Description:

6 billion Others is a massive video exhibition (and a web project) done by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (he is the one that did the incredible photos in “Earth  from above” back in 1994 ).

In 2003 Yann Arthus-Bertrand had the idea of doing a ‘portrait of contemporary mankind by asking questions about universal values’.

Arthus-Bertrand and his team wrote a series of questions – on the lines of “What is happiness? What lessons can we learn from life’s difficulties? What is the meaning of life?”- and travelled the world for 5 years visiting 75 countries and interviewing 5,000 people. The massive database of answers was then used to do both an exhibition (from the 10th of January to the 12th of Febrruary 2009 at the Grand Palais in Paris) and a collaborative website where people can view the interviews but also send their own answers to the questions.

The exhibition is meant to travel the world. The interviews are organised by themes, each theme beeing in a room  (or a hut). People can browse around and be immersed in an exhibition where “real” people from all aver the world speak about their own beliefs and fears.

The website is more like a browsable fresco. An overwhelming mosaic of clickable faces allows us to follow people, topics or texts. I highly suggest to see the French part of the website (as the English one is an old version and is not as well designed).

Find out more:

See the French website of 6 milliard d’Autres

See the English website of 6 billion Others

Watch a video of how the exhibition at the Grand Palais was put together

My comments:

I believe this is a fascinating project, not only by scale but by its affective impact. I have not been to the exhibition myself, but I have friends that have spent hours transfixed by the grabs of 6 millions d’Autres. I suspect there is something magic about listening to a world of people that one will probably never meet, especially if what they say is very personal.

The interviews were cleverly shot with a standard portrait framing (by tilting the camera horizontally) which gives a photographic touch to the experience. Also, this type of shot brings a feeling of proximity and presence that is quite powerful.

The website is a stand alone project which obviously uses the same database used for the exhibition. I suspect though that the feeling is very different. The web experience is more about browsing and collaborating, while I assume the exhibition is more immersive.

Although the whole project is a little commercial and simplistic (can we really claim to do a portrait of contemporary manking by selecting 5,000 people?) I believe it is very strong. One cannot but feel whowed by it… so many faces, so many stories, so many different lifes… for one second the multiplicity of our lives seems to be graspable.

Description:

The [LoveStoryProject] is a growing collection of stories and thoughts about love. It started in Cairo in 2003 when Florian Thalhofer and Mahmoud Hamdy asked friends to explain their definition of love.

People from very different cultural backgrounds talk about one common phenomenon: love. Without claiming universal validity, the answers provide a new perspective on your own and the other culture.

The [LoveStoryProject] is a database-driven video-archive that can be viewed in a computer-installation or over the internet. The [LoveStoryProject] is an evolving and dynamic documentary-film. A film that never is the same twice.

Find out more:

The project was edited with the Korsakow system (a software that Florian developed himself to be able to interact with video online – or on a DVD support). For more on Korsakow check: http://www.korsakow.com/ksy/

For other Korsakow movies check wiki page http://korsakow.ca/index.php?title=Korsakow_Films_Online

To see the [LoveStoryProject] go to http://www.lovestoryproject.com/

My comments:

The [LoveStoryProject] does really work for me. Although one jumps from one interview to another with a visual hyperlink logic (click on an image rather than on a text) the curiosity about the topic really makes this exploration rather natural and intuitive. One does not think “do I want to go to the right or to the left” (the type of decision that is difficult to make as a user because one does not actually care about it), on the contrary, one sees a face and wants to know more about him/her.

Probably because it is such an intimate subject – love- curiosity and interest is enough to browse through this project. I really like it.

The Making of the Balkan Wars is a linear documentary (viewable on the Net) but with a twist: it has been done in conjunction with a 3D multiplayer game – and it uses images from the game, and editing logics coming from the game.

So, in a way, as a documentary it is not interactive (you can only view it) but it uses new media logics that are not part of traditional film language.

On their website we find the following description of the narrative style:
In contradiction with the usual way of the visual representation of the narrative used by the media scene, where mythological structures of local identities have roots in the history of every region and collide with the new model of the man – image consumer, this documentary uses different visual linguistic structures of narrative.
It uses and puts in contradiction the TV form of video, the TV interviews and the cinematographic perception of the documentary with the language of digital creation and the software that compose virtual worlds, like those of the video games. The simultaneous people’s narratives and the recording of the environment alternate are continuously transformed, as they are incorporated in the 3D virtual space surpassing the limits and confinements that are usually present in perception by the use of a separate visual language. This way, the viewer can comprehend the fragmentation and the discontinuity of the mechanisms of production that construct the fantasy elements of the peninsula and get to know the complexity that composes the battle field of the spectacle and its representation in the 21st century.

Find out more

See the documentary The Making of the Balcan Wars online.

Play the game The Making of the Balkans Wars online.

Read the Balkan Wars PDF about the documentary.

My comments:

I have not played the game, but I have watched the documentary. Effectively the narrative style of the video is interesting, as it mixes virtual reality, 3D games and video footage.

The problem for me though, is that there is no interactivity while watching the video. I wander if a series of videos of people playing the game would not be more challenging in terms of interactivity. I suppose the authors wanted to include “classic” interviews with people external to the game and it would have been a challenge to incorporate them in a game logic but… this is a challenge that cold be picked up by someone else!

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