Interactive YouTube

YouTube is by far one of the most popular video sharing sites on the internet. Recently the company announced that they have reached over two billion videos viewed per day. That seems almost impossible! People are using it for news, entertainment, education, dreams of fame, and for speaking their minds. I personally have it set as my home page on my browser and there is almost never a day that goes by that I don't use it. It's just that videos seem much more entertaining and straight forward. This is probably due to the fact people can just sit back and relax as the videos play themselves at a steady pace, compared to text or images which people read at their own pace. Then there is also just the wow factor of being able to see almost anything you want, except for porn. I mean you can still find chicks shaking it on YouTube but basically they try to keep that stuff off their site. This is a good thing, because most other video sharing sites that allow porn usually just turn into porn sites.

Another great innovations that YouTube has created for their video sharing experience is the ability to embed links within videos. Most of the time the links just take you to someone's channel or something but some people are actually using the linking to create a 'choose your own adventure' type interactive video story. People started doing this as soon as the ability to embed links in their videos started. Recently though, the production value on these adventures has begun to go up and we are now seeing much more polished works of art.

I had the luck of stumbling across a piece entitled Interactive Movie Zombie Adventure which was made to promote a company called Hell's Pizza. I must say, this is by far one of the best interactive videos I've seen yet. Throughout the video the user gets to make about three decisions (more if you make the wrong decisions like I did) that either end the story or keep it going. However the thing that really got me was the the quality of the production. The whole thing was in HD, the actors were pretty hilarious, costuming seemed legitimate, and the story line was nicely written. At one point there was a little skit concerning a scooter that can only be described as ROFL.

This is the kind of artwork that I like the best. Artwork that uses the newest and hippest technology to infiltrate an audience. Ten years ago, even five years ago, this would not have been possible. We needed to wait till peoples internet connections were fast enough, until the website supported HD, and until a non pornographic video site took over the internet. And still with all that we needed crafty individuals to come up with a way to use technologies in alternative ways. Admittedly though YouTube is so big now that many people will never find this video amongst the endless sea of other videos that are constantly growing ever day. I still think its cool though how people can figure out how to take something as passive as watching a video on the internet and make it into an interactive artwork by simply using the tools that we take for granted everyday. Happy YouTubing.