[OSList] New Animal from London - "The Fly"

[Harold Shinsato]

Michael,

Thanks! You hit a theme that has been hard for me as a videographer. I 
don't know if anyone has seen this old low budget documentary, Sherman's 
March. Ross McElwee got a grant to film the effects of Sherman's 
devastating march of destruction through the South during the American 
Civil War - and instead really made an introspective inner journey about 
his dating life, nightmares of nuclear holocaust, and how he keeps 
people away from him with the camera.

My work with the camera has always been haunted by that film. I am very 
familiar with how I can use the camera as be a shield to keep people 
away, to hide behind the camera while exposing others. And as someone 
interested in Quantum Mechanics, I'm also very aware of the observer 
effect. There is no such thing as a completely "detached observer". 
Observation always impacts that which is observed.

Did the fly metaphor help integrate Ragnar into our event and community? 
Did it separate him?

I've been bringing in the local cable access television station for my 
Missoula Open Space events. They've gradually been getting more and more 
integrated into the event - yet I'm always wondering how to amplify and 
extend the event through getting them more integrated.

Whatever Phelim and Improbable has done - if you look at the 
documentation site for WOSonOS2012 - it's one of the most heavily 
documented Open Space I've ever seen with 53 reports already online and 
there will be lots of video!

http://www.devotedanddisgruntled.com/events/world-open-space-open-space/reports

     Harold


On 10/19/12 9:35 AM, Michael Herman wrote:
> this thread reminds me that i've always been a bit uncomfortable with 
> the 'fly' dimension of photographers, videographers, and graphic 
> recorders in open space... not because of what they're doing but 
> because their gizmos or special skills makes them seems special.  of 
> course they are special... but not more or less than all the others. 
>  it seems to me that these recording folk are doing in some obvious 
> ways what everyone is really charged with... taking in all that they 
> can and coming away with something to show for it...  flowers that 
> come from cross-pollinating, butterfly wings that came from nibbling 
> around and cooking oneself in reflection (stretching the metaphor a 
> bit, perhaps), making lists of immediate next steps or dot-voting for 
> the action-minded, or whatever other "take aways" that people might 
> create for themselves.  so these recorders seem to me to be doing what 
> everyone else is doing, perhaps just in a more outwardly obvious way. 
>  so i guess my discomfort comes when their work is suggested or 
> perceived as being done "for" the community rather than "in" or "as 
> members of" the community.
>
> m
>
>
> --


-- 
Harold Shinsato
harold at shinsato.com <mailto:harold at shinsato.com>
http://shinsato.com
twitter: @hajush <http://twitter.com/hajush>
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