Digital storytelling by bdv

The very first workshop at the REC Academy was given by Tom Rumes, storyteller extraordinaire and author of the book ‘How To Story: Storytelling for Journalists’ (translated from Dutch). It is precisely the latter part of that title that inspired this blogpost.

We have come to live in a time where every journalist needs to be a digital storyteller. And whoever isn’t one yet, needs to become one. ASAP.

The newspaper - emphasis on paper here - business is a dying business. Sure, as tactile creatures we love touching things. Flipping through pages. Having to wet your finger to flip that one page that’s stuck to the next. But ain’t nobody got time for reading through the entire paper no more. We want mediasnacks. Easily digestible. Whenever we want. Wherever we want. Low and behold: the smartphone.

Even the Vatican can’t escape from it: picture on top taken in 2005, the one below in 2013. “Quick, show people we’re religious! God knows we didn’t take this trip to the Vatican for nothing!” Nothing but a self-centered reason to brag about you being better than everyone else. Obviously.

What does this turn of the decade imply for journalists? You’ve probably noticed already. The way they’re trying to cope with these changes - dare I say, revolution - is to aim low and lure us in with clickbait. For which we again and again fall. “Miley Cyrus Is Single Again”? (De Standaard, Belgian quality newspaper, April 21, 2015) Shit, I was actually dying to know. Because articles like those is all media feed us. As you already read in my blogpost on Antithesis. 

But hey, we have to give the newspaper business a break. They got lagged behind at first. Because... Well, because they were really slow to respond to this whole internet thing. I’m certain the chief editors were telling the editors “Don’t worry about this enter-what, oh, inter?-net thing. It’s probably a fad.” However, it was built to last. And boy, did it fuck shit up.

Fastforward to 2015. The internet enabled democratization with things like citizen journalism coming into effect. Great trend, as journalism is never objective anyway. (Yes, you journalist reader, I am looking at you with your imperialist western goggles on) But these microsnack things are not so great.

Actual journalists still have a certain duty to fulfill, which is something citizen journalists do not necessarily feel inclined to. Journalists have to make use of the new tools given to them. And there’s plenty of tools. It just seems like they can’t seem to find them. Or very few best practices are available. 

The(Im)possible Futures festival is an arts festival that asks – and tries to answer – some questions about the future. It’s kind of a self-explanatory name:what kind of future is out there for us? Which one(s) can we create? What is possible and what is not? A number of artists dwell on these ideas and provided work for the festival. To be experienced

as an audience (performance, installations, exhibitions, ...)

as a participant (lectures, workshops, ...)

as a clubber (concerts, parties, ...)

You were also able to take it all in at The Road – a tour which takes you to the different projects spread throughout the city of Ghent. All of them offering an alternative view on our society and its citizens, relationships between these citizens, danger and fear, healthcare, or the connection between city and nature. Let us walk you through 3 projects we found alongside The Road.

Move your cursor over the images to find out more about the artists’ work.

1. Urban Action Clinic by Maria Lucia Cruz Correia

This artist and activist created an urban action clinic, originating from her worries about environmental pollution. How polluted have our bodies become, she asks. In this urban action clinic, you could find out more about biomonitoring, herbal solutions and guerrilla marketing for a better planet using seed bombs.

2. Leefstraten (”Humanized streets”) by Lab van Troje

Grassroots initiative to make streets more enjoyable and to encourage a better sense of community. Lab van Troje will ask community members what they want to make happen - and then they do. Key points: social cohesion, mobility and re-imagining the place.

3. Fun with Cancer Patients by Brian Lobel

Cancer patients go through a lot from the moment they get the diagnose on. Brian Lobel’s mission was to talk to these people, people from all over the world, and to bring their stories in an exposition. Cancer should not be a taboo.

And to end this blog post where you had to use and aim your cursor so intensely:

This is the title for Michiel Vandevelde’s latest performance work, which took place at Ghent’s vibrant arts centre Vooruit during the (Im)possible Futures festival. The REC Academy sent me out to see it, and what an experience it was. In this blog post I will focus on the message Vandevelde conveyed through projected quotes and dance.

Act 1: Thesis 

Vandevelde starts his performance postulating a thesis. Throughout history, we are more and more trading in the written word for the visual image. This has become increasingly apparent in the last few decades with the rise of still (photography) and moving (video) images. And with television, smartphones and the internet to spread these media.

At what cost though? Images do not speak. They do not in themselves contain any knowledge, unless we attach and project meaning onto them. With words. You know, those things we have been avoiding lately. Because a snap or Instagram photo speaks a thousand words, right? Spoiler: it doesn’t. It’s empty just like your godless soul, you 21st century postmodern creature.

Postman compares Orwell and Huxley’s ideas in the foreword of his book “Amusing ourselves to death”. 

Having our communication shift towards the visual holds potential threats. We’ll end up amusing ourselves to death, as Neil Postman puts it so succinctly. “Thinking does not play well in an image-based culture,” he wrote. And right he is. As amused as I am watching funny cat videos or people pouring buckets of ice over their heads, those images do not incite any thought. Here’s the problem: those type of images are omnipresent. *badum-tss*

Thus we have our thesis. 

