MP3 Experiment 5 in New York City

Originally my plans for this weekend included mostly alone time with school textbooks, but ended up being exponentially more exciting! Friday morning immediately after taking a shower, as I usually do, I checked my email. In my inbox was a rather interesting email from James Cobalt, the director of Boston SOS. He was asking if any of our members were interested in participating in Improv Everywhere's fifth annual "MP3 Experiment".

If you're not already familiar with the concept of an "MP3 Experiment", it goes like this:

• Tens, hundreds, or thousands of people that for the most part do not know each other download an MP3 file off a website and load it on to their MP3 player. It is critical that you do not listen to this file until you are instructed to do so.
• All these people meet up at a specified location at a specified time. With their clocks synchronized, all participants watch the time closely, and press play.
• Listeners are verbally encouraged, via the voices on the MP3, to participate in individual and group activities, with fellow participants or occasionally nearby strangers, that most likely differ from the social norm one would expect.
• Usually during such an event, many or all activities are photographed or recorded on digital video and uploaded to the internet for future viewing by anyone.

Originally I didn't plan on accepting this invitation, as I had a stockpile of work to get done. After some smooth convincing on James' part, I bought Saturday 7:30am ticket out of South Station in Boston to 34th&8th in NYC for a mere $37.00. The ride, by Bolt Bus, was a much needed upgrade from those Asian buses. The bus had comfortable seats, electric plugs, mobile wireless internet, an on-board bathroom, and most importantly, a fantastic American (and thus English speaking) driver! It turned out that with such short notice, only three of us Bostonians could make it down the following morning.

Arriving in New York City for the first time, I was not amazed at the buildings, but rather at the volume of pedestrians moving about on the sidewalk. Compared to NYC, Boston is rather deserted. We immediately went into Penn Station, and boarded the subway to lower Manhattan. Again, I was shocked at the number of people on the subway platform. We boarded the ferry to Governor's Island, as the instructions on Improv Everywhere's site said. To view the instructions as we saw them, click here. Upon arriving, it was obvious that something was up. There were photographers, free umbrellas, and a sign that read:

IMPORTANT NOTICE.
GENERATE/L.C. INC. will be filming in this area for various future uses in connection with the program tentatively entitled "MP3 EXPERIMENT", including, without limitation, exploitation on all forms of television, home entertainment devices, theatrical distribution and/or any other form of reproduction or exhibition now known or hereafter devised. By entering this area where filming is taking place you hereby consent to the possibly reproduction of your name, voice and/or likeness in connection with any of the foregoing forms of subsequent exploitation of today's/tonight's filming, including all advertising and/or promotion therefore, and you now and forever expressly waive any claims you may have in connection therewith. If you object in any way to the foregoing, please STAY OUT OF THE AREA WHERE FILMING IS TAKING PLACE. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated. Thank you. GENERAL/L.C. INC.

We had until 3:15 before we had to press play on our MP3 players, so we wandered around the island looking at some of the bizarre artwork that was scattered about, and eventually ran into Charlie Todd, the founder of Improv Everywhere. As time drew closer, more and more people began showing up and crowding around the hot dog stand.

As our watches read 3:15, approximately 1000 of us all simultaneously began pressing play. Most of the MP3 was of "Steve, the omnipotent voice from above", voiced by Charlie Todd. Starting off with some stretches and simple exercises, everyone began to loosen up. I will make sure to post the official video that Improv Everywhere releases, but that could take a while. I won't spoil all the details now, but you'll get a general impression of how it went. Early on, we had a thumb war, where participants had to challenge another with a different colored shirt. It so happened that everyone in my area was already color-matched, except two guys both wearing blue shirts who were sharing an MP3 player, each with an earbud in one ear. I found this particularly challenging, as I was in two thumb wars at a time, one with each hand.

After many easy, mostly individual events, we were told to group to the center of Governor's Island, walking while spinning our umbrellas in the air.

Many of the activities we proceeded to do were just amazing to experience, such as packing tightly together and opening our umbrellas over our heads, creating a canopy that blocked out much of the sun, making it significantly darker. Using the four colors of shirts participants were expected to wear, we grouped together and made Tetris pieces, and then combined into to form larger shapes.

