‘Fragmented times’ is how associate artist Bill T. Jones describes the period we’re living in, with its rising divisiveness. He sets out to look for a we, together with the audience. Where his production Deep Blue Sea would have had him dancing with a hundred people from the local community on the same stage, ‘in times of social distancing’ he invited people to individually record a short video about something they know deep down and feel strongly about - expressed in words and gestures.

“This innovative idea has effectively taken on the digital daze we are now all living in and created a world in which we connect despite circumstances.”

— Glamcult

All the individual video contributions are than turned into a visual mosaic that will grow as the festival advances and more people participate. The strong words and gestures of all these individuals - brought together in a dynamic design based on complex data visualisation techniques and a refined sound design - substantiate a larger, collective knowing.

Instagram-style inspired collages
Each video that a person uploaded we used as the basis for a generated personal video edit in which the uploader would take center stage. The person got an automated email with their personalised video ready for social media share. Creating a chain reaction in activating participation.

Within 3 weeks we reached over 40.000 visitors and our project received over 125 unique video uploads, exceeding the anticipated 100 people that would otherwise join physically on the festival stage. During the Holland Festival 2020 we created a video collage every second day launching with the 'I know' of Bill T. Jones and adding on consecutive days his dancers and audience uploads. The end result is an interactive catalogue of knowledge, brought in by people from all over the world, each filmed in their own way.

To generate the personal videos for social media sharing, we build a tool in OPENRNDR that would take the uploaded video, analysed it in terms of movement and integrate the original video as well as the analysed images seamlessly into a new and unique video. Also the sound is adapted automatically to the length of the original video of the uploader, which could be anywhere between 5 and 30 seconds. All this ran server-side, and the video was auto-uploaded to Vimeo.