September 22, 2009 – 1:52 am|Posted in Fun, Montreal
Your humble correspondent dances disco-style at the beginning of the Love Mob (photo from the Facebook group)
I do like fun. And as long as an event has that as its primary goal, I'm all for it. Even if it's a tired formula like a choreographed dance or a lip dub.
On Sunday, I played hookey from PodCamp to participate in an event called "Love Mob Montreal". Not crazy about the name, but maybe that's just because I'm not in touch with my emotional side. As I mentioned in the previous post, it was an MP3 experiment that made sense to everyone with headphones but no sense to all the bystanders without.
It's called "Love Mob Montreal", which sounds kind of weird, but it's actually a Montreal version of Improv Everywhere's famous MP3 Experiments (Improv Everywhere prefers people not use their names for independently-organized events, to avoid confusion).
The idea is that all the participants download an MP3 audio file to their iPod or other portable media player. They gather in a common place, and at a specified time they all press play simultaneously. The audio file contains instructions for what the participants should do. Since bystanders can't hear the audio, the experiment gives a sort of surreal image of a bunch of people doing crazy things in unison.
The Montreal event, organized by a "flash mob" group with some pretty poor web design skills, takes place today (Sunday) at Place des Arts, at what appears to be 3:30pm (the event lists the time as 3:30pm in English and "13h30" in French, but it had previously been established as 3:30/15h30).
Unfortunately, that puts it squarely in conflict with the Day 2 afternoon sessions of PodCamp Montreal. At first I figured the events would be related because they were on the same weekend and I had heard about the Love Mob from someone involved with both. But that's not the case, and I'll have to ditch at least two PodCamp seminars in order to participate.
The MP3 files themselves have just been put online: English, French (UPDATE: Links fixed, sorry). Participants are asked not to listen to them before the event. Instead, remember to bring a watch or other timing device that's accurate to the second, a media player with the MP3 loaded, and a white, red or pink T-shirt, and be at Place des Arts for 3:15pm.
Facebook has over 400 people "confirmed", which means about 40-50 will actually show up, give or take 200.
The annual fireworks festival has its closing ceremony tonight at 10 p.m., which will be your last chance to see these amazing shows until next summer.
Look, I don't want to make it seem like I'm anti-fun or something, because I really do enjoy it when people just go out and do something silly, if only for a few minutes.
No wonder groups so associated with the term, like Improv Everywhere and Newmindspace, have rejected it. I think it's time we all follow their lead if it's going to be commercialized like this.
I biked to Parc le Pélican last night to see l'Autre St-Jean (yeah, that l'Autre St-Jean). I got there after the anglo acts, but early enough to take some pictures of the party and hear some songs from Malajube before I left.
The Fringe Festival includes a pillow fight scheduled to take place Friday at 5pm at the Parc des Amériques a St. Laurent and Rachel. You can signal your presence on the Facebook event page.
Bring your own pillow (no feathers please) and hope it doesn't rain like last time.
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