Cesar Kuriyama: One second every day

“Basically, I’m recording one second of every day of my life for the rest of my life—chronologically compiling these one-second, tiny slices of my life into one single continuous video,” says Kuriyama in today’s talk. Why? “I hate not remembering things that I’ve done in the past,” he says.

When Kuriyama turns 40, he’ll have a one-hour video encapsulating his 30s. And when he turns 80, he’ll have a five-hour video spanning 50 years. In this talk, he reveals what he recorded in the first 365 days of the project — both the glorious and the painful.

Naturally, Kuriyama was curious what others would do with this tool. And so he took to Kickstarter, where more than 11,000 people funded his efforts to create a 1 Second Everyday app. It’s available for iOS now, and will soon be available for Android.  Below, see some of the videos created with it.

Ryan Kawailani Ozawa—who describes himself as a father, husband and web geek—downloaded the app for the new year. Here’s his January 2013, in a beautiful 31 seconds.

A friend of Kuriyama’s, Kathy Monahan set out to record all of 2012, editing the footage together herself since the app wasn’t available yet. Watch her year unfold, from concerts to learning how to use a crossbow.

Arseny Vez of in St. Petersburg, Russia, shares his January 2012 using the app.

Think 1 Second Everyday is for the dogs? Possibly. Here, a user has captured January 2013 in the life of their dog, Henry.

A look at January 2013 in Amsterdam.

From ultrasounds to what’s for dinner, John Mezzepesa captured December 2012 and January 2013.

Ben Nesvig’s French bulldog is just one of the stars of his video of January 2013.

Martha Denton filmed January 2013 in New York City, Milwaukee and Detroit.

Pedro Sostre edited together one second from every iPhone video he’s taken over the past five years.

Robbie Marr brings you January 2013 in Brighton, England.

Chicken and waffles figure greatly in Oliver Church’s 2013 thus far.

Laura Ferenc captured both December and January 2013. She writes, “This left-brain heavy, non-creative bookkeeper is taking a bit more time noticing things each day.”

The second half of 2013, as captured by Collin Ferry.

Years ago, Steven Addis’s wife photographed him holding their 1-year-old daughter on the corner of 57 Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. On her second birthday, the family happened to be back in the city, so headed to the same corner for daddy-daughter photo, round two. The next year, Addis brought his daughter back to New York — on purpose, this time — to take the same photograph.

This annual ritual is now 15 years strong. And in today’s talk, filmed at TED2012, Addis shares his “15 most treasured photos,” all but the first two snapped by strangers he handed his camera to. The most recent image drew big laughs from the TED audience, as Addis is holding his now-teenaged daughter in his arms. She appears to be nearly his height.

“These photos are far more than proxies for a single moment or even a specific trip,” Addis says. “They are also ways for us to freeze time for one week in October and reflect on time and how we change from year to year—and not just physically, but in every way. Because while we take the same photo, our perspectives change.”

Addis’s hope in sharing this metamorphosis through photographs is to encourage others to take “an active role in consciously creating memories.”

To see Addis’ father-daughter photo series, watch his moving talk.  And below, a look at others who are realizing the power of the same image repeated over time in impressive, funny and meaningful time-lapse projects.

1. When he turned 30, Cesar Kuriyama decided to start filming one second every single day. The cut-together snippets show adventure, boredom, illness, nature, coffee, computers — that is, life, alternately exciting and mundane. Kuriyama gave the talk “Filming one second every day” at TED2012 about this now lifelong project.

Recently, Kuriyama has been working on a 1 Second Everyday App. This month, he took to Kickstarter to fund it. With over a week to go, the project already has twice the amount Kuriyama needed to get the app off the ground. Read the TED Blog’s Q&A with Kuriyama about why he decided to create the app, so others could film their lives too.

2. In a similar (and similarly beautiful) project, Dutch filmmaker and artist Frans Hofmeester filmed his daughter, Lotte, every day from birth to age 12. They do grow up fast—in under three minutes, in this case.

3. Last week, the New York Times’s Op-Docs team put out a video chronicling a day in the life of a piano on a street in New York City’s Washington Heights. This short film, by Anthony Sherin, has a gripping narrative arc—and inspires an unusual degree of empathy toward the piano, a.k.a. an inanimate object. (Spoiler: get out some tissues.)

4. And now for something completely different: this exuberant video of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, is not just another cityscape time-lapse, argues Mashable: it “may just take the genre to a whole new level,” using “quick cuts, neck-twisting camera angles and a pumped up soundtrack to mesmerizing effect.” You may be inspired to visit, or at least to go party at a nightclub.

5. Still have that box of tissues handy? This video of the Milky Way, shot during May evenings in South Dakota, is the kind of majestic footage that makes you reflect on your place in the world. The videographer, Randy Halverson, has made a number of other time-lapse videos as well.

6. For the past 30 years, a family in China has held a photo ritual that is strikingly similar to Addis’. On Father’s Day, 31-year-old daughter Zhao Meng Meng posted on Weibo images of herself with her father, one taken every of year of her life. The amazing images quickly went viral.