Cowbird, Balloons of Bhutan: Jonathan Harris and Real Life Storytelling

In the mountainous kingdom of Bhutan, nestled between China and India, happiness is no small measure and it’s surely not immeasurable. While its neighbors are under constant scrutiny for economic growth, the kingdom of Bhutan has opted, among other factors, to measure its growth in the well being of its people. As early as 1972, erstwhile King Jigme Singye Wangchuck introduced the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH), and in 2005, the Royal Government of Bhutan “made the decision to develop GNH indicators in order to move the concept of GNH from the point of academic discourse to a measurable one.”

The government “developed a detailed questionnaire” that measured key areas such as “psychological well-being, health, time use, education, culture, good governance, ecology, community vitality and living standards.” The results of this survey can be found on their website, but it suffices to say that the prayer flags in Bhutan flutter with the happiness of its peoples!

A few years later, in 2007, Jonathan Harris, an artist who combines “elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling” set out to measure Bhutan’s happiness not in percentages, but in balloons!

Balloons of Bhutan chronicles his two week journey through Bhutan where he interviewed a 117 people and asked them how happy they were on a scale of one to ten. He would then proceed to give them the number of balloons corresponding to their happiness level, and thus increasing that happiness, if only temporarily. Harris’ interviews  provide an insight into the stories of each of these individuals; their identities, their happiest memory, their favorite jokes, and their wishes. In the end, he wrote down each person’s wish on a balloon in a color of their choice. Each of those balloons was “strung up at Dochula, a sacred mountain pass at 10,000 feet, leaving them to bob up and down in the wind, mingling with thousands of prayer flags.”

The website for Balloons of Bhutan, wherein lie a 117 short stories, provides a glimpse into moments of happiness and into the life and culture of Bhutanese people.

Stories rooted in reality and “collected in some unconventional ways” have always held Harris' fascination. In a TED talk in 2007, Harris spoke of his desire to eliminate the role of the narrator in his stories. One such example is his project titled The Whale Hunt, where he “spent nine days living up in Barrow, Alaska, the northern most settlement in the United States, with a family of Inupiat Eskimos, documenting their annual spring whale hunt.” The entire story-line can be divided into sub-stories based on context, characters, color, and moments of excitement and lull (a timeline akin to a heartbeat graph).

Another, more recent, of his projects centered on the idea stories from life and even crowd-sourced journalism is Cowbird, a place where people can “keep a beautiful audio visual diary” of their lives through stories.

“Our short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Our long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as part of the commons, available for this and future generations to look to for guidance.”

On Cowbird, these stories can be categorized and read in numerous ways; by sagas or major news events, topics, cities, countries, tags, and people. If you enjoy creative writing, Cowbird is a neat way to share stories with the world and transform the site into a collective “witness to life.” Many will agree that social media content on sites such as Twitter or Facebook can, at times, lack forethought, even originality. (Yes Facebook ask us what’s on our mind, but if the posts on Facebook are indeed indicative of humanity’s contemplative tendencies, we may just be in trouble). Thus Cowbird is different in that it encourages thoughtful sharing of personal musings and ideas.

Jonathan Harris is an undoubtedly novel storyteller, but he desires more than an audience that will listen, he desires one that will engage in storytelling. He has built the foundations of a world that can be interconnected through stories that are his own and more importantly, theirs, the worlds. It is through these stories that we can listen in on a Bhutanese shop keeper talking about her love for Korean television or experience the melancholic evocation of an Islamic prayer call in old Jerusalem while overlooking the Great Dome of the Rock.

Storytlr.com - Site To Watch

Storytlr.com is a completely free Web site that can bring together content from various source feeds (Facebook, Flickr, RSS feeds, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, and many more) and allow you to create a Web site from them. Or, you can create an embeddable widget of the streaming content, which Storytlr calls a Lifestream, and place it on your existing Web site. What set Storytlr apart, though, is that it can also take these feeds and turn them into stories. The stories are photo-album style renderings of your feeds during a particular period of time. I'm not quite sure I can do descriptive justice of what stories are like, so you can check out this example Storytlr story, on your own. Bottom line, though, is the story mode is an easy, attractive way to present your feeds to your audience. And, these stories can be made available on your free Storytlr Web site or embedded as widgets on your existing Web site.

Do you want to get a sense of what life was like at the Center for Arts Management and Technology in October 2008? Take a peek at our story. Even with only a few feeds (using 3 staff member Twitter feeds and CAMT's Flickr account) we created a story that, especially around the time of the 2008 Technology in the Arts Conference, shows what October was like for us.

An extremely informative backend demo video of Storytlr has been created by Storytlr user Molly McDonald of DemoGirl.com.

