Débora Fantini reporting at the Creators Project:
More hereArmed with cell phones in their hands and heads chock full of ideas, low-income African and Brazilian adolescents are having their creative potential be awakened by the Art_Mobile project, an experimental mobile media-focused youth workshop series taught by Giuliano Chiaradia.
Image courtesy of the Creators Project
No stranger to the possibilities of mobile media himself, Chiaradia is the director of Beeep, Latin America’s first short film shot on a mobile phone, and is about to release 5calls, a project completely recorded and edited on cell phones. In order to share the knowledge he’s acquired over his two-decade career in art and television, he came up with the idea to host workshops with the aim of spreading ideas and innovations to underprivileged children who might not otherwise have access to such things.
During his workshops, young people learn how to explore the possibilities and limitations of their devices. If a particular cell phone doesn’t have a video editing app, Chiaradia teaches the student how to shoot longer takes. If there’s no camera, he encourages the creation of artwork like text-message poetry. “With the onset of new media, audio and visual production became more accessible. We depend on our own ideas to stand out," he says.
The one constant is that every class starts with the Mobile Symphony, where students play their ringtones conducted by the instructor, as shown in the video below.
