cameraworld is a collaboration between Mikel Rouse and Cliff Baldwin incorporating digital surround sound, moving images and media for home entertainment systems of the future. These elements fuse to form the forthcoming feature film cameraworld.

cameraworld will pioneer a new form of all-digital entertainment. Fusing the minimalist rap musings of Mikel Rouse and the reductionist roving eye of Cliff Baldwin, cameraworld takes the audience on a tour of our country that is at once familiar and striking. As a kind of mobile surveillance, cameraworld viscerally demonstrates that real people in real places can create compelling real video and ultimately, real opera.

In ignoring storyline and placing emphasis on visually dynamic subject matter, the visual component of cameraworld evolves organically. cameraworld goes In the search of the sublime suburban mall, the overcongested freeway, high-traffic waterways, construction sites, offices and the occasional movie set. Events are documented as they unfold and as they happen naturally. With a Webcam sensibility and a perpetual urban bodygroove, cameraworld sets the world on its ear and eye.

In the conceptual tradition of FluxFilms, Minimalism and the likes of Michael Snow, Richard Serra and Steve Reich, cameraworld picks up where the minimalist music and video of the 70's left off and propels it into the next century.

Befitting the multilayered nature of the two artists' work, cameraworld will exist in many dimensions, from web broadcasts to feature film; from live media performance to stand-alone cd and dvd.

January 30, 2000 / The New York Times

Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy

By BILL CARTER he European invasion began with "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," which transformed the competitive landscape of network television. Now, just months later, a new wave of formats, all based on real-life experience voyeuristically captured on camera, is coming from abroad.

The shows range from examinations of people trying to survive on a desert island to people trying to get along while locked together in various settings of forced intimacy -- in a house, on a bus or a tourist vacation, in a home set up to match conditions 100 years ago.

The shows, many of which will have ambitious Internet components, have been described as various combinations of MTV's cinéma vérité show "The Real World," the syndicated talk show "Jerry Springer" and, of course, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," which came from Britain. One show makes its Orwellian aura overt: It is called "Big Brother."

Virtually all the shows have been significant hits in European countries. "Big Brother" is a phenomenon in Holland, even spawning a second series, a talk show where the events on the show are exhaustively discussed.

It is the chance for the networks -- which have been losing viewers to cable television for at least a decade -- to create the kind of phenomenon in this country that ABC did with "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," which is driving network executives to pursue the other inventive European television formats that break the mold of comedies, dramas and news programs.

In fact, the bidding for the American version of "Big Brother" reached a fever pitch last week, with prices escalating to a point where one senior network executive labeled the process "totally nuts." A deal for "Big Brother" is expected this week, with CBS the front-runner. In a first, plans call for the show to run for 100 consecutive nights in prime time.

That would give CBS the first two examples of this genre, because the network is already deep into its planning for a 13-episode summer series called "Survivor" -- a giant hit in Sweden -- in which 16 people will be stranded on an island off Borneo in the Pacific Ocean, charged with finding ways to survive. Cast members will be eliminated each week by vote of the other contestants until one is the final survivor, winning $1 million. "Survivor" has lined up eight sponsors, and they will be given product-placement opportunities. For example, Reebok is a sponsor; the contestants will most likely be wearing Reebok shoes.

Leslie Moonves, president of CBS Television, said the move toward these wilder formats reflected the network's conclusion that tried-and-true television, like situation comedies on brightly lit Hollywood sound stages, now leaves many American viewers cold.

"What's happening is people are realizing you need to be different," Mr. Moonves said. "You can't go with the same old meat and potatoes anymore. You've got to shake things up. And clearly people are realizing it's a big world out there and shows really can come from the other side of the Atlantic."

The reality shows have an economic advantage over scripted series: they do not employ vast numbers of writers and they have no expensive stars at all. That points to a downside for Hollywood. Mr. Moonves said that every game show in prime time cost the industry 100 jobs. Producers have already complained that the proliferation of news magazines and game shows are radically shrinking prime-time opportunities.

"There's no question that if the reality shows take off there will be a contraction in the business," he said. "There could be a real shift in who's working and not working."

More than anything, the move toward the European shows reflects the effect of "Millionaire," which has transformed the network prime-time ratings race, pulling ABC from a likely third place this season to a near-certain first-place finish.

"Millionaire" has already fathered a brood of game shows. Last year there were no game shows on network prime time. Now there are eight hours of games each week. Because "Millionaire" emerged from Britain as a fully developed hit, network executives have started looking at other European shows.

One agent who has been in the middle of many of the negotiations for these new programs, Ben Silverman, head of international packaging for the William Morris Agency, lived for more than four years in England.

"I scoured the TV listings all over Europe looking for shows that sounded interesting," Mr. Silverman said. "The European producers don't come from the American system. They don't have this track record that leads them to reject certain ideas. They also don't have the infrastructure to support shows full of writers and stars. So they have to find innovative stuff."

Mr. Silverman, along with a William Morris partner in Los Angeles, Greg Lipstone, represented the British company Celador in negotiations with ABC for "Millionaire," which was supposed to be nothing more than a summer series. After it became a hit, Mr. Silverman started getting calls about other European properties he had already lined up.

Even PBS called, securing the rights to a show produced by a British company called Wall to Wall. This one, "1900 House," involves bringing a family into a home with cameras and making them live just as they would have a century ago -- without, for example, television.

