports as much as they can.
During our second interview with him, I was surprised to learn that he still took solo vacations to the Caribbean. His rationale? “You’re not doing anything except relaxing and trying to get some tan,” he said. “And those places that I visit, they’re really nice. I didn’t have to lift a finger.”
A Greek artist with low-vision makes drawings of landscapes and still lifes. In New York, Fotis Flevotomos finds inspiration to draw his first portrait in years. An iPad drawing application helps him deal with a blurry eyesight and a difficulty in perceiving depth.
I cannot understand how far things are and how fast things move.
I was born with a genetic condition called ocular albinism. This affected my vision, my perception of the third dimension.
8 7 dash 5 1
I always wanted to draw people but it’s not so easy I am quiet slow when I draw because I have to understand first what it is that I want to draw.
So it was easier to choose still lives or landscapes as a subject.
That’s one of my goals to find interesting faces and be able to draw portraits.
In NYC, you just have to take the subway and go somewhere and you’ll see a great variety of subjects, interesting expressions, interesting faces.
When I want to draw something that I think is interesting, I just spend time looking at the subject until I feel confident that I know everything about the shape and the color and the way it stands in the space.
When you feel strong feelings, then the need for expression is really really big so you have to find a way to express these feelings. That is how you become creative.
The ipad has two things that I find very helpful… I am able to enlarge my painting, I can adjust the brightness of the screen. For someone with low vision, these two characteristics are so so crucial for a confident drawing and a confident expression…
Low vision made me pay attention more to the importance of the moment…
I discovered that time apart from space is also an important element for a painter…
Just like a musician, you have to respect the flow of time…
As a child in Greece, he could not read letters on a class blackboard. Fotis Flevotomos, 35, was born with ocular albinism, a genetic condition in which the eyes lack melanin pigments causing blurry vision, a difficulty in perceiving depth and sensitivity to bright light.
Despite his condition, Flevotomos grew up to become a piano player and an artist. He made watercolor and ink drawings of still lives and landscapes but not many portraits. Although he was interested in human figures, he found it difficult to draw people. “I am quiet slow when I draw… and then I have to be really close so it’s a relationship that has certain requirements and for me it’s been difficult to find models with whom I feel comfortable,” he said.
Last year, Flevotomos was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to be a visiting artist at the New York Public Library. Since September, he has been engaged in discussions and workshops on the accessibility of art for people with low or no vision. He writes blog posts about the importance of subjective vision in making art and the relationship between music and paintings. Recently, he wrote about the affinities between Monet’s weeping willows series and Mozart’s Requiem.
In New York, Flevotomos started using an iPad application as a drawing tool, which helped him overcome some of his vision problems. Inspired by the diversity of people in the city, he decided to draw his first portrait in many years.
Recipes teach us about culture and society – even if the recipe is from the 1870s. Sarah Lohman digs through old cookbooks and pamphlets to discover how we live today. Sometimes the discoveries are not so sweet.
I had come across a reference to a pamphlet from the 1870s when the country was in a very bad depression and it was teaching people how to eat on a very restricted budget and it laid out three meals a day for seven days. So I saw that and I was like, oh, I want to do this. I want to live this life. I called it Living Like a Tenement Family.
It was actually a really, really smart menu. And in 1870s money it worked out to about three dollars for, well, that’s even for a family of six. I spent, I think $21 to feed myself for seven days, three meals a day. So to think that I was doing this 1870s diet, which was really smart, And I actually was getting a lot of fiber because I was getting a lot of beans.
On the other hand, I was only taking in about 800 calories a day and ended up spending about the same amount as someone on food stamps, except that I was slowly starving. I lost 3 pounds in a week.
So it, the amazing thing about these projects is that although I am looking into the past, there are often these very, very important connections to the present day. They’re very reflective on the contemporary, and that’s very important to me.
Sarah Lohman is a foodie and a historian. In 2008 she started a blog called FourPoundsFlour.com to write about food and recipes from the 18 and 19th centuries. An early experiment she called Living Like a Tenement Family stirred up a lot of excitement in the foodie and the historic worlds and led her to continue blogging her findings. For the experiment, Lohman got her recipes from a pamphlet in the 1870s that explained how to live in a tight budget.
Called “Fifteen Cent Dinners” and distributed in 1878 for free in New York City, the pamphlet planned out one week’s of meals for a family of six. It was intended for working class families to whom the author, Juliet Corson, writes: “This little book may not be a welcome guest in the home of the man who fares abundantly every day; it is not written for him; but for the working man, who wants to make the best of his wages, I pray it may bring help and comfort.”
Lohman adjusted the recipes for one and discovered just how well that menu would nourish for a family of six. What she found was not so pleasant, and has resonance to today’s working poor.
The US is cutting edge in online journalism and as in many other fields, web video story telling is much better here than elsewhere.
An initiative in Germany is now trying to push innovative videos forward by creating a prize for web videos. The Deutsche Webvideopreis is awarded in several categories from the biggest fail to the loudest laugh, from a journalistic category to the best advertising video. For journalists, the most interesting category is probably “For your Information“.
The site is mostly in German but I am happy to assist if you want to submit a video. The limitations:
the video has to be in German or geared towards a German audience
the video has to be produced for the web
the video has to be published between February 1 2012 and January 31 2013
no copyright infringements
Most videos are really bad (Unfortunately I couldn’t find a single one I liked). So if it happens that you have produced anything related to Germany, I highly recommend you to submit your videos.You can also just go and check out what video journalists in Germany are producing.
New York City is known for its high speed lifestyle, its agressive attitude and its jam-packed streets. Many who try to live and work in the city become overwhelmed by the burden of such a stressful environment, but not Omar Montana. Montana a 23-year-old graduate student speeds between taxi cabs and pedestrians on his bike every single day. But what makes his commute even more treacherous is he does so with no brakes. Montana is one voice in a growing culture of single gear brakeless bike riders, known as fixie riders.
Omar Montana: When you think of New York, you think of traffic, congestion, people all over the place, cars, people, kids, dogs, you think of mass traffic and you have to think of a way to avoid getting killed.
I’m Omar Montana.
I’m 23 years old, going on 24.
What’s so great about riding a fixie is that you really become one with the bike.
If you don’t pedal, if you decide to cruise, it will keep going, your legs will keep going. You have no brakes to rely on, you rely on yourself, and you’re always in control.
When you’re on a bike. You are in essence a form of a renegade to the established order.
You have individual agents on their bikes fighting over space, fighting over certain territory
You’re saying to the rest of New York. I exist. I’m here.
And I’m trying to get to point A to point B like a lot of other people.
Omar Montana, 23, showed up at my door out of breath and covered in sweat on a day just breaching freezing. He snapped off his helmet and small talked about the mile or so bike ride from Queens College, where he worked as a Teacher’s Assistant. A job he balanced with his graduate studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He locked his bike, rolled up his sleeve and showed me the latest addition to his tattoo collection, a face made of bike parts on his left forearm.
I walked him into the set. As I clipped the mic to his shirt he informed me that he’d have to run soon for a scheduled ride with friends. I focused, checked the levels and pressed record.
What ensued was an hour and a half conversation with Montana about his love for his bike. His fixie, or single geared brakeless bicycle had come to define his life. He had biked hundreds of miles through rain, snow, heat and traffic. He described how it felt to speed between taxicabs and pedestrians, race over bridges and sway home after late nights out.
His bike is more than just a method of transportation; it’s a lifestyle and a political statement. It is a rebellious act against a society that basks in “car fetishism” and a way to be heard in the cacophony of city sounds. Montana is one voice in a growing movement of fixie riders.
I am a performance artist, and wh¬¬¬at I do is I have special instruments that I use to make large soap bubbles.
Most people in the park, most of the guys who know me consider me to be the first. I was the first one to bring this to Central Park. I was the first to stand out there and entertain the crowd with bubbles.
Before I started with the bubbles I was actually working, of all places, at a toy store. I used to work at F.A.O. Schwartz. My manager pulled me aside and told me that they were shutting down our department.
I was of course looking for a job. I was pounding the pavement.
I was downtown, and I saw a vendor on the street and he was selling these little bubble toys. I thought to myself, “That’s it. This is something I have to have.”
I started just going around the park at random, just making bubbles and entertaining the kids, making people smile, and people responded very well to it.
That’s when I realized, “I think I’ve got something here.”
The science of bubbles is actually just like any other science. It’s something that we utilize to the best of our ability, but we’re always refining it.
Some factors include, of course, the quality of the soap that you’re using.
Yes, I do have a secret recipe – which I’m not at liberty to divulge.
The best part about this is when I see little kids—babies, toddlers, infants—and I see the look of curiosity on their faces, and it just—oh man—it just gets me so so so so charged, because this is their first experience with seeing something like that.
Why does any person do anything? Why does an artist paint, or draw, or sketch? Why does a dancer dance? It’s a passion. It’s something that stirs your soul, something that gets you up in the morning, something that you have this—this, this inner desire for. And I think that’s what comes with me and the bubbles.
Stephen Duncan, 28, isn’t just one of those “bubble guys” in Central Park. He’s the original bubble guy in Central Park.
In 2008, after losing his job at a cafeteria in F.A.O. Schwartz, Duncan began roaming the park with his giant soap bubbles, which he makes using a pair of sticks attached to a loop of string. Since then, “bubbling” in Central Park has become something of a phenomenon, with at least five separate bubble artists performing at different stations throughout the park. Some have copied Duncan’s technique from afar; others have trained under him directly.
Duncan says he’s happy to share his art. “At first the thought did cross my mind about maybe a little competition,” he said. “But then I thought, I’m not out here to compete with anyone.”
When he’s not making bubbles, Duncan studies sociology at Brooklyn College, where he hopes to get his bachelor’s degree by the end of the year. Though he says he can make good money sometimes from the tips he gets for his bubbling, he doesn’t support himself with it. He lives at his mother’s apartment in Harlem with her and his brother, and uses the proceeds from his bubbling to help pay the bills.
In the future, however, Duncan hopes to make his bubbles into a full-time business. He has begun performing at parties, and has set up a website advertising his art. “The number one thing that I think about is the future,” he says.
