John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

think about it you can not only edit and direct your own movies but also through
things like YouTube distribute your own movies. That is a significant step
that now you are in charge of distribution, you can literally as YouTube’s
strapline says “Broadcast Yourself”. These sites are really growing they are the
fastest growing sites on the web – and yes TV programmes use them to
syndicate their programmes and brands come and use them for viral marketing.
But by far the biggest bit of content on there is generated by users themselves.
This has led to the creation of new genres which are quite interesting. There is
‘drunk lip-synching’ that is two girls, usually two girls that come home late at
night in front of their webcam and film themselves singing along to their
favourite tunes. This [slide] is the ‘Urban Ninja’ this is a twenty to thirty
something male that dresses in black, goes out into the park and jumps out on
people. I don’t really know the origins of this, somebody might know – I see
some smirks – maybe it was you that started it but this stuff has been copied
loads of times. People have put these ideas out there and people have copied it
and we just wanted to see if we could do anything in that space. Of course the
most infamous genre to be created through this is ‘Happy Slapping’ where a
gang of youths gang up on somebody in a car park and video themselves beating
somebody up.
We wanted to create the idea of the ‘Grandma Recipe’ as a new kind of mass
documentary clip and through this project catalyse that happening. All we’ve
done here is give form to an idea – it’s not a radical idea – you might video your
Grandmother cooking her speciality recipe but we’ve given form to it and we are
asking people to submit their own Grandma’s through
whatscookinggrandma.net and really we are trying build something that
capitalises on people’s desire to put a bit of themselves out there. We were
debating earlier whether that is a new phenomenon that people wanted to share
and make their lives more public or whether it is something old. That’s what
we’ve done.
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