Aaron Landry

Justine Visits Minneapolis, originally uploaded by s4xton.

Justine Ezarik, one of the world’s few life casters is in town this weekend for the iPhone release at the Mall of America. Justine broadcasts her life on a 24/7 basis mostly by means of a Logetich webcam bolted to her hat wired to a small Sony Viao laptop, utilizing EVDO to connect to the Internet.

Justine and I first got to know each on the still-private-beta flirting-not-dating site I’m In Like With You. Without going too far into how the site works, she essentially was the highest bidder on my game where winner got sent a postcard in the mail from me. She responded with a silly video.

Ed Kohler of Technology Evangelist knew that I knew her when he booked her flight to Minneapolis for this weekend’s iPhone craziness. Thanks to his planning, he arranged for us to meet up at the Guthrie Theater to toured around that side of town and then settle at Pracna on Main. We were then joined by some friends and more staff from Technology Evangelist. We ate and drank until after sunset and walked back on the Stone Arch Bridge.

I’ve always been interested in seeing the limits of self-publishing. I used to have a couple old webcams at home broadcasting all day and all night for a few years a long time ago. I used to moblog obsessively for about four years. Neither of these things compare to what Justine is doing. Everything she looks at and says, all day and all night, is viewed and heard by hundreds of people. There’s a chat channel next to the video and audio so other viewers can comment with each other and try to interact with Justine. Constantly. Some of these people are friends and regulars, but many visitors treat her like an animal at a zoo trying to make her do things for the camera. Some funny, some rude. Of course, the faux-cloak of anonymity allows people to be profane, insulting, or outright perverted. On the flip side, she gets a number of media appearances and goes to fun events. She meets a lot of people. And hell, she gets flown out to see the wonderful city of Minneapolis!

One of the many things we talked about the phenomenon of how when people watch video they expect to be entertained. We’re so used to television and film where the purpose of motion picture, in most respects, is some form of entertainment. Being a remote eye on someone using a computer for a couple hours, driving down the interstate or sleeping for hours doesn’t provide the same type of content most people are accustomed to. It’s actually one hundred percent real life, opposed to the “reality shows” on television. As a result, some people will focus on whatever is on the camera and develop context to it. Suddenly stories develop about the small things on her desk, or how that “guy she’s with” must be her boyfriend. Dramatic ideas as to what Justine will do next are created out of nothing; some viewers perceive the meaningless to be foreshadowing. An alternative (and many times more interesting) version of reality develops and then fades away.

It’s a crazy dynamic of voyeurism and interaction too. While she doesn’t see everything everyone says about what’s going on and certainly doesn’t hear what the majority of her viewers think, she does catch what’s happening in her chat periodically and has the opportunity to respond. Usually just fun and games, but sometimes it’s very helpful: When she was changing flights in Chicago after flying from Pittsburgh, the chat was monitoring not only where the planes were and what speed and altitude they were flying at, someone noticed the gate changed and she was sitting at the wrong one. Thanks to them, I may have not been able to meet her last night. A few of us had a couple funny jokes about what it’d be like to have our very own chat room with people giving us advice on our every move.

Justine is doing an amazing feat and I think few realize the kind of energy, dedication and strength it takes to maintain a life cast.

Check her out this afternoon at justin.tv/ijustine while she immerses herself in the iPhone madness at the Mall of America with Technology Evangelist. She flies back to Pittsburgh tomorrow.

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Hamil Griffin-Cassidy in the Control Room, originally uploaded by s4xton.

I’ve been a fan of public access for a long time. I had a couple go-nowhere experiments when I was in high school, such as a show where I’d call public telephones around the town where random people would answer them and I’d create a scenario all on tape. For example, this old guy answered the phone at Square Lake beach near where I grew up and he went on to tell me about how good of a time him and his family were having. All while I was making obnoxious faces at the camera as if I was bored out of my mind, yet sounding very curious over the phone to keep him going. A bit mean, maybe. I thought it was funny when I was 17 years old.

I forgot about public access for about a decade and then caught Totally Scrabble Tuesday for the first time in November 2005 on MTN. I’ve been hooked ever since. I’m a big fan of media where regular citizens can step up to the plate and essentially for free create their own show. What caught me here is that even viewers can also be live participants and drive the direction of the program. No script, no direction, low-rent and completely free-form.

Host Hamil Griffin-Cassidy, along with the show’s co-producer Martin Hallanger had a pretty funny gig. A show about Scrabble that was so little about Scrabble and so much about people trying to call in and participate in something bigger in such a non-consequential way. The comedic value was in the absolute uncertainty of what might come out of the caller’s mouth next or how Hamil will respond, especially when the callers were blatantly inebriated. Surprisingly, it was usually pretty funny.

Like many viewers of TST, I formed a “team,” which was essentially a bunch of friends coming over to drink and watch the show together with. After a year, though, people’s priorities and schedules changed and the team dissolved. I was the nerd that stuck through.

I was thankful to have the opportunity to be involved helping Hamil a bit with spreading word about the show, hosting the show while Hamil was on vacation, being the in-studio organist and helping negotiate a deal between the show and City Council Member Gary Schiff for Gary to co-host the show in exchange with the password to his MySpace page.

About six months ago, Defeat Hamil launched, extending an opportunity for Totally Scrabble Tuesday callers to team up online. Eventually, it mostly worked. As it was not long after my team dissolved, I joined up with the people behind that site.

Hamil also has a lot of other projects going on, most notably Call-In Karaoke. A show where not only would people call in and sing the words scrolling by, but a show where dancers and a slew of visual effects would distract (yet augment) the caller trying to sing. I got to dance on an episode or two (video really kicks in after about 8 minutes - it’s quite a weird trip). Another example of harnessing live television to allow any casual viewer to call in and participate.

Not long ago, Comcast bought out Time Warner’s Minneapolis market and soon after, Comcast updated some of the technology behind how MTN’s content gets pushed on Comcast’s network. As a result, there is now about a four second delay on what is “live.” Put simply, it became a real distraction on Totally Scrabble Tuesday and it essentially ruined Call-In Karaoke. Hard to sing when what you are seeing and hearing on TV what was four seconds ago.

After three and a half years of TST, Hamil had his last game of Scrabble last Tuesday. As well, last night Hamil decided to try a different idea in the Call-In Karaoke slot: “poeTVision.” If callers could read poetry (everything from Shakespeare to e.e. cummings to a powerful work by Hamil’s father) like they did with Karaoke, syncing to music no longer mattered. At first, people were wanting to sing, but by the end, callers were playing it up and some were busting out their own rhymes. Some were screaming, some were shy, some people were cliché (”There once was this man from Nantucket…”) and some people had some very surprisingly cool original work. It’s a strange experience seeing from start to finish a show where you have no idea what is going to happen and afterwards you wonder “wow, what the heck was that? That was hilarious!”

And honestly, and perhaps ironically, I hate poetry open-mic night.

The latest thing up Hamil’s sleeve is a show called “Philo.” Philo is an illustrated character you’ll see being drawn live. Callers will able to tell the artist what happens to Philo next. The illustrator then interprets what the caller suggests on paper. The next caller decides where the story goes from there. The person with the pen will be Hamil at first, but the show could be a venue for a bunch of guest hosts including professional comic artists. At first I didn’t think this would be that big of a deal, but after thinking about it a few minutes I realized the kind of depth a collaborative comic by the city of Minneapolis could be like. Or it could suck. I can’t wait to find out.

In a few weeksOn July 2nd, Philo will start airing on MTN 16 on Mondays, 9:30-10:30pm.