The final activity we did, the EPIC BATTLE, certainly lived up to its name, in one way or another. Dividing into two groups, the Blue/Green shirted and the Red/Yellow shirted, we gathered at opposite sides of the field and inflated balloons to use as weapons. As instructed, we marched forward whistling a battle march on imaginary flutes and drums. As we stood face to face, we rushed into each other. I recorded much of this chaos and posted the video to YouTube; you can watch it at the bottom of this post.

After all was over with, and we recovered from the treacherous battle, we swarmed to the dock to load into ferries. Surprisingly, we were only divided into two groups, but took up most of the floor space on both ferries. As you can see in the picture below, the dark center of the ferry designated for parked cars was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with MP3 participants returning to Manhattan. Cheering and singing, we all made it safely back to shore. Before returning to Boston, we made a quick visit to Times Square in downtown Manhattan so I could be the typical tourist and take loads of photographs of the immaculately lit skyscrapers and the streets flooded with people and yellow taxi cabs. I hope you enjoyed this very long post, check back periodically for updates on my spontaneous lifestyle!

The "EPIC BATTLE" at the end of MP3 Experiment 5:
(note: all audio is from the MP3 audio track provided and is property of Improv Everywhere and its affiliates)

The MP3 Experiment Tour


MP3 Experiment 5 (New York)

MP3EXP Recap

Yesterday was amazing! I drove to Boston to make it by 2:30 just to make sure I got there on time. I showed up, and there were small groups of people in colored shirts, waiting for the MP3 Experience. I met up with some regulars from Boston SOS and we synchronized our watches. Right before the clock struck three o'clock, several people began a countdown-- "ten, nine, eight...". Everyone got silent and began listening to the MP3 we had all downloaded just days before. No one knew what to expect in the next hour and nine minutes. (If you want to hear it for yourself, click HERE)

It began with the left and right sides of your brain chatting to each other, with the stereo sound switching channels back and forth. We began doing some simple activities to get everyone loosened up.

"Hey, why don't we try smiling for a moment? Smile as big as you can! Can you smile with your eyes closed? I can smile with your eyes closed. Now lets wink at all our new friends. We're winking because we're in on it. We know something the others don't. Wink, wink! Can you wink while keeping both your eyes closed? Not easy, is it?"

Then Steve, The Omnipotent Voice From Above from Improv Everywhere was introduced, watching down on us. He made us separate up and begin spinning very quickly. After we stopped spinning, we had to go shake the hands of all our new friends. This was rather difficult, and even when I tried to stopped moving, I felt myself trying to fall down to the left.

The narrator came back on and made us freeze as statues for five minutes. You really don't know how long five minutes is until you have to stand there without moving. Some people made obvious bad decisions on their poses, and were struggling to keep still. Right after we unfroze, we had to hide. I hid under a park bench, and many people nearby hid behind small pillars. We tip-toed around to other hiding spots.

The next segment was a wildlife hunt, where we had to find bugs, wingéd birds, fishes, and the ferocious half-mouse/half-spiders/half-man-eating-tiger (the squirrel). The audio effects were done with such precision that it gave the illusion that there were seagulls flying overhead, when there wasn't at all.

There were some other ridiculous events, like smelling flowers, hugging inanimate objects (and then the entire park as a group effort), dancing, surfing, and posing as groups in our colored shirts, a runway fashion show, and a corral-the-cows (people in green shirts were the cows), walking and riding horses like a cowboy, and singing (quite unsynchronized).

We ended up at the Aquarium's plaza, quickly taking over the entire area. We walked around giving very suspicious glares at each other and strangers. All at once, we pulled out our finger-pistols and held them up pointing at everyone. As we shouted "bang, bang", we fell to the ground, leaving no survivors.

Overall, it was a fantastic day -- more than I could have ever hoped for with this type of event. I don't know when the next MP3 Experience will take place, but I will most definitely be there, and you should too!

Here's some pictures I took during the event. I participated in everything, thus did not take a video. I'll link some in a few days when they start making an appearance on YouTube. Stay tuned!

