So after much deliberation with Sam, tossing up several ideas like the culmination of videos idea we wrestled with for days, we have finally settled on an idea, and one that we are really excited about.  We thought a lot about this idea of “Modularity” that was expressed in the book “The Language of New Media” by Lev Manovich, and what it means to truly make content that is modular, that is seperate from its source but can also be held within it. Our original idea toed the line with this thought but we ultimately felt that it did not belong to the era of new media, but merely imitated it.

Our new and final idea is centred around the idea of collaboration, and exploring this idea within the platform of YouTube playlists. This is a platform we believe to be really undervalued in terms of media creation, especially with its capability for collaboration, where the playlist creator can invite others to collaborate with them, which opens a lot of doors for internet collaboration. Facing strong time constraints means we had to explore this with a very simple concept of how music inspires media creators, giving all collaborators the same short piece of music to explore what it inspires them to make.

We see this as just scratching the surface of what is possible within collaborative YouTube playlists, with the potential of a collaborative narrative story being made with creators on the internet, a lot like the primary school writing game of writing a sentence and then handing it off to the next person to extrapolate from and follow the story in their own ways. I believe the most important part of media creation, especially storytelling forms of media creation comes from our own experiences and with this platform, those experiences aren’t just limited to one person, but a whole world of collaborators, which is incredibly exciting and liberating.

 

Edit: Here is our collaborative playlist.

“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it” – H.E. Luccock.