I was here trying my best to stay on target on my list of tasks, when The Twitter® distracted me with A Life Eroding, a cool project from the Tokyo campus of Temple University

As described there:

This is a video call to participate in the first ever crowdsourced augmented reality music video, produced in collaboration between UK folk music band Songdog and a class of 20 film-making students in Temple University Japan Campus.

The song, A Life Eroding (©Songdog, One Little Indian, 2010), is about all the moments of sorrow that fill a life, and makes it beautiful. Augmented Reality is used to symbolize all that one can remember, but that is lost forever – you can see it, but you can’t touch it. While augmented reality has been used in music video before, it is usually designed by monster-big production studios with substantial budget; this is the first time this is done on the scrounge, by students working directly with a professional band.

To do this, we rely on fan’s participation: everyone is invited to send a short video sequence featuring the AR marker, and we’ll edit everything together into one large, international, crowdsourced video.

Do you know that sound or feeling as you get pulled into doing something that you did not budget the time for? It goes along with a shrug and a “WTF” facial expression.

I was inspired by noting that this past Saturday marked the 24th year since my brother David, a brother who’s sad life story meant I never go to know him, passed away. The full story is at this 2008 photo I posted of his rocking chair, that my Mom had sent me.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

The spring of 1987 was a few months before I packed up my ’73 Ford Maverick and moved my life to Arizona.

This was also a good chance to get more practice shooting video with my Canon T1i, and I did 2 shots- one in my bedroom of his photo that is on my wall, and one of his char, which I put into rocking motion. And I tossed in the AR marker as requested.

The specs asked for were a 10-20 second video w/o any audio track (since they were setting it to music). Here it is posted to flickr

I’m excited to see what the students do with the project, regardless of my own video.

Step up now and share a video before April 28.

And how could I resist a band named “Songdog”?