hitRECord in Seattle - Featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Tuesday night I tried something a bit different.  I'd been vaguely aware that actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt had some sort of multimedia/short film adventure going on - mainly because people I'd met were really jazzed to attend it at SXSW 2010.  I generally dig Joseph Gordon-Levitt and will purposefully seek out his films ever seen catching him in the under seen Mysterious Skin.  But frankly I was a little suspicious these same people were more interested in checking out the dreamy Mr. Gordon Levitt than anything super film specific.  But when I heard that his hitRECord project was coming to Seattle I decided to take the plunge and buy a ticket.  What I got was an interesting piece of sorta interactive multimedia performance, crossed with a dash of brash celebrity hubris and a sprinkle of Nirvana. Throw in meeting up with cool persons I hadn't seen for a while and making new friends via the twitterverse it was an evening very well spent.  And I've since spent a bit of time poking around the  hitRECorg.org website.  So I guess the evening drove the behavior hoped for by its founder.

What is this site I speak of?  It's probably easiest just to check it out. But if I must describe ... from my vantage point it's a collaborative visually oriented studio space that encourages people to record interesting things, contribute them and work with the crowd (or a few collaborators - in the non Stasi sense) to create something new.  It embraces the digital modder culture head on - clearly stating the organization's position that anything you upload can be downloaded and used by other community members.  In other words remixing isn't stealing in hitRECord land.  It's an increasingly rare position for anyone with resources to take so it's a nice view even if everything that comes out of it isn't a masterpiece

Or in Mr. Gordon-Levitt words:

HITRECORD.ORG is a project I started almost five years ago now, and in 2010, we evolved into a professional open collaborative production company. We create and develop art and media collaboratively here on our site. Even this introductory video is the remixed result of a great many contributions. So rather than just exhibiting and admiring each other's work as isolated individuals, we gather here to collectively work on projects together. Videos, writing, photography, music, anything -- we call them all RECords.

Now and then, when I think something we've made has come out especially well, I approach the traditional entertainment industry to turn our work into money-making productions; and then we share any profits with the contributing artists.

If you're too lazy to read you can just watch his little video.



In keeping with my belief at SXSW that some of the attention comes from a certain non-artistic based attraction to Joseph Gordon-Levitt the audience was seriously skewed gender-wise (and a bit obsessed with 500 Days of Summer based on my eavesdropping).  I'm talking Twilight mix ratios here.  Which is fine by me.  I will admit it was nice to see that young women can gather en masse without fighting over that whole Team Jacob / Team Edward thing.  I mean really... that codependent bullshit with Edward is just sooooo wrong.

Anyway ...

The evening itself consisted of a series of short films from the site.  Some larger, some smaller.  As is my experience with most short programs regarding how traditional or experimental - some were pretty great, some were less great.  In between Joe interacted with the audience, spreading thoughts about the project, doing some performance art, and/or interacting with audience members.  That interaction included them reading "tiny stories" or having a discussion about what makes Seattle different from their personal perspective.  All throughout audience members were encouraged to record anything they wanted and upload it to the site for later live performances.  In fact the entire proceeding started with a clone of the standard turn off your recording devices message - but subverted to tell fans to do just the opposite.

I believe many of the shorts are on the hitRecord website.  Which is worth checking out.  First to see if there's some interesting content, second to see what the design of such an open studio concept might look like, and third to let your creative side loose.  If you are that type of person.

I took some photos and a bit of video that you can checkout below.  First up we have a quick montage of the footage I shot throughout the night.  Next is the one thing we were asked not to upload to his site - a pretty solid cover of local band of legend.  Then a bunch of photos of Joe in action.

What's the lesson of the evening for me?
(a) It's good to try new things.
(b) no matter how big a star you are no one looks good with a a camera shoved inches from your face.

A few more photos after the jump...