Walk LA with Me

So it’s late at night and I can’t sleep.

When I say late I’m talking like pushing 11:30 PM!  My girlfriend makes me go to bed early so this is late by my standards.

I put my robe on, tip toe into the glass office and touch my mouse. The screen is sofa king bright.  I refresh my video feeds and this wonderfully engaging/bizarre video flashes up.

The video consists of a woman walking around with a video camera pointed at herself.  The camera is mounted on a stroller as she walks around filming herself and the total strangers who happen to be pushing the stroller with her.  Her name is Lisa and she’s brilliant.  I think to myself:  what a fantastic idea.  Create a moving tripod, walk around and interview strangers on the street.  Not just any strangers either, these people are experts at being interesting.  They live in HELL A, Los Angelesita!  Good old Los Angeles…  A city so bizarre that walking is considered a radical act of defiance, an act of self assertion and individual choice/empowerment.

What do the people of the streets in Los Angeles have to say?  You’ll have to go check out her project page, her video blog and then plug her RSS feed into Fireant or iTunes.  The more I dive into Lisa’s work the more she reminds me of my good friend Rick.  More about the Rickster in a future episode.

By the way, welcome to the future.  I know the future is already here but it’s noticeably more distributed this week.  Lisa has a show and I’m going to watch it.  I found it through a trusted filter and I enjoyed it.  It’s free, syndicated and entirely unmediated.  The cost of content production/distribution is rapidly approaching ZERO and I haven’t turned on my television in over a week.  Nothing on TV will engage me like something Lisa can and will create.  The quality of television has never been better in terms of production value but the content is like a race to the bottom.  Who can come up with the worst show ever!?  What is it now?  Evander Holyfield dancing or something?  Sofa king (#2) mindless.

Instead of sleeping I’ve had the pleasure of learning a little about Dérive, a little about the situationists, and about isolation.  But most importantly I’ve learned that we can be trapped into safe and or dangerous thinking by our preconceived notions of spaces and places we haven’t even explored, both physically and psychologically.  If you think its hack, amateur or stupid then you just don’t get it yet.  Turn your computer off and go back to watching TV and don’t say another word about the "main stream media."  Or pick up your weapon of choice and become the media!

After watching all those videos, reading Lisa’s blog, her thinking, and drafting this little post it actually is getting late.  I’ll be able to sleep easier now.  Goodnight nerds.