Our vision is a constantly growing collection of video footage based upon 24-hour uninterrupted recordings of diverse individuals from around the world, available for free online and collaboratively subtitled, tagged, and mapped. We have already benefited from volunteer contributions from more than 40 independent filmmakers, photographers, designers, programmers and everyday people from nine countries.

After completing our ten pilot shoots, we will re-launch our website with three types of video content available as streams and podcasts: short videos (<ten minutes) recorded during a 24-hour period, life story interviews, and full 24-hour videos divided into segments for unedited online viewing.

Mockup of website opening page:

Sample subject page:

Parallel to our online portal, we have developed a portable video installation, which can be built and displayed with materials and technologies available in any major city on earth. This physical incarnation of our virtual collaboration will welcome individuals from all over the planet to our community. Volunteer docents will lead organized school visits and content-creation workshops and multimedia curriculum kits will be distributed to educators.

Installation from above:

Central viewing chamber:

View a 3D animation of the exhibit&#187; Detailed exhibit description&#187;

The ten pilot subjects for the installation will be selected to roughly represent the world's population, based on the criteria of world region, population density, age, income, religion and gender.

Pilot subject selection process:

By bringing together a suite of existing technologies—online video, wiki-based translation, tagging, social networks, and mapping—we are creating a community of content creators and viewer-participants who are being transformed by their intimate contact with human realities utterly different from their own.

The transformative capacity of interpersonal connections across world cultures has been clearly established in studies on effects of international exchange programs—past participants are found to be more culturally sensitive, aware of global events and active in their communities.

By emulating the experience of immersion in another culture and reality, we aim for similar results—piquing curiosity about the world and reshaping the lenses through which we understand international cultural, political and economic relations. In this way, we see our work as a bridge to a more inclusive, just, and meaningfully interconnected world.

WHAT WE NEED:

Resources needed fall into three major categories: 1) video and computer equipment, 2) programming expertise and 3) financial support.

Equipment needs include professional HD cameras, LCD projectors, compact desktop computers with DVI outputs and video editing equipment.

Programming needs are in the creation of an online community and design of a scalable graphical interface integrating dynamic mediawiki, HTML, and FLV content around a Google Maps/Earth API with scalable multilingual support.

Financial support is essential at this time to ensure that volunteers are effectively managed and that an infrastructure for content processing and display is in place as soon as possible.

Location