Wednesday, June 9, 2010

My First Project: The MyMoment/YourMoment Project!

THE DETAILS

Recently, I've been struck by and rather obsessed with the extreme largeness and beautiful simultaneous-ness of the world and its billions of inhabitants. We all live our very self-contained lives without much thought as to other people we've never met in places we've never seen (speaking, at least, for myself). So, I'd like to try to explore and document the wonderful weirdness of this part of the human condition. I'd like to assemble a mass of photographs, as many as possible, all taken at the exact same time by people living their own, separate, unique lives - showing our distinction, our difference, our likenesses and our intrinsic connection coming from inhabiting the same big earth.

SO, ENOUGH OF THE POETIC CRAP, WHAT EXACTLY DO I HAVE TO DO?

Simple simple simple. All I'm asking is that you take a photo, just one photo, at a specific date and time. With your camera, on your phone, or with an old-school 35mm flash camera - your choice. Simple as that. Then email the photo to myphotoyourphoto@gmail.com and you're done! That's it!

SO, ABOUT THIS PHOTO...

The picture should somehow show what you're doing, or living, at that particular instant. It can be a picture of what you see, or a picture of you doing something, anything. The one thing I ask, however, is that it is not one of those "hold the camera in front of your own face and smile real goofy" pictures. Those are funny, but I'm looking for a more natural representation of you and your life as it actually is at this moment. Please don't make any special plans, don't dress in any particular out-of-the ordinary way (or out-of-your-own-ordinary) and don't go out of your way to be artistic - just snap a quick photo of you and your life, email it off, and forget about it. Simple, right?

SO ... WHEN?
The date I have chosen, at random, is Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 2:00pm (Central). If you don't live in the Central timezone, just adjust accordingly. So, that'd be 3:00 Eastern or 12:00p Pacific. Pretty simple math will tell you what time to take your photo. Or, the nice little gadget at the top of this page should show you what time is the right time for you, locally. It's most important that the photos actually be taken at the exact same physical moment, that the time stamps match up is not important.

IS THAT IT?
Yes! Well, except for this - TELL YOUR FRIENDS! I want to see how far afield this thing will go. That's why I've chosen a date several weeks away. So we can recruit. Tell your friends, show them the details, show them this blog, give them the email address. Let's get everybody on board!

So what's this all about?

I created this blog in an attempt to fuel and broaden an art project. I began on facebook, recruiting my friends and acquaintances. Now here I am, reaching out in a larger fashion, I hope, to anyone out there on the big ol' world wide web who happens upon this blog and bothers to read my ramblings.

Basically, what I'm talking about here is a large-scale collective and collaborative photography project. Given a prompt, or an assignment, I'm asking my friends, acquaintances and whoever else to take a photo, their own photo, representing them individually and email those photos to me for compiling, collecting and otherwise assembling into some kind of artistic creation.

I hope these photos can, and I believe they will, show our distinction, our difference, our likenesses and our intrinsic connections that come from inhabiting the same big earth.

To my mind, there's something so astounding and beautiful about the fact that we all live vastly different lives on the same mass of rock. We're all different and connected. So, maybe that why I'm doing it, to explore a way of connecting every and anyone who contributes through an artistic pursuit. That just seems so cool to me, and hopefully it does to you, too.

I'll describe the first project I'm undertaking in another post. In the meantime, tell your friends about me. Tell anyone you know. I want to get as many folks from anywhere on board. It's a big idea, and a big task, but I think we're up for it.