Impakt goes to PICNIC Amsterdam
Last week festival director Arjon Dunnewind went with Pim Verlaek and Miguel Escobar to PICNIC Amsterdam,
where they coordinated a workshop for the Hot100: the top arts and
design students of the Netherlands. Our job was to introduce a problem
for them to work upon, within a compressed time lapse of 3 hours. The
challenge we selected for them reads something as follows: how to make
the best out of social media for the organization of a festival? Our
interest is two-fold: on one side, we want to use digital social tools
to increase the interactivity of the people visiting the festival - to
use, for instance, Facebook style communication tools to trigger
meaningful and unexpected interactions among attendees, artists and
curators. On the other hand, we want to channel this initial
enthusiasm, generated by the festival's five-day program, into the
development of year round internet communities. These concerns are part
of our core interests. Last year, for example, Impakt organized a panel
on the Future of Festivals where these issues were discussed and new
ideas were brainstormed. One of us (yours truly) has also been busy for
the past year writing his brains out about ways to increase the
interactivity in festivals and bring about a closer connection between
the offline and the online community of participants. After our visit
to PICNIC, we received some extra inspiration from the young students,
who had compelling insights into our own festival. Owing much to the
freshness of their perspective, some new ideas were discussed which we
are eager to try out in practice. So you can expect exciting new
developments in the upcoming editions of Impakt. As much as we would
love to delve into the details of our future plans, we cannot really
let the cat out of the box yet... However, here's a little sneak
preview:
The “Emotion Wrist” Ice-Breaker
Consider the relatively low degree of interactivity between attendees
not previously with each other: how often do you approach strangers
when you go to a festival? In the middle of a crowded dance floor or in
the darkness of a video screening, most of us would be too shy to start
a conversation with our fellow festival attendees. Unless, of course,
we are are interested in some small talk to minimize the boredom of
waiting for something to start, or we are physically attracted to
someone. However, there is an unexplored potential for “networking” in
this type of events, since a lot of the people there probably share
(some of our) interests.
One solution developed to tackle this problem was the use of Emotion
Wrists that would allow attendees to communicate their emotional
experiences in a simple visual way. Every wrist would include LED lamps
that can be adjusted to any of the following three colors: red, green
or yellow. In a typical traffic-light kind of way, green would mean “I
like this”, yellow would stand for “not sure” and red would imply “I
dislike this”. Therefore, the rooms will be populated by colors that
express the immediate reaction of users and would allow them to
approach each other and share their impressions. This is probably not
enough for the meaningful interactions we hope to achieve, but it is an
example of things to come.
If you want to take part in our upcoming off- and online activities,
don't forget to join us in Facebook, MySpace or join our mailing list.
Posted by Miguel Escobar
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