« Like a rolling Stone »: Bob Dylan and his interactive video

The interactive video is a new form of music video where the public can interact with the images. For a few years now, many artists have been using interactive video to create a new form of interactivity with their public. We can find many different interactive videos on Internet. For example, Pharell William created a 24-hour video where people dance to his song “happy”, or Arcade Fire created a video where the user enters his address (or any address) and sees a drawing walking on Google map while images of Google street maps appear in another window.

In the world of the interactive video, there is “Like a rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan. This video is thinking like a television where the public can switch from one channel to another during the music. At first, we can think that images are archive images and that Bob Dylan has just record the song over the video. We can see a news channel, music channel, history channel, a concert of Bob Dylan of and many other different channels. But, finally, all these channels and images are created for the video of Bob Dylan. There is just the video of Bob Dylan’s concert of 1977, which is an archive. The rest seems to be archives, or real TV images, but it’s not.

http://video.bobdylan.com/desktop.html

Lost Films Project : when a photographer meet old photographs

© La Fille Renne

Let’s talk about a project led by La Fille Renne, a French blogger. Photographer and osteologist, she finds twenty-four films belonging to Maurice Jouteau, doctor and soldier in the Second World War. Following this discovery she decides to create the project “Lost Films”.

Every Sunday, she releases photographs of one film in her blog. The photographs were taken between 1936 and 1945. In her project presentation, she define two kinds of photographs:

• Holiday photographs taken before the Second World War;
• Photographs taken during the Second World War

At the beginning of every article she shows the specific features of the film: what kind of film it is and the registration on the tube.

But, this project is not just a presentation of amateur photographs; there is a real scientific approach to the archive. First, she participates in the preservation of the Second World War photographic memories with her publication. Indeed, the first step of her project is the digitisation of the negatives. In archives the digitisation is very important for the preservation of documents. It allows the preservation of the contents without the material. Furthermore, she decides to share her discovery with her readers. Archives cannot exist if they’re not used or shared. Thus, her publication allows her to conserve photographs and to keep them meaningful. Lastly, she works on these photographs. Before publishing her articles, she conducts research on the photographs that she presents. She searches especially for the places where the photographs were taken, the nature of the film and the camera which used by the photographer. After the publication, she questions her readers about these photographs to find more information.

Finally, this project is a beautiful approach to a personal discovery. It participates in the preservation and mediation of Second World War photographs.

Link: Projet Lost Film