Mondo Instante 44 Event Announcement

I can’t think of a better way to usher in the new year than to spend it sharing photos with friends and family all over the world. In true MI style, the MI44 event will be open for the duration of New Year’s Eve Day and New Year’s Day across all timezones in the world. During this time participants can post images and words and share your surroundings and thoughts with the rest of the MI community.

Please share this post far and wide and feel free to invite your friends, family and loved ones to join in, all are welcome and we will be sharing the optional theme: One Love

At the specified MI event time, participants take a photo of where they are/what they are doing or seeing at that exact moment. Your photo can be pre-planned, or off the cuff. The idea is to create for just a brief moment in time, little windows into the lives of other participants around the world. The photo taking and subsequent viewing is great fun. Even more captivating is that feeling of unity, however brief, that is caused by the simultaneous anticipation that comes with taking part in a coordinated global event.

Let’s celebrate our community and the fact that we are all in existence at this very same moment in time on this very same planet, no matter how close or far we are, how similar or how different our lives and thoughts are from one another. One planet, one love!

The event will be a live event taking place on the Mondo Instante 44 Event Page on Facebook.
…be ready to take your photo anytime New Year’s Eve day through New Year’s day where ever you are in the world.

Post your image during event time and include:
* Your location in the world
* The local time you took your photo
* Any other info about your photo you would like to share

{ Mondo Instante, or MI, is the global photography experiment originally developed by three women on three different continents— North America (Shannon in the Cleveland, Ohio area of the United States), South America (Mecha in Puerto Madrin, Argentina), and Europe (Silvia in Rimini, Italy). Thanks to the wonders of technology and social media the three of us first conceptualized and then hashed out the idea in October of 2010.

The project name itself, Mondo Instante, is a blend of Italian “Mondo” (World) and Spanish “Instante” (Instant)—meaning “the world in an instant”—to honor the native languages of Silvia and Mecha.

The project occurs once every three to four weeks on a predetermined day at a specific time, and lasts only an instant (Mondo Instante!). At this designated singular moment, all participants from points around the world are ready with camera in hand to take a photograph of their immediate environment, whether it be a self portrait, of someone or some object close by, or a panoramic shot of their location. The photos are then submitted, and then finally posted together side by side in an online gallery exhibition here on the blog— little windows into the lives of people all over the world at the same moment in time.

For more about the project visit www.mentalbeans.com/mondo-instante }

 

Mondo Instante 43 | The whole is greater than the sum of its parts – Six Years of Mondo Instante Celebration Event

To JOIN MI 43, VISIT THE Mondo Instante 43 Event Page HERE

Well hello there! I have already written about how MI came into being in various ways in the past (if you missed it you can read about it where it is best recapped here), but the impending 6 year mark of the primordial beginnings of MI is upon us so I feel the urge to talk about it, this time focusing on is what the project has become. MI started as a seed of an idea I had while long distance driving in the dark of the night 6 year ago on October 8, 2010, and that idea was nurtured and encouraged by Mecha and Silvia, two friends from different points on the globe, and together we put together the very first MI which took place on October 23, 2010. That event yielded 22 photos.

For the next several years the project began to slowly gain participants. Word-of-mouth via social media or face to face conversations between friends, or interested parties finding the project through the Mental Beans blog was, and still is, the sole method of growing the project, and this is done purposefully. The result is, now 6 years later, an incredible group of human beings scattered all over the world who all have some sort of tie to one another—connections made by family members inviting family and friends, friends inviting friends, friends who invite friends who invite their friends, who then tell other friends, and down the line—all converging into a melting pot filled with people who have a passion for sharing life experiences with others around the globe.

The MI events continued to hover in about the 50 mark with number of participants until January 2015, when we had a sudden surge in the number of MI players (over 200) and a record 3,000 people invited to the event. It seemed we had hit a critical mass, and invites, for the first time spread to people who I couldn’t trace back to someone I knew. Even more friendships were made, and the number of photos per event reached an all time high.  That changed the nature of the events, which, in the very beginning, photos were emailed to me and I created a post here on the blog and photos were viewed after the fact. For a brief spell I turned to Flickr to showcase the photos, and you can still peruse the archives of MI 1-27 on the Mondo Instante Flickr page. Eventually, because I couldn’t keep up with the sheer number of photos being submitted via email, we turned to Facebook for real-time events, which proved to be even more exciting. It has been incredible to watch as MI has grown and expanded naturally.

Today, MI events are created as a public event through the Mental Beans Facebook page, announcements of the event are also posted here on the blog (when I have time) as well. When I am able, the photos from an event are gathered together and a collage of photos is created as a digital souvenir for everyone who has played. I lament the fact that I haven’t had the time to do this for the past several events, and, as a side note, I encourage any of our MI players to jump in and create a collage after an event if you have the time and interest, because they really are lovely to look at.

In addition to the real time events, a group, Mondo Instante Project, was created on Facebook to serve as a place for MI players to gather and communicate between events. The group is closed, meaning you need to request permission to join, but it is open to all who participate in MI, or are even considering participating! If you’re interested, search for the group on FB and ask to join, all are welcome!

And this takes me to my next point—participation in MI. It is very important that you know that each one of you plays a very important part in making MI what it is. I may have planted the seed, and I may create and facilitate events, but it is each of you, you, you! that makes MI such an amazing thing. We have a wealth of talent amongst our ranks and I would love to see, and encourage, any of you to join in on the steering of the MI Project. This includes instigating mini events, sharing ideas to make the project even more fun, helping to gather together photos from an event to create the collage, or even helping to keep track of statistics we create—how many players ever? how many locations/cities in the world have been represented? how many countries? Finding people from new countries, or continents (we have yet to include Africa and Antartica in continents photographed for MI, a goal I have had for a long time). If you have a desire to become more involved please let me know! It is the collective creative energy that we all are creating together that makes MI so special and what it has become. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” as they say, and Mondo Instante is a perfect example of this.

Case in point, thanks to MI player and dear friend of mine, Wendy D, who instigated an impromptu “Hands Up If You love Mondo Instante” mini event on the MI Project group this past weekend, the idea of all MI members having the option to spark an off the cuff, real time event within the group page to tide us over between official events was discussed, and I will be writing about that very soon!

In the meantime, we have MI43 happening very soon, on Saturday, October 8, 2016. We are celebrating the birth of the MI idea, exactly 6 years after that long drive that sparked an idea. The event is an all day event (starting at 12am October 8, in the first time zone that has an MI player and ending at 11:59pm October 8 in the last time zone that has an MI player) and all are welcome to join, and all are welcome to invite friends to join in for the first time, or to return to the event! Optional theme? I think it has to be “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts!” If you haven’t already joined in, add yourself to the Mondo Instante 43 Event and spread the word!

Once again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you, every single one of you who has ever taken part in, or spread the word about, Mondo Instante. You have made this such a wonderful journey, and I am excited to see what the coming events bring for us!

Mondo Instante 42 Event Announcement

Mondo Instante 42 Summer/Winter Solstice Eve Global Event
Sunday, June 19, 2016
8pm local time

For more visit the Mondo Instante page on this blog, or the MI42 Event on Facebook, where the posting will occur!