The research project, 50 Seconds of Breath-taking, envisions the evolution of short videos and social media and their potential impact on our cognition and sociocultural dynamics, providing the theoretical basis for the Society for Alternative-Social Media and Short Videos.
Through therapeutic workshops and alternative story-making, the Alt-social initiative aims to address the growing pressure on social media to maintain online images, show empathy, and follow social trends, especially for future generations.
Is it true that mutuality rests on three principles of equality, shared responsibility, and reciprocity?
Seeing Mary Cassatt’s painting, The Bath0, makes me wonder about mutuality. The painting depicts a woman bathing a child wrapped on her lap as an analogy for “holding, vulnerability, closeness, attachment, peace and recognition.” (Watson, 2007). An Ireland-based psychotherapist, Marie Tierney, says, “I am moved by the tender presence and engagement between mother and child; in the shared activity, both are affected by and affecting the other. There is an obvious inequality in the parent-child relationship as the mother offers holding and containment for the child, yet both are involved in generating and perceiving the relationship.” (Tierney, 2018:24).
I agree with Tierney and hope that mutuality in larger relational structures, including families, communities, and collectives, could be comparable.
Through the newly initiated activity of The Society for Alternative-Social Media and Short Videos, we aim to reconnect social media with humanity, thereby restoring mutuality and authenticity in decentralised and self-organised digital platforms, so-called Alt-Social. We believe that a short video production through poetic and reflexive modes, applying Pauline Oliveros's deep Listening technique, will help this process, fostering media literacy, discovering each alternative story, and eventually echoing with “counter-dancing digitality”.
When technology overlaps with our humanity,
the world will only have a generation of idiots.
Albert Einstein
1. Introduction
As a filmmaker who commenced my career in 2006 - coinciding with the advent of YouTube, DSLR filmmaking, and the iPhone, I have explored digitality, especially a question on the affinity between social media and youth culture. Working as a U.N. digital media officer and following its communication strategies targeting younger generations brought me to one question - why do the latest social media platforms resonate with youth culture, tastes, and preferences, as opposed to grown-up culture?
Despite concerns about misinformation, disinformation, mental health issues0, and cognitive influence, social media acts as a safety network for social minorities, rural dwellers, and individuals under psychological and physical violence, offering the possibility to connect with like-minded people too. Yoichi Sato, a Japanese social scientist from Waseda University, highlighted in the mid-2000s, "Beyond traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic, video editing has become an essential skill in the digital age”. This shift is deeply connected to the rise of short-form videos0 on social media, positioning today's digital natives in a unique situation, equipped with inherent video-editing capabilities, with the potential to advance our sociocultural dynamics0.
As the latest statistics reveal the extensive reach of smartphones as gateways to digital content, highlighting the dominant influence of social media with over 4 billion users, short-form videos are favoured for their succinct and visually impactful storytelling as a “unified medium” with an ability to merge various audio-visual elements. This practice-based research addresses the pivotal question: "How can short-form video creation foster more humanistic and meaningful engagement, driving social and cognitive transformations?". In exploring the question, this research delves into themes of alienation0, social sculpture0 and radical pedagogy0.
2. State of Research (Strategies, Methodologies)
Drawing inspiration from early silent, Soviet8 and Baltic0 poetic cinema combined with visual anthropology0 practices, this study explores the potentials of networked, ethico-aesthetic (Guattari, 1995:8) short video production and storytelling informed by media and film studies. This social media research distinguishes itself by applying the documentary film theory of Bill Nichols' "6 Modes of Documentary" to categorise and scrutinise00 short-form videos on social media. Such a classification helps us comprehend and harness social media’s short videos in a more analytical way.
Applying the film studies theory, social media are increasingly dominated by narratives in participatory and performative modes in which users themselves show their appearances, performances and skits in a live scene setting with jokes, gags and humour, sometimes including accidental and serendipitous elements. This study explores the possibilities of creating an alternative story 0with poetic and reflexive storytelling and the potentialities of expanding performative and participatory modes.
I. Deep Listening
Imagine a metaphorical kitchen garden whose fruits await harvest in your mind, representing the deep well of personal memories, traumas, and dreams. This garden symbolises the essence of Deep Listening, a concept deeply embedded in Jungian and music therapies0. American composer Pauline Oliveros articulates that such intense listening includes hearing the sounds of daily life, nature0, and one’s own thoughts, as well as musical sound. Listening to oneself is an altered state of consciousness full of inner sounds that engage one's attention (Oliveros, 1990). This listening practice parallels the methodological practices of participant observation in ethnographic fieldwork: documenting through field notes, conducting narrative interviews, and gathering a mosaic of images, texts, and artefacts. The process extends to capturing photographs and videos, conducting analysis, and video-editing and compositing. Through this integrated approach, one harvests the fruits of personal and collective experience, fostering a deep, resonant understanding of the self.
II. Pre-collage
The process of creating short videos through poetic and reflexive modes0 is akin to harvesting the fruits of one’s narrative, a method we might call "Pre-collage"(Pre-colla)”0. This approach stems from engaging deeply with personal stories via Deep Listening0, where individuals prepare three images symbolising profound memories, making notes of the context, emotions, and insights tied to these moments. Drawing inspiration from a montage of three printed images, this creative process transitions static visuals into a dynamic narrative, with each image sparking the creation of 60 seconds of video footage. The culmination of this endeavour is a 180-second film crafted on a smartphone's digital timeline. This editing phase facilitates collaboration and feedback, as peers can share and critique the video, leading to its presentation stage on public screenings and social media.
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Akio is a Japanese filmmaker and a former U.N. digital media officer. Yuguchi's interests centre around illuminating individual stories within specific social, environmental, and political contexts.
