Turning the world "Inside Out" with your iPhone.

Today I took a self portrait with my iPhone, I uploaded this to www.insideoutproject.net, this picture will now be blown up to poster size, sent to me, and I will paste it on a wall in my neighborhood. I'd like to think of it as my first escapade into street art:


So what the heck is going on? I just finished watching this wonderful TED Talk by JR, in which he talks about the past several years he's spent going around the world putting up photographs of the local populations. His destinations included Israel, Sudan, Rio De Janeiro, Sierra-Leone, and the list goes on. Everywhere he went, he would take pictures of the locals and paste their giant bust on walls, or their eyes on the side of buildings, tops of trains- you name it. The idea was to remind people that the city was theirs. I love this concept of taking ownership of the world around you. Not just for the strength in numbers, but for the concept that pride is what you make it. In Africa they printed images on vinyl, and used them to cover the roves of large huts. People felt so much ownership of their new roof that they even kept their sections when they moved away.

HOW TO:
You can upload your own self portrait and receive it back in full poster size to be put up around your town! http://www.insideoutproject.net Now if you don't want a giant picture of yourself on your nearest street corner: you're crazy... This is good old fashioned fun you can accomplish with an iPhone in 10 minutes.


All you need is a simple light source, close and diffused (anything opaque works to diffuse). Here I chose behind my door to get a nice blank background- wanna keep it pro now! Set that light close and and above your face, and don't really worry if it's yellow or orange just as long as it's strong- your final product is B&W remember. Standing about 1-2 feet away from your light and about 2 feet off the wall, hold your iPhone just below the light (as you're looking at it). Be careful to get everything in with your framing and start snapping. This is the part where you look stupid a lot:

Next comes the difficult task of choosing which photo to stick with... I went with "Big head has a secret"... but believe me "give'em the tongue" was a close 2nd... Finally, turn your chosen product black and white (super easy in almost any photo application). If you want to add a touch to the final product feel free to play with your contrast and brightness. I always like upping the contrast and dropping the brightness a little with most B&W. Once you're happy- upload, and enjoy!

Feeling Gameful!

I have been spending a fair amount of my time on gameful.org recently. If you are not familiar with Jane Mcgonigal or her work you can catch up really quickly by watching her TED talk. The basic Idea of her book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change The World, is that video gamer energy can be directed into things that are good in the real world.

The fast breakdown goes like this: Wikipedia took 7 years and 100 million man hours to create. It was done for FREE by users interested in contributing to the project. The contribution system was set up like a GAME where contributions allow players to level up, and contribute to more important pages based on level. Other players checked and rated their contributions- like a GAME- to determine the wikipedia data that the players agreed was accurate.... ok so.... World of Warcraft has enough man hours poured into it globally that Blizzard could make 1 wikipedia every 6 days.

In short: all the quality work energy of our generation is being poured into gaming- into virtual worlds, but if we direct that energy back on the real world then we could REALLY start tackling some of this worlds major problems.

This is my hope for Zombie Apocalypse... I want to encourage gamers to interact with their neighbors instead of logging onto a virtual community. I want people to walk 20 blocks because it gets them points in my game, and they've started to lose weight- 2 strikes against driving. I want strangers to laugh with eachother in public because "I just killed your guy in a funny way". I want my players to be able to fight "tsunami monsters" to support the relief effort in Japan. In short- I want to make a game that changes the way people see the world for the better.

Macho Marine Poetry

I write a lot, but I don't often write poetry... Guess it's a macho Marine thing left over from the corps. That being said, poem time:

If our entire lives were a dream, ourselves floating through its scenes, then our creations are our wake in otherwise still waters. When we arrive at the end of our dream we can turn and see the ripples that stream from our fingers touch. Extending backward and chasing us down from the dreamers hands our ripples stream. But, Hollow is the man who rears to touch and careless is the man who would only seek to make waves.

For many people art is the trace we leave behind so that when we die we can be sure the world knew it was WE who existed here. No other mind, no other person, no other thoughts could have combined to create that one unique thing by our hand. This is how I feel about my film: Removed From Reality Editing and creating the film ensures that my experience will not be lost.