HIGHRISE: OUT MY WINDOW
HIGHRISE: OUT MY WINDOW
“Seriously, check it out, it’s nuts!” — NPR
2010 | web documentary | live performance | installation | participatory site
ONE HIGHRISE. EVERY VIEW, A DIFFERENT CITY
Out My Window, a project of Highrise, is one of the world’s first interactive 360º documentaries. Delivered entirely on the web, it explores the state of our urban planet told by people who look out on the world from highrise windows.
It’s a journey around the globe through the most commonly built form of the last century: the concrete-slab residential tower. Meet remarkable highrise residents who harness the power of community and the human spirit to resurrect meaning amid the ruins of modernism.
With more than 90 minutes of material to explore, Out My Window features 49 stories from 13 cities, told in 13 languages, accompanied by a music playlist.
Out My Window, produced by the National Film Board of Canada with Senior Producer Gerry Flahive, launched as an interactive documentary, and then was mounted as an art installation at IDFA DocLab. It was also performed as a live show on stage with three different bands creating different soundtracks in Toronto, Montreal, and Amsterdam. It was also accompanied by an award-winning interactive educational site, and another “participatory” site that housed crowd-sourced images from viewers around the world “out their windows.”
Out My Window was built with Flash software (a privately owned technology by Adobe), which allowed users to interact with 360 collages of environments and select any video embedded within the photos. Because Adobe discontinued Flash in 2020, the documentary is no longer accessible. Below are videos that illustrate what it looked like and how it functioned.
VIDEOS
Trailer for HIGHRISE: Out My Window (2m 13s).
A demonstration of how the site and documentary work in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (4m 12s).
A short video about transforming the HIGHRISE: Out My Window web documentary into an art installation, coproduced with CFC, and launched at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (6m 03s).
Video about transforming the HIGHRISE: Out My Window web documentary into an live soundtrack and performance in Montreal, Canada (44m 18s).
WATCH A FEW OF THE SHORT FILMS WITHIN THE WORLDS OF OUT MY WINDOW.
“Religion” (Amsterdam) in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (0m 45s).
“Bijlmeer, a Highrise Neighbourhood” (Amsterdam) in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (2m 56s).
“Clouds” (Amsterdam) in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (0m 52s).
“Everybody’s Baby” (Sao Paulo) in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (2m 47s).
“Yak” (Toronto) in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (1m 31s).
“Great Wall of China” (Prague) in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (2m 22s).
“My Dad” (Prague) in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (1m 34s).
“360-degree music video” from Toronto, with musician Amchok in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (1m 34s), filmed with one of the world’s first 360-video browser-based capture and play software systems.
“360-degree music video” from Alamar, Cuba, with David Escalona Carrillo and his hip hop poetry-dub collective, in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (1m 34s), filmed with one of the world’s first 360-video browser-based capture and play software systems.
“360-degree music video” from Amsterdam, with musician Zanilya in HIGHRISE: Out My Window (1m 34s), filmed with one of the world’s first 360-video browser-based capture and play software systems.