Vanityklaw’s Project VIEW

Published by ikona on May 8th, 2007 in Nseries, Mobile Culture, General

Long-time Arena members may remember John “Vanityklaw” Kuner, one of our admins and formerly the boss of both Redrum and Ikona. He’s been on sabbatical from the N-Gage program since the Fall of 2006, working on a project that could be more important than videogames.

“What’s that?” you ask. “More important than videogames? Impossible! How can that be?”

We found it hard to believe too, until he started telling us about Project VIEW. This is a project that uses digital storytelling with camera phones for cross-cultural connections.

What that means in practice is helping people who normally wouldn’t get to interact face to face get to know each other through video. For example, imagine students in India exchanging video clips with students in Norway, describing their favorite places to eat.

This is a great way for people in different parts of the world get to know each other face to face, but without the intervening distortions of media or the expense of travel — sort of like Pen Pals for the Digital Age.

Project VIEW is part of the Digital Vision Program at Stanford University, a forum for social entrepreneurs to develop IT-based solutions in the areas of health, education, and finance for emerging markets.

If you’d like to learn more — or better yet, participate — visit the Project VIEW website.

Here is a sample from the project:

 

 


Click To Play
 

Part of the Place Project (describe a place you love) This movie (shot on a Nokia N90) covers the miss! ion district, and is filmed only with local sounds and music. Without a voiceover, it is much easier to share across cultural and linguistic boundaries. This was shot & edited by Nick, one of Project VIEW’s video interns at Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC)