Hazuki Aikawa and Andrey Alistratov of Noka Productions, a Brooklyn-based media production company, have created a short video to raise awareness – outside of Japan – of the recent earthquake and tsunami. In “Listen,” random people in New York City were selected to listen to sound bites that were taken from broadcasts and home videos of the tsunami. Their reactions were recorded.
To me, what’s interesting about this project is that this was the first time a natural disaster such as this one was documented by cell phones and portable cameras on a mass scale. New videos – whether it was ship crew recording the wave as it approached, or documentation of reclaimed land being liquefied – were popping up on youtube every day. But the intentional removal of all images is actually a much more straight and direct way to get people to imagine the earthquake, as opposed to just watching it.
(thanks K)