But "Big Brother," owned by the Dutch company Endemol Entertainment, is currently the hottest property in this genre. Mark Itkin, the senior vice president of William Morris for reality programs, said: "I had no idea the bidding would be so hot. But the show has so many elements, from being on 100 days in a row to an Internet component that is especially attractive to networks."

Mr. Silverman first believed only a cable network would make the commitment to Endemol's format: 100 consecutive nights of "Big Brother." But after "Millionaire," three big broadcast networks jumped into the bidding, each promising to broadcast "Big Brother" essentially every single night this summer.

"Big Brother" throws a group of 10 people, mostly in their 20's, into a new house constructed with cameras and recording equipment everywhere to document their every move. In Holland that included everything from showers to sex, though an American version is clearly not going to go that far.

In Holland, the Internet helped drive the show because users could log onto the show's Web site, pick out certain characters and cameras, and literally watch 24 hours a day.

Each week one cast member is voted out, with viewers participating by phone and Internet. The last cast member standing in Holland won 250,000 guilders, about $111,000. Many of the elements are similar to "Survivor," so similar, that Mark Burnett, who is producing "Survivor" for CBS, said the show's British originators had filed suit against Endemol. The suit is pending. Mr. Burnett described "Survivor" as "a little bit of 'Truman Show' and 'Lord of the Flies,' with an edgy 'Gilligan's Island' thrown in." Currently Mr. Burnett is whittling down the hundreds of applicants for "Survivor," using, among other things, a battery of psychological tests. He hopes to avoid the unfortunate outcome of the show's first edition in Sweden, when one cast member committed suicide after being rejected by his comrades. And that was in a format that was softer than the American version.

In Sweden, cast members decided by voting whom they wanted to remain on the island. Mr. Burnett acknowledged that the American version would be far more Darwinian. Individuals will be voted out by the group. Though CBS may lead this trend, program executives at the other networks are likely to try to come up with their own, similar formats.

Mike Darnell, executive vice president of special programs for Fox, has been highly inventive in the reality arena, coming up with the concepts for everything from the game show "Greed" to "When Good Pets Go Bad." He was also the man behind the now-scrapped idea to crash a Boeing 747 live in the desert. Mr. Darnell's latest brainstorm is a special, set for Feb. 15, called "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire," in which 50 female contestants will be whittled down by beauty pageant-like contests and extensive interviewing to five finalists, all in wedding gowns, one of whom will be proposed to and married on the air, live, by a willing millionaire. "All these shows are voyeuristic," Mr. Darnell said. "After a while they become soap operas. That's why casting is so important. The people you pick will determine whether you're a hit or a bomb." '

Robert Thompson, founder of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, called the trend toward voyeurism shows an inevitable confluence of advances in technology and basic human interest. "Popular culture is beginning to catch up with our real behavior," Mr. Thompson said. "We all talk about family values, but that's not how most of us operate as human beings. In some ways, this is the programmers discovering what TV was always so great at in the first place. This is Peeping Tom to the max."

Upon moving to New York, Mr. Rouse formed his contemporary chamber ensemble, Mikel Rouse Broken Consort, consisting of keyboard, electric guitar/bass, woodwinds, and percussion. With Broken Consort, Rouse has produced numerous recordings including Soul Menu (1993), A Lincoln Portrait (1988), A Walk In The Woods (1985), which appeared on the New York Times list of the ten best records of 1985; and Jade Tiger (1984).

Additional recordings span a variety of genres including pop: Etudes (1980), Set The Timer (1985), Social Responsibility (1987), and Against All Flags (1988), which was the New York Times Pop Album of the week upon release; electronic: Colorado Suite (1984), and Quorum (1984), the first piece of its kind for sequencer. This music was used for Ulysses Dove's Vespers and presented by The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1987 to the present. In the spring of 1995 a film of this work, directed by David Hinton, aired on PBS's Great Performances "Dance in America" and won 2 Emmy Awards.

In 1989 Rouse began work on the opera Failing Kansas (1994), inspired by Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which premiered at The Kitchen in New York. This led to an emerging art form he calls Counterpoetry, which involves the use of multiple unpitched voices in counterpoint. Other works that explore this technique include Living Inside Design (1994), a collection of extended spoken songs and Autorequiem (1994), for strings, percussion, and voices.

Most recently Mr. Rouse has premiered the opera Dennis Cleveland (1996) which explores the late 20th century phenomenon of television ritual as a replacement of ceremony previously associated with religion. The opera, which takes place on the set of a television talk show, was hailed by The Village Voice as the "most exciting and innovative new opera since Einstein on the Beach and Perfect Lives" . In 1998 The Brooklyn Academy of Music commissioned the third opera of his trilogy, The End Of Cinematics to be presented at BAMs Next Wave Festival.

Other works include Book One, a book nine of string quartets and Two Paradoxes Resolved, a piano suite. Rouse has received numerous awards from Meet The Composer, including a commission from the Meet The Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program for a new opera, The New York State Council on the Arts and ASCAP. In 1994 and 1999 he was nominated for the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts. In 1996 he received an Edward F. Albee Fellowship. In 1997 he received a commissioning grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust for The End Of Cinematics. He currently resides in New York City.

For booking cameraworld as a live event please contact:
Michael Mushella - mushalla@compuserve.com
Double M Arts & Events 917.864.4137 fax: 718.832.6112

For screenings, webcasts and broadcasts of cameraworld please contact:  Cliff Baldwin - cliff@pleasewatch.com

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Cameraworld also exists in the form of 30 framed digital film stills and is available for exhibition, as well as purchase through Pleasewatch.com.

All 30 images can be seen here.