Lawrence Lessig provides in the presentation ‘Free Culture: What we need from you’ an excellent insight into his concept of “free culture.” He argues that audio and video offer in the digital realm and within the Internet environment a new platform of “speech”: (21.00-22.00)
This is read-write culture. This is digital creativity. It’s the creativity these technologies beg for, creativity that of course it is not new when you think of film and television for the last 60 years, what is new is that this capacity has been democratised. Anyone with a 1500 dollar computer can take images and sounds from the culture around us and remix them in a way to express either political ideas or cultural criticism, in the most powerful way any of us know how to speak. Through video and music, these tools of creativity are now tools of speech producing a new potential to speak, a new potential to learn, this is the literacy of the 21st Century and its capacity is to revive this read-write culture.
‘Free Culture: What we need from you’, by Lawrence Lessig, Linux World, Recorded August 15, 2006
Tom Worthington notes on Stephen Mayne’s (Crikey.com founder), talk on journalism and the role blogs could play in media.
Stephen argues that Web 2.0 user generated content is not new. Letters to the editor and talkback radio are old forms of user generated journalism. Unfiltered anonymous online forums quickly generate into a mess. Bloggers don’t break many major public stories. Due to compulsory voting, independent bloggers are unlikely to influence elections. The bloggers need a partnership with the conventional media to reach a mass market. Bloggs can also continue a public debate, in the place of declining public forums.
Free tool offers ‘easy’ coding
By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News
A free programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been developed.
Primarily aimed at children, Scratch does not require prior knowledge of complex computer languages.
Instead, it uses a simple graphical interface that allows programs to be assembled like building blocks.
I prepared this link resource for the course Networked Media which grew into other affliated resources that make up this post. Most of the online video preparation and publication that we do is in QuickTime with a .mov result. Some of the resources referred to here also touch on other media players and file types.
Media players (context): QuickTime wikipedia QuickTime definition; real player; wikipedia real player definition; Windows Media Player - wikipedia WMP definition; Flip4mac - home website; Flash; VLC (open source) wikipedia VLC definition
QuickTime, WHY?: QuickTime apple website - why quicktime?; Why QuickTime? dvblog
Streaming Video: wikipedia streaming media;webcast; The streaming suitcase; video on streaming viddler - rin Jansen, author of “NetLingo The Internet Dictionary” and founder of NetLingo.com,
Compressing Video:CompressingH264 media wiki (miki); H.264 compression; quicktime tutorials apple H.264 apple information; video for ipod; quicktime tutorials apple freevlog - 4.1 Compress For The Web (iMovie); Make Internet TV: Exporting video (video clip explanation)
Applying a Creative Commons License onto video clips - marking video
Video sharing and embedding:; blip tv; Wordpress - vPIP plug-in; uploading video freelog (includes blip.tv)
video tutorial sites: our media; current TV
In the still/open workshop we are getting into the following open source apps:
arduino - The open-source Arduino environment makes it easy to write code and upload it to the i/o board. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The environment is written in Java and based on Processing, avr-gcc, and other open source software.
processing - Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions.
My interest in Lawrence Lessig’s writing led to some feedback on his simplified powerpoint presentation style. I discovered what is called the ‘Lessig method‘ of presentation on Garr Reynold’s blog. Here is Lessig’s ‘free culture’ example on video. Which linked me to the humorous webcast presentation example on identity 2.0 by Dick Hardt. A follow up led to other related presentation styles - ‘Living large: “Takahashi Method” uses king-sized text as a visual’; The Kawasaki Method: an enlightened presentation approach…
Following is a summary I drafted in the //non-video/new-video/net-video post for the still/open workshop and blog:
My interest in the still/open workshop is motivated by both my teaching and PhD research, with particular focus on a couple of projects that I am currently developing. The first is the Video Vortex conference that I have been working on as a principal researcher with the Institute of Network Cultures (INC) in Amsterdam. Video Vortex focuses on how video is potentially being used on the Internet and critically analyses from an alternative perspective social media websites like YouTube and video blogs. The second project is videodefunct which is an experimental work that explores a hybrid form of video blog. Currently, as a work-in-progress, a number of prototypes are being developed in the open source blog publishing system WordPress. In a broader context this critical analysis of online video practice supports my teaching in the Internet based subjects Networked Media and Integrated Media, in the Media department at RMIT.
Open source as a concept in these activities extends beyond the area of software with important connections into ideologies being explored around copyright as part of ‘free culture’ initiatives and peer-to-peer alternatives. I am interested in examining the notion of what it means to operate, produce and share in an ‘open’ process, through a critical analysis that investigates these “modes of thinking” from varying perspectives.
The first event as part of building towards the Video Vortex conference in Amsterdam is scheduled for 5th October, 2007 and is a colloboration between the Argos, Centre for Art & media, and The Institute of Network Cultures (INC). Below is the description of the event from the mail out:
Video Vortex: Responses to YouTube Over the past years the moving image has claimed an increasingly prominent place on the internet. Thanks to a wide range of technologies and web applications it has become possible, not only to record and distribute video, but to edit and remix it on-line as well. With this world of possibilities within reach of a multitude of social actors, the potential of video as a personal means of expression has arrived at a totally new dimension. How is this potential being used? How do artists and activists react to the popularity of YouTube and other ‘user-generated-content’ websites? What is the impact of the availability of massive on-line images and sound databases on aesthetics and narrativity? How is Cinema, as an art form and experience, influenced by the development of widely spreading internet practices? What does YouTube tell us about the state of art in visual culture? And how does the participation culture of video-sharing and vlogging reach some degree of autonomy and diversity, escaping the laws of the mass media and the strong grip of media conglomerates?
This Video Vortex conference is the first in a series of international events, aimed at critical research and reflection surrounding the production and distribution of on-line video content, at the instigation of the Institute of Network Cultures (INC).
Speakers: Lev Manovich, Nora Barry, Keith Sanborn, Tomas Rawlings & Ana Kronschnabl, Simon Ruschmeyer, Peter Westenberg, Johan Grimonprez. Others tbc. Moderated by Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures) organised by Stoffel Debuysere (argos).
I located the open mute website through Andrew Murphie’s blog Adventures in Jutland. The about on open mute:
OpenMute is a web resource project aiming to support cultural practice in the information age. Through the provision of server space, tools, practical guidance and critical contextualisation, we seek to develop open and collaborative ways of working, and contribute to the kind of public knowledge architectures that will serve practitioners’ needs over the long term.
The organisation recieves public funds and acknowledges the england arts council. They provided some interesting book references produced through their (pod) print on demand initiative :
The Class of the New Netizens, elancers, cognitarians, swarm-capitalists, hackers, produsumers, knowledge workers, pro-ams… these are just a few of the monikers that have been applied to the new social class emerging from the networked workplace.Media Mutandis: a NODE.London Reader It engages debates in FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software), media arts and activism, collaborative practices and the political economy of cultural production in the present day.DiY Survival diy survival DiY survival is a collection of essays, tips and case studies collated from an online call for participation by the maverick art group C6.
They are also involved in the open organisation project.