One second every day
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0:01 - 0:02So, I'm an artist.
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0:02 - 0:05I live in New York, and I've been working in advertising
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0:05 - 0:08for -- ever since I left school,
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0:08 - 0:09so about seven, eight years now,
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0:09 - 0:11and it was draining.
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0:11 - 0:13I worked a lot of late nights. I worked a lot of weekends,
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0:13 - 0:17and I found myself never having time for all the projects
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0:17 - 0:19that I wanted to work on on my own.
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0:19 - 0:21And one day I was at work and I saw a talk
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0:21 - 0:23by Stefan Sagmeister on TED,
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0:23 - 0:25and it was called "The power of time off,"
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0:25 - 0:27and he spoke about how every seven years,
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0:27 - 0:30he takes a year off from work so he could
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0:30 - 0:33do his own creative projects, and I was instantly inspired,
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0:33 - 0:37and I just said, "I have to do that. I have to take a year off.
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0:37 - 0:41I need to take time to travel and spend time with my family
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0:41 - 0:43and start my own creative ideas."
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0:43 - 0:47So the first of those projects ended up being
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0:47 - 0:51something I called "One Second Every Day."
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0:51 - 0:53Basically I'm recording one second of every day of my life
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0:53 - 0:56for the rest of my life,
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0:56 - 0:59chronologically compiling these one-second
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0:59 - 1:03tiny slices of my life into one single continuous video
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1:03 - 1:09until, you know, I can't record them anymore.
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1:09 - 1:11The purpose of this project is, one:
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1:11 - 1:16I hate not remembering things that I've done in the past.
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1:16 - 1:18There's all these things that I've done with my life
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1:18 - 1:20that I have no recollection of
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1:20 - 1:22unless someone brings it up, and sometimes I think,
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1:22 - 1:26"Oh yeah, that's something that I did."
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1:26 - 1:27And something that I realized early on in the project
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1:27 - 1:30was that if I wasn't doing anything interesting,
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1:30 - 1:32I would probably forget to record the video.
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1:32 - 1:36So the day -- the first time that I forgot, it really hurt me,
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1:36 - 1:38because it's something that I really wanted to --
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1:38 - 1:41from the moment that I turned 30, I wanted
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1:41 - 1:44to keep this project going until forever,
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1:44 - 1:46and having missed that one second, I realized,
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1:46 - 1:50it just kind of created this thing in my head
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1:50 - 1:52where I never forgot ever again.
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1:56 - 1:59So if I live to see 80 years of age,
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1:59 - 2:01I'm going to have a five-hour video
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2:01 - 2:04that encapsulates 50 years of my life.
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2:04 - 2:06When I turn 40, I'll have a one-hour video
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2:06 - 2:12that includes just my 30s.
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2:12 - 2:13This has really
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2:13 - 2:16invigorated me day-to-day, when I wake up,
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2:16 - 2:19to try and do something interesting with my day.
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2:27 - 2:30Now, one of the things that I have issues with is that,
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2:30 - 2:34as the days and weeks and months go by,
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2:34 - 2:36time just seems to start blurring
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2:36 - 2:38and blending into each other
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2:38 - 2:42and, you know, I hated that,
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2:42 - 2:47and visualization is the way to trigger memory.
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2:55 - 2:58You know, this project for me is a way for me
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2:58 - 3:01to bridge that gap and remember everything that I've done.
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3:01 - 3:04Even just this one second allows me to remember
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3:04 - 3:06everything else I did that one day.
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3:06 - 3:09It's difficult, sometimes, to pick that one second.
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3:09 - 3:12On a good day, I'll have maybe three or four seconds
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3:12 - 3:14that I really want to choose,
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3:14 - 3:16but I'll just have to narrow it down to one,
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3:16 - 3:18but even narrowing it down to that one allows me
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3:18 - 3:20to remember the other three anyway.
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3:20 - 3:24It's also kind of a protest, a personal protest,
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3:24 - 3:26against the culture we have now where people
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3:26 - 3:29just are at concerts with their cell phones out
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3:29 - 3:31recording the whole concert, and they're disturbing you.
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3:31 - 3:32They're not even enjoying the show.
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3:32 - 3:35They're watching the concert through their cell phone.
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3:35 - 3:39I hate that. I admittedly used to be that guy a little bit,
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3:39 - 3:42back in the day, and I've decided that the best way
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3:42 - 3:47for me to still capture and keep a visual memory of my life
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3:47 - 3:50and not be that person, is to just record that one second
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3:50 - 3:53that will allow me to trigger that memory of,
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3:53 - 3:56"Yeah, that concert was amazing. I really loved that concert."
