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swarm documentaries
So here are the basic premises behind my "swarm documentaries" idea:
1. Affordable image-capturing technologies are more prevalent than ever before. (Disposable cameras, affordable digital cameras, camera-phones, etc.)
2. Affordable sound-capturing technologies are also more prevalent than ever before. (Handheld cassette recorders, Minidiscs, PDAs with recording capability, Audblog, etc.)
3. New communication technologies (cell phones, Internet) help to easily facilitate spontaneous or semi-spontaneous social gatherings (smart mobs, MeetUp groups, etc.)
4. Given points 1-3, it seems possible to assemble a group of individuals to collaboratively document a specific event.
5. Grid blogging serves to distribute the task of archiving the material gathered by the individual "documentarians."
Informal swarm documentaries already exist: I'm thinking of some weddings I've been to, where the official wedding photographer is replaced (or supplemented) by the guests themselves simply by placing a disposable camera at each table at the reception. A more political use might be the "open publishing" or "participatory media" models utilized by Indymedia to cover street protests.
So. The strength of this documentary model is that it produces a lot of raw information easily and cheaply. This is also its primary drawback: people are pressed for time, and they may not have a particularly strong interest in sifitng through a lot of disorganized, potentially redundant information. Part of the appeal of a documentary is that someone else has already done the sifting for you, gathered the relevant material, and ideally shaped or arranged it in a way that reveals connections or otherwise makes sense of it. Assuming that this idea is not outmoded (and it may be), it appears that even a swarm documentary might need an editor, even if it's just someone to group the different participants categorically (as Ashley Benigno has done with the results of the grid blogging project).
Ideally, the task of editing would be distributed, too—the participants themselves should be able to take on the task of editing. Perhaps some kind of Slashdot-style collaborative flitering scheme? |
Friday, December 05, 2003
11:56 AM
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