Darius Kazemi Collects Stories

I watched Jonathan Harris’ talk on TED tonight: Johnathan Harris Collects Stories. Initially, I watched it thinking it would be a talk about how one could tell a story in a different, new or innovative way, and it did have some of that. However, the real power of the piece is in the fun, absurd, innovative and creative ways that he visualizes information. In his case, the information is stories – stories about himself, his experiences and the experiences of others. The power of the art is the way he presents the information he collects – not in charts or graphs, but in interactive, bouncy collections full of symbolism.

(Darius Kazemi collects stories, too. He calls it “game metrics” and his company’s called Orbus Gameworks. It would be amazing to take some of his information and turn it into “just because we can” art pieces similar to Harris’. Apart from the Darius connection…)

My take away from this is that games are a give and take of information, and that there are still lots of ways to create a space in which a game can take place. Some of those places haven’t even been considered yet. Harris considers new ways of searching, sorting and retelling stories that’s well worth a watch.

I encourage you to watch it, too.