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3:56 - 4:02And it just takes a quick, quick second.
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4:02 - 4:04I was on a three-month road trip this summer.
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4:04 - 4:07It was something that I've been dreaming about doing my whole life,
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4:07 - 4:10just driving around the U.S. and Canada
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4:10 - 4:13and just figuring out where to go the next day,
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4:13 - 4:16and it was kind of outstanding.
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4:16 - 4:19I actually ran out, I spent too much money on my road trip
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4:19 - 4:22for the savings that I had to take my year off,
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4:22 - 4:25so I had to, I went to Seattle and I spent some time
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4:25 - 4:29with friends working on a really neat project.
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4:36 - 4:40One of the reasons that I took my year off was to spend more time with my family,
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4:40 - 4:43and this really tragic thing happened where
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4:43 - 4:45my sister-in-law,
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4:45 - 4:48her intestine suddenly strangled one day,
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4:48 - 4:51and we took her to the emergency room,
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4:51 - 4:54and she was, she was in really bad shape.
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4:54 - 4:56We almost lost her a couple of times,
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4:56 - 5:00and I was there with my brother every day.
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5:04 - 5:07It helped me realize something else during this project,
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5:07 - 5:13is that recording that one second on a really bad day
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5:13 - 5:14is extremely difficult.
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5:14 - 5:20It's not -- we tend to take our cameras out when we're doing awesome things.
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5:20 - 5:22Or we're, "Oh, yeah, this party, let me take a picture."
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5:22 - 5:25But we rarely do that when we're having a bad day,
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5:25 - 5:27and something horrible is happening.
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5:27 - 5:30And I found that it's actually been very, very important
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5:30 - 5:34to record even just that one second of a really bad moment.
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5:34 - 5:38It really helps you appreciate the good times.
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5:38 - 5:42It's not always a good day, so when you have a bad one,
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5:42 - 5:44I think it's important to remember it,
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5:44 - 5:49just as much as it is important to remember the [good] days.
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5:57 - 6:00Now one of the things that I do is I don't use any filters,
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6:00 - 6:04I don't use anything to -- I try to capture the moment
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6:04 - 6:10as much as possible as the way that I saw it with my own eyes.
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6:10 - 6:12I started a rule of first person perspective.
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6:12 - 6:15Early on, I think I had a couple of videos where
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6:15 - 6:19you would see me in it, but I realized that wasn't the way to go.
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6:19 - 6:21The way to really remember what I saw
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6:21 - 6:25was to record it as I actually saw it.
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6:33 - 6:37Now a couple of things that I have in my head about this project are,
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6:37 - 6:43wouldn't it be interesting if thousands of people were doing this?
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6:43 - 6:49I turned 31 last week, which is there.
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6:49 - 6:51I think it would be interesting to see
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6:51 - 6:53what everyone did with a project like this.
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6:53 - 6:55I think everyone would have a different interpretation of it.
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6:55 - 6:59I think everyone would benefit from just having that one second to remember every day.
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6:59 - 7:02Personally, I'm tired of forgetting,
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7:02 - 7:05and this is a really easy thing to do.
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7:05 - 7:08I mean, we all have HD-capable cameras in our pockets right now --
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7:08 - 7:09most people in this room, I bet --
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7:09 - 7:11and it's something that's --
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7:11 - 7:13I never want to forget another day that I've ever lived,
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7:13 - 7:16and this is my way of doing that,
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7:16 - 7:18and it'd be really interesting also to see,
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7:18 - 7:20if you could just type in on a website,
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7:20 - 7:24"June 18, 2018,"
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7:24 - 7:26and you would just see a stream of people's lives
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7:26 - 7:28on that particular day from all over the world.
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7:28 - 7:31And I don't know, I think this project has a lot of possibilities,
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7:31 - 7:34and I encourage you all to record just a small snippet of your life every day,
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7:34 - 7:36so you can never forget that that day, you lived.
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7:36 - 7:38Thank you.
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7:38 - 7:42(Applause)
- Title:
- One second every day
- Speaker:
- Cesar Kuriyama
- Description:
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There are so many tiny, beautiful, funny, tragic moments in your life -- how are you going to remember them all? Director Cesar Kuriyama shoots one second of video every day as part of an ongoing project to collect all the special bits of his life.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 08:02
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for One second every day | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for One second every day | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for One second every day | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for One second every day | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for One second every day | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for One second every day | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for One second every day | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |