24-hours.in (2011)

A participatory documentary project '24-hours.in' empowers people to document their city or location and lives, using mobile camera phones and available devices. The project aims to provide a democratic framework for a community vision to develop, exploring the rich diversity and vibrancy of life around the world. Utilising user-generated video captured on mobile phones and available devices, the project is participatory, with the audience contributing documentary videos around the theme of 24-hours in a city. With reference to Dziga Vertov's seminal 1929 documentary film 'Man with a Movie Camera', the aim is for the videos to document the cities, the people that live there and their daily lives. Armed with our mobile devices and camera phones we all have the potential to document everyday reality and ordinary life as we wander the modern city. We can capture the nuances of the vernacular, regardless of how banal or seemingly unimportant they may seem at the time, for posterity and digital eternity. Used collaboratively to capture unique moments, camera phones can give us a window on the world, and as time goes by, a window on the past. These devices are in the hands of the many, with the potential for a collaborative and cumulative vision of truth about humanity and life in the 21st century to emerge.