Codebarre.tv / social TV experience
A co-production between French-German TV channel Arte and Quebec
production company, ONF (NFB : http://www.nfb.ca), Codebarre is a new kind of audiovisual service
which allows a great interactivity to users.
Increasingly, audiovisual bosses, specifically in the television industry, recognise major opportunities
are linked to making their programs fun. Now, many viewers want to interact with programmes and it’s
with this aim that Codebarre was developed.
The purpose of this interactive program is summarised in a collection of 100 short movies from 30
French and Canadian film makers about 100 daily objects that everyone (in developed countries)
uses. The bottom line of this project is: “Objects are mirrors reflecting what we are. Objects are still
with us, they are part of us and according to the objects we use or how we use it, everything in final
determines who we are.”
This semantic purpose is represented by an ingenius way to find videos in three different ways: search, scan or share.
Search: type what kind of object do you want to see and the web site will provide you linked video.
Scan: an original and fun manner to find information by scanning with your webcam the bar
code of your object. When the bar code is scanned, the web site finds the corresponding
video. If you don’t have a webcam you can also type your bar code to find same video.
Share: if you were not successful in finding a video dedicated to your object you can download a
photo of it from your computer on the web site with a little descriptive text by you to present this
specific object and why it’s so important for you and what kind of relationship you have with it. After
that, this object will be included to the object library of the web site.
All content is readable in one of these three ways and the structure of this interactive video project is
built around the objective of fun. If you extract all video content from this website you could make a
traditional documentary which could be focused on the last fifty years of consumption in the world,
or something like that.
But, in this case, what is very interesting is the way that each user creates his own ‘documentary’.
Like a child who play with toys like Lego©, Codebarre brings to the viewer all the pieces of content
he wants, but everybody is free to do what he wants with it (or add what he wants).
In this kind of situation, viewers are not just a passive public, they act on what happens on screen
and can probably be more open to the content experience they can learn from.
To conclude, developing this kind of project is a real issue for television in the future because beyond
making such content accessible, Codebarre (and others) are part of a massive trend: everyone
wants to be a part of a large community but only with these specific characteristics. Codebarre is a
perfect example of this trend, a universe: bar codes; but three differents ways to make sense of this
information and see only what you want.
For more on Codebarre: (French interview but very interesting).
Teaser video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJZQmInll1c&feature=player_embedded
