Kids React

The following is the proposal for my project. Please do not take it as an example of what I was expecting or of what should have been done. I have written it to express the possibility of what could have been done and as an idea open for criticism Please feel free to leave a comment. 

For my project, I would like to explore the idea of the reaction and certain manifestations it takes with respect to a child use of the internet as a from of media. I foresee this project as having two interlocking components. First, an investigation and analysis of the “Kids React” series of youtube videos. Second, an experimental and ethnographically oriented retelling of a story involving the “scary pop-up” genre of video. To be brief, this story involves two of my brothers scaring a young neighbor boy with a scary pop-up video. Often these videos are directed towards children as in website “Scary for Kids.” In each of these two forms of video, Kids React and Scary Pop-up, the concept of the reactions of children is central to the way in which these forms of media are produced or consumed.

The questions that I will begin to consider within the scope of this project are: How do we come to identify something as a reaction (as opposed to an action, compulsion, or something else)? What is the role of the reaction with respect to the medium of the internet video and its supposed interactivity? What is it about a child's reaction in particular that can draw our attention to something that has otherwise lost our interest? For example, Rebecca Black = so 6 months ago while kids reacting to Rebecca Black = suddenly interesting again.

To conduct this project I plan on watching and analyzing the “Kids React” series of videos. I will note what I see in parallel with how I am reacting to it. Once I have done this, I would like to email the creators of these videos with questions and comments about what they have done in the hopes of soliciting an email from them (a reaction of a kind). I also plan on interviewing the people involved in the scary pop-up incident described above. I will shoot video of each of them telling the story of what happened. I will then recycle these videos by showing each person the interviews that were conducted with each of the other people using the Kids React format (shot facing the interviewee while they watch a computer screen diagonal off to their left). I will attempt to recycle these interviews as many times as I can. In other words, after shooting the initial reaction I attempt to shoot a reaction to the reaction, a reaction to the reaction to the reaction and so forth. I'm not sure how they react to this technique but isn't that part of of what makes reactions fun?

Victor