Sun Dried Art – L’Arche Craft Studio
23
Apr
2013
I started working with L’Arche Daybreak to create a video arm to their social media presence/ strategy. L’Arche is an organization that lives and breathes the essence of authentic community. With their growing Facebook page being their focus, I’m recording and editing a short daily series of the positive goings-on in their community life, building on the online resonance that they’ve already discovered by sharing images of positive daily events and the lives of charasmatic “core members” who are at the heart of their community life.
Enjoy Life!
26
Mar
2013
Stranger Encounters
It started with a shuffle. I was sitting in a public waiting area at Mount Sinai Hospital yesterday. A man in his 80s, wearing a beige trench coat and a few days stubble shuffled in to the seat next to me. He sat, paused, gummed a bit then turned and in a rich Hebrew accent asked if I knew what that giant candelabrum was next to us. “I think it’s a menorah” I offered and that opened it. He informed me on the meaning of Shabbat (to rest), why animals are sacred, he tested me on the difference between animals and humans – “speech” I offered, “and walking upright” he added. “That’s me” he said as a red pick-up pulled up outside the front door. He stood, shuffled, grinned and shook my hand saying, “Nice to meet you. Enjoy Life!” and off he shuffled toward his balding middle aged son holding the door. I turned, waved, and was left smiling with the stranger in the seat across from me. “Enjoy Life!”
“Scooter + The Big Man” Hypervideo Music Documentary – Popcorn.js
03
Dec
2011
“Scooter and the Big Man” is a hypervideo music documentary exploring the friendship and musical / spiritual bond between Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons. Produced via my participation in Mozilla Foundation’s amazing “Web Made Movies” project and the Popcorn.js HTML5 Media Framework.
Rooted in their legendary stomping grounds of Asbury Park, New Jersey, follow the story at the heart & soul of Springsteen’s E-Street band through a series of edited YouTube videos populated by Popcorn’s YouTube plug-in. Shuffle through layers of moveable polaroid pictures embedded with Popcorn’s Google Map, Flickr, Twitter, and Google News plug-ins. Dig into Street Views of the historic bars and streets of Asbury Park, explore or submit your own Flickr pictures and populate the Twitter streams with your own updates.
I send out two emphatic thank yous: First to Anna Sobiepanek who is the programming lead on this project and one of the lead developers working on Popcorn since its conception. Anna took the interactive heart and soul of this project and went to work massaging and advancing the Popcorn.js library to turn out our sweet Beta version reality, with speed and passion.
Second, a massive musical, heart and soul salute to Jake Clemons. It was during our own creative collaborations between music, video and interactivity ( Love’ll Never Change | A Fool in Love ) that we learned the sad news of the death of Jake’s iconic uncle, Clarence Clemons. Jake is a musical force, an amazing soul and is burning the Clemons musical fire warmly and brightly in our collective road ahead.
This hypervideo experience is rooted in my passion for story telling and the goal of creating meaningful online experiences that resonate and integrate with people’s lives. It comes out of my learning and explorations with Mozilla Foundation’s amazing Web Made Movies community and the amazing Popcorn.js HTML5 javascript library that drives its passionate forarys into the future of interactive video and the open web. This prototype is also a result of my membership and training in the wonderful P2PU online education community.
Let me know what you think and I’d be interested in hearing of any interactive story experiences that have really resonated with you in the past couple of years. What works? What doesn’t? It remains new and evolving territory for experimentation and learning.
Deep Fried Dreams Revisited
19
Sep
2011
Creative Commons Licence from SBC9
I live in a city. Now there’s any number of problems that can scare a person about a city, violence, crowds, pollution… For me it’s just one thing: Grid lock. Sure, everyone gets frustrated by it, angry. It’s not a pleasurable thing. But me, it actually scares me. My knuckles turn white, I start sweating, my heart rate picks up, my mouth gets dry, and I run from it, like I do my imagination in a midnight woods. It’s a bad thing, so call me a coward, but I just don’t want to get involved. That’s when I head north to escape to the open fields, the fresh air, the sandy beaches and pristine waters, joining the Friday night traffic that stretches like a tapeworm on Hwy 400. I guess that’s why they tell you to face your fears.
But there’s something else out there on those bare county roads. Not a thing so much as a business, a rare trade, and one particular to these parts of Ontario. As you crawl into Perkinsfield, in a township called Tiny, past summer signs that boast of giant “asparagus – 20 feet”, you’ll find the first hint of their kind. Just off the dirt shoulder, where brake lights are filtered by dust, sits the truest answer to grid lock. This one’s an old TTC street car, propped up on a set of aimless tracks. The trolley was carted up to these parts a year ago, retired from its public duties and, under a fresh coat of paint, found a new persona. The RED ROCKET was freshly toasted as the latest addition of the Chip Wagon industry.
Yes the Chip Wagon. Whether you’ve bathed in the masterful brilliance of a “fry” well done or suffered in the bowels over a bad batch of gravy, these double parked beauties are a salute to the idea of stop and go. Locomotive burger shacks, a Meals on Wheels of sorts. Sure it’s not low fat health food. If you’re lethargically overweight, with high cholesterol, maybe you should reconsider that meal plan, and if you’re an ardent supporter of the benefits of trail mix, then drive on. But there’s no denying the place they have in the landscape.
“Lollipops + Goosebumps” pt.2 – CBC 1 Day
17
Aug
2011
The CBC is set to premiere the “1 Day, 24 Hours, 34 Million Lives” UGC documentary this weekend (August 21st to be exact) and all we UGC contributors are of course a tingle with the prospect of having our submissions edited in off the cutting room floor – or perhaps that’s a need to visit the loo, can’t be sure, will figure it out later. So it comes down to this, as the Bard would have put it, the chance to be CBCeen or not to be CBCeen – that is the question. The catch is, we don’t know, Mom’s the word, so everyone needs to watch to find out.
Say it ain’t geo-blocked
Of course, being in Cambridge, UK during the screening adds a double edge. I’m going to have to watch this thing online in order to follow through on this great baited mystery that the CBC has dangled before us. But the question is, is the show being geo-blocked? If it is, and chances are yes as most every CBC program is, except perhaps the “George with the incredibly long last name that starts with S” show, then it will be a case of “not to be CBCeen”. I would have a problem with this, because as I mentioned on entering my piece from Cambridge, UK, (regardless of whether it’s in or not) many of we 34 million Canadians aren’t even in Canada, and I’m speaking as a 4th generation Canadian, whose Irish ancestors crossed the Atlantic on a bloody sailboat in 1830 at the kind bequest of the Brits (note generational sarcasm). Putting aside Canada’s frequent flyer national health care patriots, Canada is where Canadians are, and taxpaying one’s at that. So pop the show on the internet please, and open up the geo-block, at the very least to England where even the Canadian Head of State (you know, Mrs. Queen) can sit back with a bowl of microwaved popcorn and see what those crazy Canuck commoners get up to.
