‘There are no others, there is only us’ video installation directed by Marc Silver and produced by Germination in the summer of 2009.

A 9 minute dance of half a million swarming birds, the installation is a powerful visual metaphor illustrating the nature of collaboration and the power of crowds.

“There are no others, there is only us” which premiered at the Supersonic Festival in Birmingham last year, was inspired by stories of people answering the question “how do you find peace in a world of chaos?”.

Our aim with this piece was to bring people closer to an understanding of our need for personal peace, and the untapped potential for greater human collaboration.

This screening is the first major London screening of this piece and comes before a night of music from Ben Frost and his collective The Whale Watching Tour.

To buy tickets:

http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?id=10070&pg=2272

What is has delivered is a collection of connecting experiments that haven’t really worked yet because we’re not allowing the full extent of human creativity to be applied to it – for reasons of walled gardens, proprietary behaviour and an over-reliance on the idea that technology will somehow take over from the people that made it. “The intelligence of computers and the kind of robots people tell you will take over the world, is as exaggerated as much as the intelligence of those that made them is underestimated.” Computers will take over the world? Well not on the evidence we have so far where experiments like Facebook are a rather dull and unimaginative way of helping people relate, and also built on a business model of shifting sand.

Larnier is, however, not an internet naysayer. He made pains to point out he LOVES the internet. Rather his point is there’s so much more that this technology can do – if artists and engineers could work together unfettered to make the adventure of human life in its greatest forms much much more seductive. Relying on technology to do this (which is limited) rather than the human spirit (which is not), is crazy.

A must read for anyone who suspects that behaviour on the internet as it is right now, is sometimes actually quite dull and could be made so much more liberating through aesthetics and humanism than just better and better technology. Buy the book or read more about the man, and his art.

First, A Small Town Anywhere – produced by Solar Associates and interactive designers Coney and hosted by BAC – a theatrical game where the audience are the play. Before you arrive, each participant has exchanges by e-mail with Henri, the town historian, who assigns you a character and a past. The ‘play’ is the acting out of those characters (each with a skeleton in the cupboard) as external events are controlled by an unseen town crier, daily post and the town clock which marks the passing of time.

The show got over the usual awkwardness in audience participation by the prep and elegance of Henri’s e-mails (and it was a self-selected audience of have-a-go people) and for the first half, the experience of being ‘in’ the play was stunning. As it progressed though, it became frustrating that any resolution was dependent on the ability of the other ‘actors’ to extend their characters. Not sure how you design this out and anyway, it became an allegory for life – the main point of the piece – that we live in a social system and the agency we have is in our (limited) ability to influence other people. On our night we had a weak Police Chief (slightly deaf and a bit behind with the plot!), and other characters ran wild as he struggled to maintain order. As external forces took over – pressure to comply with the political rule in the wider country, the demand to offer up a scapegoat from the town, and the eventual threat of the military – we were acting out a small town in pre-war Europe and had to make choices. Being ‘in’ the play as opposed to passively watching it unfold resonated far more when it came down to the ‘what would I have done’ question. Some more reviews.

Next up, Playful – a day-long exploration of “cross disciplinary frolicking” where people making games and interactions came to tell each other about their stuff. You can see a run down of presentations on the blog, but in short it was delightful to be in a room with loads of adults (okay, geeks) in touch with their playful side. It was striking how much of the discussion was about using play to connect with social issues – like Alice and Kev, the story of being homeless in the Sims 3, Katy Lindeman from Naked talking about projects like Kuka, the voicebot installed in the Houses of Parilaiment, and Molly Range talking about the Scandanavian serious games scene. Outstanding favourite was Chris O’Shea and his Flap to Freedom project, using mechanical chickens to get people to move.

The following Sunday saw Ruby Wax delivering the School of Life Sunday lecture. The School of Life are putting up provocative individuals to revive the Sunday sermon and provide moral guidance. Ruby talked about depression, self-delusion and the need for us all to manage our egos – and though it’s stuff that is becoming more known, her personal story and commitment to facing her own strife is refreshing.

We need more of this kind of courage – a la Stephen Fry and Alistair Campbell, and Time to Change who all 3 of them speak out for. When there, you realise how perfect a time Sunday morning is for moral reflection, especially when followed by lunch and more relaxed conversation than you have time for in the week. It was great to see a communal discussion on mental health amongst the individualistic community of London town with playfulness and humour. Best moment? The “Hymns’ – the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling and Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror – “I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways.”

Then, off we went to produce a 3-day collaborative event to co-design a new process for sustainable design. A big challenge in how you manage a large group of people towards a common goal, and reach agreement over core principles. It works only when human beings can put aside their own egos and surface collective wisdom. We’re still developing techniques to encourage people to work in this way – some working better than others – and learning that structure and rules are really key to open, collaborative working – even more so than for traditional events. There’s a lot that we can learn from the structure and mechanics of gaming, and playfulness and humour to come in from the side and wrestle people out of their egos.

See one of the films here – or check out our vimeo archive.

We’re inspired by the ideas young people have about what they can do for themselves, as well as the excitement of what’s possible when the Olympics comes to town. We’re planning a 4 year project where through film, young people inspire each other to perform random acts of kindness and make Newham a place you really want to come to during the Olympics, to see what’s going on. We and they are inspired with things like this.

When you go around the development site you can’t help but be amazed at the size and scale of it, and the enormous planning and logistical task. In the middle of the park is a bright green industrial plant – the soil washing area – where 1.4 million tonnes of the old soil will have been washed, detoxified, cleaned up and put back into the site. It seems like a metaphor for the wider redevelopment – like the soil, other parts of east London are being taken out, scrubbed up and sanitised.

