Pop-up!

Yes they still exist: pop up books! Stories in 3D Art but exceptionally not in virtual immersive multi-player somethings.. Pop up books like this from Maurice Sendak are playful but in a sensitive way. Childrens' fantasies become tangible and overcome is the border between the big and small humans one more time: "Based on a play by Arthur Yorinks, “Mommy?” follows a toddler lost in a mad scientist’s lab as he searches for his missing mother. Anything Sendak touches becomes his own, however. As the boy explores the lab, the opening coffin lids and unwrapping mummies function as a tribute to classic movie monsters like Nosferatu, Frankenstein and the Wolfman. As a group, they’re not so much scary as Sendakian: they’re moody, melancholy beasts." (link)
I must have this one! :)

One day in history

One day in British history: November 1st. History Matters invited people living in Britain to post a blog entry on a "nationwide" blog. The idea behind it, is to leave a trace for future generations. We don't know what historians in future will find interesting, strange or fascinating about us and our times nowadays, says BBC. The upload process of the diary entries is still in process, more than 8000 people contributed to the collective one-day blog. Looking through the first blog entries, I found a lot of insights into adolescents' lives. This is one of my favourites: "My favourite food is tuna, Chicken and quiche. I am nine years old and i have brown eyes and blonde hair. Our prime minister is Tony blaire. And our queen is called Qeen Elizabeth." Some of the blog entries seem a little bit "forced" and written under the pressure of describing one's daily routines in a list arrangement (7am alarm woke me up, 8am going to work,....). I guess the whole blog would get a very different notion if it randomly collected blog entries from regular bloggers who are not writing under the assumption of contribution to history and hence not trying to describe what might be interesting for our descendents, but rather whatever is currently on their mind, what interests them, what they are fascinated of, disgusted by, etc. Stories of thoughts, insights in how we think.
However, I like the idea of a collective blog and of letting people tell stories "gemeinschaftlich". I attended a talk about communities in Irvine yesterday. The speaker researched on how (and if) the former notion of "Gemeinschaft" (community) transforms and provokes that we can't speak of "Gemeinschaft" anymore. Individuals rather strive for their own goals and principles, form "communities" based on their individualistic mindset and plans. Blogging on first glance truly seems like one of these individualistic activities. Especially the communication forms such as blogs transport a new collective experience. When claiming that the term community might not work in former terms anymore (did we really ever live what it stands for?), we have to consider that not just the community itself but also the individual changed. We live with several identities, no matter if in role-playing games, through our self-representation in blogs, or networking sites such as Facebook. Humans always played with multiple identities (acting, performing arts, writers), however it seems that a broader group of people is now getting the chance to let the own self "play". It hence becomes an everyday activity and part of ourselves. Instead of acting through various identities, I argue, that we just found another way of exploring our "self" in more collective experiences.