Many of our attendees at this year’s OVC come representing great projects of their own. One project that we’re excited to see develop is Zeega, a tool that facilitates the creation of participatory documentaries without requiring extensive coding knowledge. Kara Oehler, one of Zeega’s founders, and its new lead developer, Joseph Bergen, filled us in on Zeega’s origins and where it’s headed.

How did Zeega get started?

Zeega was founded in 2010 by journalist Kara Oehler, media artist Jesse Shapins, and creative technologist James Burns. The team first started working together while developing Mapping Main Street, a collaborative documentary co-created with radio producer Ann Heppermann and funded through the Association of Independents in Radio’s MQ2 initiative with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

We queried Google and census data, and found that more than 10,466 streets are named Main. With this database of streets as its starting point, we built and designed www.mappingmainstreet.org, an online platform that combines NPR documentaries with photos, videos and stories contributed by others.

We see Mapping Main Street as a new form of documentary that combines all these different elements into a website that “plays” like a video, but that is constantly changing through user input and interaction. We built Mapping Main Street from scratch while also producing stories for NPR. But ultimately, to pull it off, Kara had to put her stuff in storage and live out of her car for the summer. Afterwards, we decided people shouldn’t have to give up their homes to make collaborative documentaries.

What kinds of stories can people create with Zeega?

Zeega will enable anyone to create participatory projects that combine original content with photos, videos, text, audio, data feeds and maps via APIs from across the web. But Zeega is not just an online documentary toolkit. Integral to the project is the ability to bridge physical and digital worlds. Zeega will be a community and framework for creative invention, making it possible for people to pioneer new forms of storytelling that have not yet been imagined.

So far, we’ve undertaken a few early-stage tests into HTML5 video through Sensate, a new journal for experiments in critical media practice. Jeffrey Schnapp and Kara Oehler developed a mash-up called “the first spoken arts record you can dance to.” The project uses the first 5 minutes of the 1968 LP Medium is the Massage as a baseline that is annotated with video clips dynamically drawn from across the web. Joana Pimenta’s Revere Double Exposure uses Zeega to combine archival materials from the Revere Beach Historical Society with contemporary recordings and Google Street View. In both cases, all media plays back natively through the video tag and the editing was done through Zeega’s web-based interface.

How does Zeega make it possible to bridge physical and digital media?

Before Zeega, Jesse Shapins and Kara Oehler were working on Yellow Arrow, a seminal project in locative media that involved cities, stickers, mobile phones, and participants in over 450 cities in 39 countries, transforming the urban landscape into a “deep map” that expresses the personal histories and hidden secrets that live within our everyday spaces. Participants placed uniquely-coded Yellow Arrow stickers to draw attention to different locations and objects. By sending an SMS from a mobile phone to the Yellow Arrow number beginning with the arrow’s unique code, Yellow Arrow authors connected a story to the location where they placed their sticker. When another person encountered the Yellow Arrow, he or she sent its code to the Yellow Arrow number and immediately received the message on their mobile phone. The website yellowarrow.net extended this location-based exchange, by allowing participants to annotate their arrows with photos and maps in the online gallery of Yellow Arrows placed throughout the world. Mapping Main Street had many of the same characteristics – in order to participate in the project, people had to physically go to a street named Main Street and document it, either with photos, videos or audio.

So far, Zeega has been developed through a series of experiments with documentarians, libraries, educational institutions, architects and others. Through a course at Harvard called the Mixed-Reality City,student Kat Tang wanted to create a project where people could stand outside of a building and hear the interior or inaccessible sounds of that particular space. She designed a system where people would see a sticker on a building with an invitation to text a unique code to a telephone number. When someone texts the code to the number, he or she gets a phone call back with an audio recording that Kat made inside that building. When one hangs up, he or she gets a text message that explains the audio recording. (While the project is meant to be experienced on location, you can test it from anywhere by following these instructions). Kat used the web-based Zeega interface to create this project by simply defining the sequence of interactions and adding her audio recordings and texts. She didn’t do any programming. And now anyone can create similar projects combining stickers, audio and text via mobile phones to tell stories on location.

What’s next for Zeega?

Zeega received a grant from the Knight News Challenge this year. Right now, we’re hiring for a Director of Projects and Community Partnerships and shortly, we’ll be announcing a call for journalists, news organizations, artists, community groups, filmmakers, librarians, scholars and others to create Zeega pilot projects. To sign up to get updates and become a beta tester, visit our website: zeega.org.

What are you looking forward to at this year’s OVC?

Zeega’s new lead developer, Joseph Bergen, will be lurking around the OVC this year. Says Joseph:

“I’m really looking forward to the interactive and creative sessions being offered at OVC. It will be really great to see how Zeega fits into the larger picture of open media on the web, how we can improve it, and how we can best contribute to the ever growing, and increasingly diverse community. However, probably the most compelling part of the whole event will be meeting, talking, and listening to the people who are thinking about, creating, and innovating in the field.

I’m a very hands on type of person, so I’m looking forward to their “less yak, more hack” philosophy and taking part in the working group sessions. specifically ‘The Connected Documentary’, ‘Alternate and Augmented Reality Storyworlds’, ‘Database-Driven Narratives’ (pretty spot on).”

We’re really looking forward to the Zeega team’s participation in this year’s OVC. Register today to join in on the conversation at all our great sessions, activities, and events.