Ryeberg, “Ryeberg Home Movie: Piazza Maggiore, Bologna” (2012)
From the beginning, the three YouTube founders — Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim — imagined that video clips uploaded to YouTube would be embeddable in other websites. Well done. They allowed YouTube content to circulate, which meant countless new forms of “cultural production” and plenty of creative communities. Content mobility, and all the reframing and remixing that goes with it, enriches our cultural and political discourse (understatement alert). Ryeberg and many many other websites and blogs owe a whole lot to YouTube.
YouTube’s original stated mission, as it appeared in 2005, before it became part of Google Inc., read like this:
Show off your favorite videos to the world.
Take videos of your dogs, cats, and other pets.
Blog the videos you take with your digital camera or cell phone.
Securely and privately show videos to your friends and family around the world… and much, much more!
In tribute to that somewhat vague founding mission, Ryeberg has decided to feed the YouTube archive with its own home movies, all shot with “digital camera or cell phone.” After all, Ryeberg is a heavy user, and should participate in dealing a little of its own video material. Not many of these videos will include dogs, cats, and other pets, but they will offer glimpses of the world out there, as Ryeberg sees it, and they will be modestly produced shorts, as befits the early days of YouTube. Remember the first ever YouTube video? Jawed Karim standing in front of elephants at the zoo.
jawed, “Me at the Zoo” (April, 2005)
Each Ryeberg home movie will be accompanied by a few words of explanation or description. Watch the first Ryeberg home movies here. To see a complete list of Ryeberg home movies, click here or here. Here’s more dancing, and another Ryeberg home movie.
Ryeberg, “Ryeberg Home Movie: Lyon Opera House” (2012)
Know what a Ryeberg playlist is? Answer.
