Concerned Citizen Documentary - Jeremy Christensen

Artist Statement

We decided to do our Concerned Citizen documentary on Jeremy Christensen. Jeremy is involved within the community by playing video games for Children's Miracle Network hospitals. Each year there is an event called Extra Life, wherein gamers get together and do a 24 hour gaming marathon, and they get sponsors to raise them money, which is then donated to the Children's Miracle Network.

Jeremy got involved with this charity after Jac, his son, was born with a hole in his heart. They were scared, but they took them to Primary Children’s hospital, where Jac underwent heart surgery when he was still under a year old. The operation went well, Jac made a quick recovery. This was a very eye-opening experience for Jeremy and his wife, who were first-time parents. They didn’t know what to expect, and they certainly didn’t want anything to happen to their little boy. After the whole operation, Jeremy found out about Extra Life by listening to a podcast, and, feeling grateful for the healthy recovery of his son, found the perfect way of giving back to those who are in similar situations. Thus, Jeremy got a team together and has been participating in Extra Life for the past 5 years now.

Jeremy could have just thanked the doctors and gone on his way, but instead he decided that he wanted to give back. The Extra Life charity as a whole raised over $5 million dollars this year, thanks to the generous support from sponsors and other charitable individuals. Jeremy was already a self-professed gamer, and so the combination of raising money for a relevant charity and the opportunity to play video games for 24 hours made the idea appeal to him all the more.

We really wanted this documentary to focus on Jeremy’s motivation for participating in Extra Life, and that is why the story about his son is right at the beginning. We didn’t want this to be an advertisement for Extra Life, but to go inside Jeremy’s head and to see why he was doing it, and specifically what he was doing about it. I found it very hard to boil down the entire story into less than 3 minutes, because there is so much more to say about the topic than that. But I feel that what is in this doc makes it personal and we as viewers understand exactly why Jeremy is doing what he is doing. I thought that it was appropriate to show Jeremy playing games with Jac, and to wrap up the doc by having some shots of them playing games together and wrestling and having a good time. Because, at the end of the day, the documentary is really about the relationship that Jeremy has with Jac.

In ARLENE GOLDBARD’s article on human culture, she states at the end that, “In the grand scheme of things, a [thing] like this is minuscule. Yet just such human stories... provide the true test of our capacity to inhabit the future.” This reminds me of Samwise’s speech at the stone window in The Two Towers, where he says, “...there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fightin’ for.” While Jeremy himself raised only $500 dollars this year, which may seem like a drop in the bucket, it is still a valuable contribution to those who are in need, and will provide a better future for someone else’s child who is in need.

Group Members:

Steven Bills

Travis Clark

Game for Change - Internet Activism

Here's my game: Internet Activism

"Liking Isn't Helping" - Part of a sobering ad campaign by Crisis Relief Singapore

Artist Statement

I decided to choose the social issue known as “Internet Activism,” or “Clicktivism.” I chose this social issue because I feel that there needs to be more awareness about how harmful it can be to the real activists who are actually “on the ground” fighting for a specific cause.  Rebecca Teich, in her article titled “Three Big Problems With Facebook Activism,” states that, “Most people jumping at the chance to use the hashtag #bringbackourgirls had little to no knowledge of the history and politics of the country in which they obliquely advocated foreign intervention. And they [had] no clue that many Nigerians not residing in America are opposed to US intervention due to a history of the negative effects of US foreign aid and meddling there." She goes on to state that, "the viral social issue of the hour floods Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook with content that looks, on the outside, like deeply felt social activism. But for all the pathos running rampant over news feeds and blogging sites, there is little depth to speak of, and virtually no change afoot in the real world."

Jill Luke, who authored the article titled "Liking isn't helping: How Facebook is Killing Student Activism," wrote that, "...writing a tetchy status update is a very different kind of political engagement to going on a march or even the old Amnesty approach of letter-writing. Because when you get angry on Facebook, nothing actually happens...liking, posting and commenting makes you feel like you’re doing something without actually making any difference whatsoever."

In the game that I created, the player can do a number of things. One of them is to do the homework that they have looming over their head, and another option is to go cruise Facebook. If the player chooses the latter, they are immediately confronted with an opportunity to "Like" a page that will help out some social cause in a 3rd world country, or to go and do something else. Statistics are presented that discuss the growing rate of poverty in 3rd world countries, and again, the player is given the opportunity to "help," or to get distracted with something else. There are a few outcomes that can occur based on the input from the player, but this game is not intended to be an all-inclusive commentary on the affects of Internet Activism.

Chimamanda Adichie, in her TED talk "The Danger of a Single Story," talks about the dangers of boiling down a major social issue into one thing. When we narrow our focus so much, we often tend to start missing things that are going on outside our scope of narrow-vision. Many (not all) people online aren't being activists for social change: They're being clicktivists for social gain. Rebecca Teich touches on this when she states that, "…issues become labels of political alignment and lend an appearance of social awareness attached to a digitally curated self. They become a means to the end of social gain, rather than of social change."

References

Rebecca Teich Article

Jill Luke Article

Crisis Relief Singapore Image

World Building

Our world: a world where batteries were invented but technology inhibited their ability to become pocket sized.

In other words, all batteries are car battery sized.

Technological Impact

As an electrical grid still exists, massive technological advancement still occurs. Devices such as laptops and smart phones still exist (the factories in which they are produced are run on a power grid) but portable capability, due to battery size, has not been achieved.

This is manifest in many ways:

Portable phones, namely cellular phones, are widely avoided due to the incredible weight of its necessary car battery sized power system.  They do exist in homes, but are plugged into a wall. An occasional individual can be seen lugging a large backpack or briefcase in which a battery is connected.

Laptops are not used in classrooms on a frequent basis. This because most universities and schools cannot afford the massive quantities of power outlets needed to support thousands of laptops.

Portable photography and videography is still entirely analog. Even many film cameras are not used due to the need for a large, cumbersome battery. Analog cameras are relatively large and expensive.

Homes are laden with power outlets. Only wealthy individuals, or middle class individuals, can afford this luxury.

Social Impact

As an electrical grid still exists, modern communication, i.e. text messaging, facebooking (social media in general), still exist and are used frequently. The technology most largely impacted by battery size is photography and its subsequent ability to mold, shape, and meticulously create a self image.

Because the available portable cameras are so cumbersome in weight and size, they are used much less frequently. With this, individuals no longer feel the constant need and desire to create a fantastic life for themselves.

They live where they are through their own lens, not through an artificial lens, making images with others in mind.

Objects have meaning because personal interaction is crucial.

A third party experience (an individual, a camera, then a viewer) becomes obsolete and the world is viewed through the first person. The world is not a construct of pixels and code, but a physical, tangible, powerfully meaningful experience.

However, on the other hand, the magnificent ability of easy record keeping would be greatly diminished.

In Design Fiction, Julian Bleeker states, “Objects are totems through which a larger story can be told, or imagined or expressed. They are like artifacts from someplace else, telling stories about other worlds.”

Without photographs as records, new form of record keeping would have to be developed.

But in the end, as is often times concluded, human ingenuity is the motivating factor in all things. Systems are human, and humans are systems.

Group Members:

Mark Leavy

Steven Bills

Aaron Hinton

Bryce Bolick