Many people including Ian Sinclair and other Games critics, are concerned about what might be lost from the fabric of these communities. At the same time, it is exciting to imagine what the new development will bring. The media centre – as big as Canary Wharf laid on it’s side – is expected to provide workspace for over 20,000 once the Olympics is over, and the 500 acres of the site will the equivalent of a new Hyde park, on the doorstep of some of the poorest communities in the city to use and enjoy.

The young people we’ve been working with over the summer are some of those that stand to gain from the new opportunities the redevelopment promises, but they are cynical. They don’t believe the jobs will be for them, or that this will bring better housing choices, as they see other families they grew up with being shipped out to outer lying boroughs to make way for the build. In the films they’ve made their questions are all about how much access they will have to the riches this Olympics promises – the Olympics which was awarded on the legacy it will provide for young people.

One simple suggestion one of the films makes is for all the sports equipment to be distributed to local schools and youth clubs once the Games is over is as yet unanswered, as is the question of whether residents will get free tickets to come to the Games on their doorstep. With so many unanswered questions still, we’re tracking sites like the Games Monitor, and will continue making films telling the story of how the development progresses, what the legacy actually is for these young people and whether rhetoric matches reality.

Questions like will the target 15% of jobs go to people in the 5 host boroughs and how much of the park will be free and open after the Games are key. Who will own and manage the land and assets and how will public versus commercial interests be balanced? The ODA claims to be meeting it’s targets and the site is truly impressive up close – but who really knows in the face of the massive PR machine that is the ODA? Are the nay-sayers who resist change right? Will we loose things that we will miss without achieving on the promises made to the communities of East London while the private developers, aided by huge government subsidy, reap the benefits? The build goes on.

This is the official view. Meanwhile, young people tell us they don’t feel close enough, or connected enough, to the big circus being built next door. “24” screens at the Rio cinema in Dalston Sunday 27th Sept – get in touch if you’d like to see what young people have to say.

• It wasn’t try-hard and had a homemade feel which got everyone in a Village Hall, chat-away-to-each other mood. Bring your own mug, bake a cake, bunting, pub lunch stampede, speakers written up on paper down the side walls.

• It was hard going, but in a good way. When we’re programming our events we spend a lot of time thinking about how much content people can take before they switch-off. Interesting packed it in with what felt like nearly 40 speakers,  and I’m pretty sure everyone was spilling over with new knowledge by the end of the day. But take it we did. Our brains were tired and happy.

• As the content’s about anything Interesting, there was no particular theme, and as the day went we found ourselves questioning our pre-conceived ideas on what we hold to be worthy of our attention. Throughout the day you could find yourself listening to a talk on why nuclear energy is good, followed by an interactive session on learning Morse Code and then a visualisation of the colour of Radio 4. Often, it was the stuff that you’d never normally bother finding out about that was the most compelling. Which just goes to show that it’s as much about the speaker and their angle than the subject. Who knew that Psychological Violence in British Girls’ Comics of the 1970′s and 80s would be one of our highlights of the day (thanks to Josie Fraser)?

just realised we were sitting behind Batman.

This last point is particularly valuable to us at the moment. In Planning the C.L.E.A.R Village design collaboration event, we’re looking at ways to break up the more intense work periods with some lighter show&tells that pop participants out of their mindset and give them a tangential view of the issues. We’re always interested in hearing from people who have a new and entertaining ways of illuminating a subject, so get in touch with any thoughts.

The mechanism for Good Pitch involves 2 pitchers (the Director and Producer of the film) facing a table of 12 potential partners wo each give feedback and say what they can offer. Very easy for a format like this to descend into self promotion or point scoring and/or for the feedback to take so long the main point of the film is forgotten and the audience asleep. But a combination of patient and incisive chairing, the right people in the room and fantastic preparation of the content saved this from happening. Participants were disciplined and the ‘dragons’ were moved towards commitment – would they put funding into development, would they help distribute to schools, would they pay for foreign language translation?

Good Pitch is doing an amazing thing – it’s opening out a process that’s usually held inside closed walls and not just creating partnerships between film-makers and NGOs/funders, but helping them each to work together. The production of the film (potential or real) is the catalyst to bring campaigns together – witness the refugee sector saying they’d like to “combine asks” across the sector on the basis of the film. Those of us who’ve worked in the charity sector know that unfortunately that doesn’t happen very often.

These partnerships are also generating new revenue models – Working Films are working on a model for revenue sharing on DVD sales marketed through charity membership bases. Bablegum are offering a share of advertising revenue to film-makers who provide content for their online site.

This kind of collaborative, enterprising partnership working is where germination is at – and what we aim to achieve through many of our events – so it was a joy to watch and learn. Lots of talk though about how NGO/film-maker partnerships break down through the process of getting collective campaign films off the ground and the need for a rare breed of ‘partnership manager’ with knowledge of film production and NGO working to come in and hold the ring for the partnerships as a film develops. We know that feeling. Anyone out there?

The next stage of the project is to bring 100 people together over 3 days at an event at the IAAC in Barcelona in November to design a masterplan for a fully sustainable village. What’s interesting to us this week is how you design an event like this when the core team is distributed across the world! So far it hasn’t gone very well. Collaboration is really difficult when contending with different time zones and the limitations of conversation by e-mail. And in any case, a collective creative process is hard. So it was with some trepidation that we approached the task of helping design a very big picture event with a group of people we didn’t know. In the end, with good questions and some very generous sharing, we got to grips with the idea and design the outline of a full three days. How? Well, apart from the talents and experience of the people in the room, a real commitment to leave egos at the door and build ideas through collective intelligence. This is how collaboration works best, and exciting when it works because it’s hard to get conditions and mindsets right. And very exciting when it does – it’s going to be a brilliant event. Apply here