( Photography © Chris Andrews )

The "finger bang" gunfight in the Aquarium plaza:

MP3EXP Tomorrow

The MP3EXP (hosted by Boston SOS) is here in Boston tomorrow at 3:00 pm! http://www.mp3exp.com/

What is it? I quote this from their webpage:

1. What is the MP3 Experience? The MP3 Experience is a free, family-friendly, off-beat social gathering that brings strangers together to participate in a shared experience centered on music and being wacky. It is a spin-off of NYC-based Improv Everywhere's (with their blessing) annual "MP3 Experiment" event. Every year Improv Everywhere creates an audio track of instructions for the listener. People download this audio track and save it to their MP3 players. Then they meet up at a predetermined location and at the same time everyone presses Play. In this way everyone hears the same instructions at the same time. Instructions can range from exercise to dancing to group games to miming and more. The MP3 Experience takes the idea one step closer to home by providing an aural experience that can be played in other cities across the nation.

2. What is an MP3? An MP3 is a type of audio file. It is popular because it has very good quality but doesn't take up a lot of disk space- thiis why it is the preferred file type for getting audio tracks via the internet.

3. What do I need to participate? All you need is yourself, a timepiece with a seconds display, a solid color shirt (Yellow, Blue, Red, Green), an MP3 Player, a camera, and a sense of adventure. All iPods are MP3 players. In fact, nearly any portable audio device (including most modern cell phones) can play MP3s. Refer to your device's instruction manual on how to use it to play MP3s. If you use an iPod you can just drag the file into iTunes. If you use Windows Media Player to sync your audio device just add the file to that library. We do not recommend burning it to a CD- portable CD players tend to skip when moving about; a $20 MP3 player will be more than sufficient to hold this file and will offer a far superior experience than a skipping CD.

So where is it? It's at the Christopher Columbus Park in Boston, Mass, right near the Aquarium and Faneuil Hall. Where do you get the MP3? You can go to the website mentioned earlier in the article, or click here: http://rapidshare.com/files/146478768/MP3-EXP.mp3.html

I'll be blogging about it later this weekend, so either check back on Sunday or go and participate yourself!

Weekend in Virginia

This morning I woke up bright and early, as in 5:00 am. It was the earliest I've purposely woken up, at least this year. My mom and I drove up to the Manchester Airport, and did all the necessary things to get to the gate. I was on the phone waiting for my plane to come in, when a rather familiar looking man walked by. It was Mitt Romney! He disappeared for a while, but then boarded after me onto our Southwest jet destined for Baltimore. I was very surprised that a man of his status would be flying alone on the last boarding group of the most budget airline you can take from around here. Proof that he would've done great for the economy!

Now I'm down in Gainesville, Virginia until late Sunday night to attend a wedding for a family member. In other news, the MP3 Experiment in Boston is next weekend, and it's going to be fantastic! If you're within range, I suggest coming down for it!

Recap of this week

This week has been ridiculous, quite literally. I had planned on not doing anything Monday, in preparation for what happened later in the week. However, the Director of Boston SOS called me up and wanted me to go with him to Boston to do some testing for the upcoming MP3 Experiment. I went down and ended up not only testing the track, but going out to eat with some other members to three different restaurants spending a few hours at each. It was very fun and full of dirty jokes, and we even played charades with members and random other people on the other side of the subway tracks. Finally we ended up catching the last subway before the MBTA closed down for the night, and I got home at 1:30 am.
(Due to the secrecy of this event's planning process, no photos of this testing day will be posted)

Tuesday and Wednesday I had to get up to go to work at 8:30 am and work until 12:00 am. Yes, that's right, I worked over 15 hours each day, for two days straight. Most of the two days was doing pretty much the same thing but we were at capacity most of the time. I work for the Information Technology Systems department at Daniel Webster College, and our entire department was present registering the freshmen and returning student's computers.

Running on no sleep for the entire week thus far, I began school today. After a rather unsettling scheduling mishap that occurred just days before, everything finally slipped back into order and I'm full up on classes. The day went as expected for the most part, including working for both of my jobs; DWC ITS and HoloDek Gaming.

This upcoming week will most likely be full of classes, leaving nothing interesting to talk about. I'm sure something might come up, so always check back for updates!
Also, if you have a suggestion of something I should talk about more, just let me know!