PLANKING

PLANKING

History: -

The precursor to planking began in 1984, called "Face Dancing". The participants were two high school boys, who decided to lie face down on a baseball field whilst a game was under way. This was done ultimately to gain a reaction. The first planking activity captured was a video of Tom Green performing a stunt entitled "Dead Guy" in 1994. The footage showed Green lying face down on a sidewalk without moving. It was recorded for MTV, however it was never aired as it was "a very obscure piece of video". In 1997, two young boys created the "Lying Down Game", these boys would continue to play the game for ten more years before they created a Facebook page. The Facebook page invited participants of the game to share photos of their most craziest, original planking photos. The term "Planking" was coined in 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planking_(fad)#Variations | Variations

By becoming obsessed with obtaining the most impressive planking photo, the individual loses sight of the level of impending danger that they face. The quality of the planking photo outweighs their own regard for life.

The planking fad resulted in many serious and some fatal accidents. It is now redundant.

First Brainstorm

After our research on planking and the presentation we gave the first day we both missed a certain statement. We both visually matched the drowned and washed up refugees to planking. The big contrast ofcourse is the horrific images of the refugees are real and it's a situation that needs a lot of attention. Non theless we felt like the images of the refugees became a hype and even a Meme in itself. All-over facebook people are sharing articles about and pictures of the refugees. But besides that people are also sharing artikels and comments of people about the refugees and comment on them. So the "war" between the "help-the-refugees" and the "don't-help-the-refugees" became on online topic seemingly as "populair" as the "refugeessituation" itself. The sharing images and articels became a "hype" like planking was. The image of the little boy on the beach became so well known and sort of symbol or refugees icon. Many artist used this image a inspiration to make a statement about the urgent situation.

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Because we wanted to try and give an planking image meaning we thought about combining the two. On the one hand to give the (forgotten hype) planking "new life" and a meaning and on the other hand to show that sharing stuff about refugees or the opinion of people about them isn't going to change the situation. We thought about combining images of refugees with planking people or write a qoute on it and in that way make our own MEME.

After pitching our idea relating to the refugees, the feedback we received pointed us in the direction of forgetting about making a critical statement. We decided to approach the risk/dare side of planking and steer away from the refugees.

Brain Storm: Planking - Something everybody can do | Impressive | Being Original | Warped reality | Trigger people to take a risk | About the individual | Promoting the individual |

We then started to think about the danger of planking and the lengths one would go to to get the best photo. This led us to exaggerate the ideals of a selfie. The culture of photography has changed dramatically over the past decades, from the first captured photograph in the 19th century to the current day selfie. Perhaps the major change has occurred in the last decade. From the time we were children on holidays, we would take a disposable camera - with 27ish exposures. We would try as a group to cooperate and take one good shot. If someone was blinking - too bad. There was no option to preview the photo before it was developed. Fast-forward to now, technology has made it possible to capture multiple pictures, with two camera options. Thus the selfie was born.

This begs the question: What will this narcissistic culture push individuals to do next?

Coming from a humorous approach, we thought of the more morbid, absurd direction that the selfie might take in the future. Will people start documenting their every waking moment or even their final minutes?