Abstract

The mobile phone, the internet and social media platforms played a significant role in the revolutions for social and political change in the Arab world, know as the ‘Arab Spring’. Camera phones were used to capture video footage of events that would prove to be a catalyst for change, and online platforms used to circumvent the state controlled traditional media outlets. Around the world the mobile phone has become part of the social fabric of 21st century life.

Richard Vickers and James Field are developing an online participatory documentary project ‘24-hours.in’ (www.24-hours.in) that empowers people to document their city or location and lives, using mobile camera phones and available devices. The project aims to provide a democratic framework for a community vision to develop, exploring the rich diversity and vibrancy of life around the world.

An interactive documentary project, 24-hours.in explores opportunities for participation, collaboration and the potential democratisation of documentary production. Utilising user-generated video captured on mobile phones and available devices, the project is participatory, with the audience contributing documentary videos around the theme of 24-hours in a city.

With reference to Dziga Vertov’s seminal 1929 documentary film ‘Man with a Movie Camera’, the aim is for the videos to document the cities, the people that live there and their daily lives. Moving beyond the user-generated content model, the project will build up a database of location specific documentary material and aim to create a new system for collaborative documentary production and user-curated content.

Armed with our mobile devices and camera phones we all have the potential to document everyday reality and ordinary life as we wander the modern city. We can capture the nuances of the vernacular, regardless of how banal or seemingly unimportant they may seem at the time, for posterity and digital eternity.

Online and social media platforms offer a means for participation, collaboration and distribution or dissemination that was unimaginable even a decade ago. The ubiquitous mobile phone offers the means of production. Used collaboratively to capture unique moments, camera phones can give us a window on the world, and as time goes by, a window on the past. These devices are in the hands of the many, with the potential for a collaborative and cumulative vision of truth about humanity and life in the 21st century to emerge.