Fwd: WorldView2002: An Invitation and Request

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Jon Jost, a film/video maker who has won several awards at the Yamagata 
Film Festival, is putting together this project that I thought might 
interest a few of you.

---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------
Date:        1.12.31  5:34 AM
Received:    01.07  11:04 PM
From:        Jon, laragreen at netscape.net

AN INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN WEB PROJECT WORLDVIEW 2002

The following is a description of a project being done out of the DV.com
Forum Cinema Electronica, moderated by Jon Jost.  We are looking for
more participants, especially from Central and South America, Africa,
the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and SE Asia - though anyone is
welcome.  Please read the following and we hope to hear from you.

In brief, we are looking for people around the world to shoot a one
minute shot, in DV or other format, each week, under some guidance.  A
still of the shot should be posted to a web site presently under
construction, and at a later point we should be able to post 10 second
clips of these.  At the completion of a year the tapes or copies thereof
would be sent to be assembled into a DVD/CD-Rom, linear $BeG(Bilm$Bg
(Band/or
video installation.    The intention is to make a global portrait.

If interested please at this time check the following, and look on the
DV.forums, Cinema Electronica area for various threads on
WorldView2002.   The following URL is for signing up.  At present about
40 persons around the world have joined.

http://www.dv.com/db_area/community/Forum13/HTML/000424.html

Roll call, for listing your name, location, and seeing who else is
involved.

We will have a www site up in a few days, providing up to date
information and instructions and this will be sent once it is confirmed.





WORLDVIEW 2002

Who are we and what are we trying to do?

We are a group, operating from DV.com, making in the coming year a
global portrait, to be posted on the internet, and at the conclusion
turned into an installation work and perhaps some kind of linear cinema
piece to show in festivals or other suitable venues.

Our plan is that participants shoot a one minute shot each week, under a
minimal bit of aesthetic and topical guidance so as to make the total
communal work coherent.  Of this minute, those who can technically do so
would be asked to post a still image and brief description of it each
week, and when the site if fully prepared for those able to do so to
post 10 seconds of each shot to a web site presently being constructed
for this purpose.

Simple instructions will be given for posting.  At the conclusion of the
year participants would be asked to post their tape (or a copy) to me,
Jon Jost - moderator of Cinema Electronica (see bio for information) ,
to assemble into a work presentable as an installation, DVD, and/or
tape, with lots of community advice, it is hoped.

The central intention is to attempt to make a global portrait - the
world, circa 2002, as seen through the eyes of  those participating. We
hope to attempt as well to be inclusive of those
- the vast majority of humans - who do not have the means, skills,
capacities or simple wealth to so show their world.

We begin on January 1, 2002, so time is short.  If you can and wish to
participate, please see the URL given above, or when the site is up, the
How To Join page.  If you can  point us to web addresses or email lists
which would be useful in broadening our participating members, please
let us know.

While we begin in the first week of January, people are welcome to join
anytime.

For full information on the basic guidelines, and on suggestions
regarding shooting, please see Guidelines.

Thank you,

Jon Jost, on behalf of those working on the WORLDVIEW 2002  project at
Cinema Electronica.


BASIC GUIDELINES (thus far)


   * Each participant is to make a one minute shot each week of the
     year, beginning January 1, 2002.  The shot may be done any day of
     the week.

   * The shot is preferably to be done on DV, 3 x 4 screen proportion,
     color, sound; but any video or digital format is OK, as long as it
     is transferred to DV at the completion and can be converted to JPG
     for posting on the WorldView web site.

   * The camera is not to move during the shot, nor should there be any
     zooming.

   * No overt DV gimmicks - i.e., solarization, posterization, and other
     in-camera digital things; however over/under exposure, fast/slow
     shutter speeds are OK.

   * The shooting should make a progression over the 52 weeks through
     the diurnal sequence:  progressing from morning. midday, evening,
     to night.  (If inconvenient to maintain this sequence in shooting
     order, it is OK to shoot out of order and edit into diurnal
     sequence on completion, hence scrambling the seasonal passages
     which is OK; in which case keep track of the time of your shooting
     using your camera$BcT(B date/clock).

   * It is suggested that your shots include approximately 1/3rd which
     is "personal" showing self, family, friends and that life; 1/3rd
     showing "work," and the things involved in that work - getting
     to/from etc.; and 1/3rd dealing with the world away from oneself -
     preferably with those who do not and cannot (often for financial
     reasons) express themselves in this manner.

