Thursday, January 21, 2010

Future Folklore Project on Youtube

I'm working with Jennifer Lafontaine, at the Center for Digital Storytelling, on the Future Folklore Project. It's an experiment to see if folktales can go viral on the web. Our first video - "You're walking on a dark road ..." - has been entered into the Cuentocorto storytelling video contest (wish us luck!). Here's the link: http://storycentre.wordpress.com. Or just search Future Folklore on Youtube. Instead of doing a presentational approach, with the viewer/listener a spectator of a taped performance, Future Folklore puts folktales into the second person present tense. "You" are the hero of the story. My aim is to shake up the frame a bit, to subvert the distancing forces of camera, screen, geographic isolation. And also to have fun by telling stories in a new way. We'll be launching 10 folktales over the next few months. Who knows? Maybe one of them will get zapped and forwarded around the world.