Capturing the Moment: the Authenticity of Stories

I was at a music festival this weekend: sunshine, great tunes, friends. Memories. One of the bands on in the afternoon were a real hit: there were some technical problems on stage, but they soldiered on, kept everyone engaged and, at the end, received a huge standing ovation as a result. I noticed one of the guys, the guitarist, was filming the audience, but then swept his phone round to his friends in the band and gave them a thumbs up, which they returned. All clearly ecstatic.

Later i was chatting to him at the bar about memories, specifically about how he’d not just wanted to capture the look of the audience, but also the reaction of his bandmates. It was a moment to treasure: a memory captured by technology in service of our desire to build stories that last.

Stories are important: they unite us, bring us together around common desires and expectations, shared experiences. Increasingly we document these stories through the technology we carry around with us: i’ve been experimenting with Google Glass as just this type of storytelling enabler, adding layers of context around the illustrations i share.

Interestingly, it’s not the production quality of these memories that counts. It’s the authenticity, the emotions, the truthfulness. That video will have memories and relevance to them for the rest of their lives, wherever they end up.