Act 2: Antithesis

Consequently, Vandevelde makes a plea for an antithesis. His thesis revolved around how we process and employ texts and images these days – longreads being a dying format and images having to be short when moving, funny and ultimately mind numbing. He provided a critical analysis of our current reality. Now what do?

For one, we need to be critical of our visual culture ourselves. Every. Stinking. One. Of. Us. But not everyone is. Exhibit A: unattainable beauty standards actually being a thing.

Some are critical, however. They will take meaningless images and ‘remix’ them to reveal their nothingness. They will hijack and reappropriate content. Here’s my personal favorite example I discovered a few years ago:

Now get this: people who actually stand up against this brainless culture of ours are in fact being punished. Because images and videos contain rights. And big meanie IPR and license companies will absolutely come after you if you dare use their content in a way it’s not meant to be used (i.e. this usually means altered). Watch this trailer of the magnificent RiP: A Remix Manifesto documentary to get a good sense of the impact of this – but preferably, read more and watch the whole thing here.

“Corporations are completely taking over our culture and telling us that we can only consume it. We’re saying no. We want to actually create with it, respond to it, take It, mutilate it, cut it up.”

When Pejk Malinovski gives an audiostories masterclass, you listen. This blog post will attempt to make you understand why you missed out - you fool.

Perhaps a little background on Malinovski first, for those lesser involved with poetry and radio (such as myself). 

Pejk Malinovski is a freelance radio producer, sound artist and poet. His documentaries have aired on PRI, National Danish Radio and BBC; his sound pieces have been shown in museums and galleries. In 2012 he launched Passing Stranger, an audio walking tour of the East Village's poetry history. He was also the co-creator and host of Thirdear, an online audio magazine and he continues to edit and translate books for Forlaget Basilisk, a poet-run publishing house in Copenhagen. (Source: Third Coast Festival)

Similarities between writing and radio

Malinovski talked about how writing and radio are in fact very similar. Thoughts have to be translated into language. Both media forms will create images in the minds of their respective audiences, and they both use silence to add to this mood. Never before had I looked at it that way.

Does a lack of narrative exist?

Another disruptive idea of his, this time no observation but putting words into action, was to escape narrative in radio. He thought sound poems should have no narrative and should not comply to listener’s expectations. Instead, he would record organic conversations on the street for example. This would allow you to tell stories without forcing a narrative. 

You may think a lack of narrative is weird and impossible, and that’s because it is. Malinoski discovered there will always be a narrative in sound, although he does not see his experiments as a failed project.

The moment interview

Another thing he talked about was the “moment interview”, pioneered by Stephen Schwartz. A face-to-face interview creates a confrontation which makes it hard for the subject to be imaginative about their story. Therefore, he would let people tell stories from the past, recollecting memories of particular spaces, but talking in the present tense. 

He let us hear such a fragment of a security guard talking us through his walk. It was just as if we were there with him, his language being the camera movement and as such, writing images with sound.

In conclusion, Malinovski is an innovative character and I’m grateful he opened up his world to us.

I love this quote by Henry Ford. It encapsulates my feeling whenever people are baffled I moved to New York and interned at the United Nations. If you think you’ll never get the internship, you’ll never apply for it. Thus you have yourself a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Some time ago I was at a keynote given by Xavier Damman. Perhaps that name doesn’t ring a bell. He is the co-founder and CEO of Storify. Perhaps that name also doesn’t ring a bell. Allow me to clarify the story of Storify.

Storify is a social medium where you grab and curate content from other social media. Very meta. As a user, you can create stories by collecting content from multiple social networks, (re-)ordering it and contextualizing it by adding text. It is often used for covering news, social movements, reactions and conversations. For example, the United Nations has a ‘story’ to cover the ongoing fight against ebola, using Storify more as a timeline.

How to Storify

You can drag tweets, Instagram photos, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, Facebook posts, or any URL into your story timeline - which is not necessarily meant to be used as a chronological timeline. Make sure to keep these tips in mind:

1) Narrate the story around a certain theme. Stick to it. 2) Structure your story: make use of headings to break down a complex topic. 3) Keep it short enough: select content wisely. 4) Update your story whenever possible or necessary.

So then you have a Storify page with a nicely curated story. Now what?

Don’t get lost in the noise

As Damman mentioned, most of their traffic (80%) comes from stories that are embedded elsewhere on the web. Not that many people are browsing the Storify platform itself. There are so many voices on the internet, it’s easy to get lost in the noise. Storify allows people to discover the voices worth sharing - that’s actually their slogan. So make use of this platform to tell your story, but don’t waste anyone’s time by producing stories for the sake of producing them.

Why is Storify innovative in terms of storytelling?

For news reporting and digital storytelling, this platform is a godsend. It allows you to gather information and content from different sources to compile a full account of a certain topic. Different angles can be highlighted, allowing consumers to form their own informed opinion. Stories are made coherent as bits and pieces are compiled together, bits and pieces that might otherwise get ‘lost in the noise’.

Check out this Storify post on... How you can use Storify. #meta