A year ago I was invited to an experimental workshop of Tim Kindbergs’ Nth Screen app, which is an app that allows multiple users to record video in synchronisity regardless of geography. This non-geographical boundary is what attracted me the most and I decided to experiment with an event called 'let's eat together'.

 

I tried the experiment once, due technical problems and logistics, I will re-attempt this in the near future - with now a better understanding of how to make this work, technically, as an experience, and visual final outcome.

 

The group app name is 'Ambrosia"

 

I send the task to 3 people - and will aim at gathering 5 people -

They have to cook a dish that reminds them of 'home' - whatever home is for them, it could be

a childhood memory, it could be a present memory from an other 'home' or anything else.

The only thing is that they have to cook this dish by only using local ingredients.

 

All the participants live in different cities and countries.

With the countdown the app allows, we all meet at the same time, the devices start

recording, we are in front of our smartphones ( I have sent mini stands to all partcipants to place their device landscape and not move it around - giving a theatrical angle).

Then each participant has 20 sec to present their dish, they take it in turns by watching at the clock, and an order that was pre-established.

Then all the clips are placed in one webpage, the other participants can finally see who else

was involved - and the page is entitled: "LET' S EAT TOGETHER"

 

There is one example in the link below - however one of the participants device filmed with fuzz -

and the other device failed to upload the app because it couldn't download latest software version.

This was a sample I learnt from.

Nevertheless, feedback was that there is always that excitement with the countdown, and knowing that someone else - we don't know who - is also part of that experiment at this very specific time.