YouTube and the Guggenheim museum have partnered for the “Play Biennial” currently being promoted on the YouTube channel http://youtube.com/play
Through this partnership, any registered YouTube user can submit or nominate one creative video for consideration to be displayed at the Guggenheim this fall.
The Play channel on YouTube will feature about 200 of the best submissions while only the top 20-25 videos will actually be on display at the Guggenheim. According to the official Terms and Conditions, YouTube and the Guggenheim want the most creative and original videos out there, they are “not looking for now, we are looking for what’s next.” The Guggenheim partnered with YouTube because YouTube is the first distribution method in which everyone is on equal ground, in which everyone can… play.
I submitted my video “Social Life, With Friends”. Social Life is a kinetic typography video I created to visualize the poem “You Want A Social Life, with Friends” by Kenneth Koch. Koch was an American poet, playwright and professor who passed away in 2002 at the age of 77. Koch’s poem states that in life, we must choose how we spend our time, and that between the three options of friends, love or work, we only really have the time to choose two.
The audio recording I used to narrate the video is a recording of Koch himself reading the piece just a few months before he passed away. The audio recording was made by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, she had recorded Koch reading his poem for one of her personal projects. Amy is a Chicago creative who I recorded an unrelated podcast with back in 2007.
With Amy’s permission, I used her recording and began animating the kinetic typography using Adobe Illustrator and AfterEffects CS3. The entire project was created over two days, taking approximately seven hours of work time.
My goal was to share Koch’s poem with a broader and younger audience than his poem had reached before. Visual media, and YouTube specifically, reaches an entirely new demographic than published poetry. My YouTube channel has a slightly larger female audience than male, with over 59% of total viewers under the age of 24.
Social Life reached over 100,000 viewers organically (ie it was never featured by YouTube) and the vast majority of comments are positive and thought-provoking as viewers consider their own balance choices between friends, love or work. So in regards to my mission to share Koch’s work with a broader and younger audience, I believe I was successful. Now, hopefully with the help of the Guggenheim, I can expand the video’s audience even farther if they choose to honor and display my work.
The Play Biennial is accepting open submissions until July 31, 2010 and selections will be on view at the Guggenheim from October 22 through 24th in New York. You can submit your video at http://youtube.com/play and you can watch my submission below:
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I like this back story to your video, I don’t think I have heard it before and I love that video! I always show it to people when I tell them about your channel or something. Kinetic typography is very interesting and I think it was a wise choice to submit as it is most definitely the “what’s next” as opposed to the “what’s popular/known”. A lovely art form applied to a lovely poem with a touching story; you have a good chance. Good luck!
Alan,
I remember seeing this video when you first released it, and it was great to have it brought forth here on your blog to see it again. I love this idea of visual poetry, and the use and execution of kinetic typography here is brilliant. I think this definitely does make poetry more accessible to those who find a jumble of words on the page too hard to find meaning in.
Very interesting. Good luck!