   * At the conclusion of the year the tape or a copy of it should be
     sent to me, Jon Jost, at an address to be given later.  I will
     attempt to find a way to order/select in a manner suitable for a
     DVD &/or CD-ROM, for a linear presentation, and for an installation
     work.  All participants will be credited and will be given a copy
     of the DVD/CD-ROM.   It is my assumption that with the help of
     those participating, and with my own connections, I will be able to
     find festivals and other venues for showing this project in various
     forms, and to find some venues for presenting this in other
     contexts as an installation work, very likely at the ZKM in
     Germany, and other similar settings.

   * Should by some amazing quirk the project make money in any manner,
     it would be shared equitably with those participating, or perhaps
     preferably it would be given to some good cause mutually agreed
     upon.

As some people ask "What is this for?" I confess I don't have an easy
answer.  I sense it to be a kind of gathering of evidence, of life on
this planet - preferably secured from as wide a net as possible - from
which those making it and those who might see it can be surprised and
learn things.  My sense is also that the more honest those making it are
with themselves and the world around them, the more effective the result
will be for us all.   In what way - well, we'll find out.

Welcome.

Practical requests and requirements:

Check and set the date/time correctly on your camera so that this
information is imbedded in the tape while you are shooting so it is
available as a record.

Please make a Header label title card stating your name and location; if
you take shots in other locations, it would be appreciated if you
inserted a title card at the head of it saying where it is taken (this
can just be a hand written note on a paper you shoot for several
seconds).

It is requested your cumulative tape transit through the time span of a
day - from morning to night; advancing approximately 30 minutes each
shot (52 weeks/shots spread over 24 hours is one shot each half hour
with 4 to spare); this need not be clockwork mechanical.


Some thoughts and suggestions:

The most simple manner for most people to do this will be to set aside a
single 60 minute DV tape, and to use it once a week, recording the one
minute shot, if possible roughly a half hour later in the day than the
previous one.  One need not shoot on the same day of the week, but
whenever is convenient.

Try to keep the shots within a few seconds of one minute.

We are not looking for just simple images of things - of ordinary shots
like news coverage. We are looking for images that are genuinely
revealing of the world, images that are truly
expressive, that get beneath the surface, that reveal the maker and the
world outside the maker.  So while a minute a week is a small demand, to
look, to see, to think about what would be of interest, what would
reveal, is a much greater demand, but one which does not require that
one carry a camera around all week; only that one look carefully at the
world which surrounds you, and opens one's mind and spirit to seeing
deeper.

As the restrictions on shooting are rather strict - no camera movement,
no zooms - it is likely a good idea to think of the range of options
that exists inside this limited frame.  Aside from the options which
normal photographic strategies offers (very close, very far; juxtaposing
these in the same image; dark/light, areas which move; those that don't,
camera angles, etc.) DV also offers a range of technical/aesthetic
possibilities which one would be well advised to consider and with which
to experiment: shutter speed controls from very slow to very fast;
"incorrect$Bg
(Bover or under exposures; focus controls from very deep to
shallow, and shifts inside the image of these.  Similarly one might look
for images which contain interesting contrasts, visual contradictions,
and other such things, so that the minute shot contains an inherent
interest beyond the $BeD(Bontent.$Bg
(B  Thus while the no camera movement
constricts in the name of a communal coherence, it also liberates in
provoking you to be inventive within its limits.

Note: shots in which the camera is fixed in a moving vehicle (car,
train, plane) are OK.

As a suggestion, but with no requirement to adhere to it, it would seem
a good general thing to allow some of your material to deal with the
personal in your life - after all, all we humans have a $BeQ(Bersonal$Bg
(Blife
and it is very important, whatever it is.  It would also seem a good
general thing to cover part of your $BeX(Bork$Bg
(Blife - the entire process,
from getting to and from (if you do), the where and what and why of it;
and then it would be good to get out of one's self, to see things
normally masked from view, in statistical terms normally from poverty
that is hidden or in its pervasiveness disregarded; but as well extreme
wealth, which is similarly often hidden from those not party to it.

The foregoing is not a requirement, only a suggestion, made as it offers
a rough framework for those participating from which to begin .  Aside
from the no camera movement/no zooms and no digital gimmicks, and the
diurnal passage, you are really free and urged to come up with your own
way of filling 52 minutes over the span of a year.  The restrictions
imposed are simply to allow all the material to sit comfortably beside
itself.













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