Jump past the break to see ideas for possible uses of Storytlr at arts organizations as well as other thoughts and concerns.

Possible Uses Arts tourism and trails - gather a group of adventurous folks, give them cell phones, digital cameras, Flip video cameras, and other gadgets, and send them out onto the trail. They tweet, post pictures to Flickr, and send video to YouTube or Vimeo. When they're done, you pull all of it into a Storytlr story and you've got yourself a nice, chronological presentation of what a tour experience is like. Put the story widget on your own Web site, or link to the story directly.

Performance and touring groups - tap a few members of your production team, artistic staff, performers, and others to volunteer their Facebook statuses, blogs, tweets, and photo feeds during the rehearsal process or tour. Post the Storytlr Lifestream widget to your Web site to give the public an updated, inside look at the production process. When the performance or tour is done, create a story to archive the experiences and share.

Individual artists - use Storytlr as your Web site. Customize the URL and page template to your style and branding. Populate your new Storytlr site with content from other feeds and sources you already use.

Fictionalized, documentary-style stories - back when Twitter was first gaining momentum, one of the most enjoyable articles I read about it was about the user zombieattack. This person tweeted, over the course of seven months in 2007, a blow by blow account of a fictionalized zombie attack. Perhaps something similar could be done with Storytlr?

Caveats and Final Thoughts Get your time zones right - One of the quirks of working with Storytlr is that all of your feeds will come in chronological order. This is sort of the point, I guess, but when you create your story, you can't tweak the order of things at all. I would imagine this feature might be added in the future, but, for now, you're stuck with the time stamps supplied by your various feeds. When I first imported CAMT's feeds to create our story, everything was out of order. It ended up that our Twitter feeds were on EST, our Storytlr account was on a European time zone (the default for new Storytlr accounts, since they're a Europe based Web site) and our Flickr account was set for GMT-1:00 for some unknown reason. I had to get all of my time zone settings in sync and then re-import to Storytlr to get things correctly aligned.

I've got a need for speed willing, tech savvy volunteers - to effectively use Storytlr, you've got to have quality feeds to pull into it. Users must be aware and sensitive to the fact that their feeds are being used by your Storytlr LifeStream and stories, and adjust the content and frequency of their postings accordingly. They must also know how to contribute to those sources in the first place.

Work in Progress - Storytlr.com is a relatively new site (launched 9/6/2008), and there are bound to be some quirks and bugs. I noticed, for example, that some of the video clips in Story mode were essentially impossible to play at times. Reading through their blog, I see more than one instance of server downtime. What impresses me most about Storytlr is how they are responding to bugs, downtime, and feature requests. They're completely transparent, and have already developed quite a community of folks who are contributing their feedback to Storytlr's development. Check out the Feedback section of their site. Storytlr seems like it has amazing potential.

Longevity of Storytlr - according to their site, Storytlr.com is "not a startup, just a fun project that [the developers] are building during [their] free time." This could stay the case; Storytlr could remain free to use and on the Web ad infinitum. However, it could also a) become a 'startup' that charges its users a fee for the service or b) blink out of existence. I would be cautious about investing loads of cash and time into this technology until its longevity has been proven. But a handful of hours? A fistful of dollars? Absolutely might be worth it. I would approach any project on Storytlr as a short-run investment and act accordingly. But, let's face it: nothing on the Internet is forever. Not even diamonds.com (domain expires on 7/15/2012).

Anyone else out there have any thoughts on what might make a good Storytlr project?

Like a Moth to a Podcast

I've just discovered and started listening to The Moth podcast. The Moth, for those of you who don't know, is a non-profit storytelling organization that brings in people - actors, playwrights, comedians, poets, personalities, and the average Joe - to tell a story from their own lives. No notes. Just a performer, a story, a microphone, and an audience. The Moth has several different live performance series and programs around the country. Now, The Moth has been around since 1997, but I'd never heard of them until a few days ago. Why? Because 1) I live in Pittsburgh, instead of New York or LA, 2) I'm not hip, and 3) I often struggle to get my recommended daily allowance of culture.

Point is: I found them eventually. I found The Moth through iTunes. I found them through their podcast.

And now? I know for a fact that I will continue to listen to the podcast. I've enjoyed their podcast so much, I'm considering buying CDs and other schwag through their site. I’m writing a blog about them. I’ve told two friends about them. And so on...

It is so very important to have as many points of entry into your organization and its services as possible, and a quality podcast can be one. We’ve got a podcast tutorial here on Technology in the Arts. There are tons of resources and guides out there. It is worth the effort, the equipment, the navigation of the waters of rights and copyright, and the time to create a new point of entry to your organization to gather fans you never knew you had, like moths to a flame.