Mar 2, 2007
ipod video, an island
Today, in the lab we had a discussion about having to create a standard video format for ipods (i.e the frame size, data rate etc) just like for example creating a delivery format for a program for television. The lab decided to bypass being restricted by video podcasting standards, in favour of leaving the published video on the Internet. The discussion was prompted by the aim to set up a reblog of video content that has a web feed from each student blog. Each video object from each individual student, which is made around a pre-set theme is brought together into one blog via the use of an aggregator. Each video object on their own blogs remains in the context of the environment it was created in. In the reblog also like in their personal blogs all the video objects remain within the networked environment of the Internet.
Nicholas Carr in a recent blog post titled ‘Steve’s devices’ provides a critique of Apple’s motives in terms of how their devices like ipods are designed in relation to the Internet. Carr states:
Jobs, in fact, couldn’t possibly be more out of touch with today’s Web 2.0 ethos, which is all about grand platforms, open systems, egalitarianism, and the erasing of the boundary between producer and consumer. Like the iPod, the iPhone is a little fortress ruled over by King Steve. It’s as self-contained as a hammer. It’s a happening staged for an elite of one. The rest of us are free to gain admission by purchasing a ticket for $500, but we’re required to remain in our seats at all times while the show is in progress. User-generated content? Hah! We’re not even allowed to change the damn battery. In Jobs’s world, users are users, creators are creators, and never the twain shall meet.
[...] In the last few weeks I have been planning out an approch towards the videodefunct video database project. Initally, I imagined developing one-off video objects that provided a critique of the video-sharing site YouTube. The idea was to explore in each of these objects, both a formal and cultural critique. This means the works would aim to experiment both with form and content as part of examining video as a form beyond single-channel closed objects, like the hardcopy output approach of television programs, or even a cinematic edit going to a locked-off film print. A video form that as dicussed in the post on ipod video, is more responsive to the properties of the Internet as a network. [...]
[...] Back to the earlier Guardian article which discusses things like size restriction (working in the miniature), quality and of course the ability for the viewer to scroll back and forth. In terms of YouTube having frame size, file type and therefore compression quality control of your video uploads this does not leave much room for individual aesthetic input from the artist. I see this as setting publishing standards, a referral to old media like TV broadcasting. A video sharing site like blip.tv at least lets you chose some file types, determine frame size and choose a creative commons license. Also there is some key differences in the terms of use in regards to copyright and intellectual property. But this type of flexiability could be taken a lot further. I discuss the notion of standards in more detail here on my blog. The idea that apple also like YouTube aims to gain some form of control over the way content is distributed often in a manner that Nicholas Carr points out as being unsympathetic towards what the Internet offers as a networked environment. [...]