Seth Keen

These are some notes from a lecture I gave recently in Integrated Media (2007) on Tom Sherman’s article ‘vernacular video’. I used this quote as a starting point for discussion:

Video in 2007 is not the exclusive medium of technicians or specialists or journalists or artists–it is the peoples’ medium. The potential of video as a decentralized communications tool for the masses has been realized, and the twenty-first century will be remembered as the video age. Surveillance and counter-surveillance aside, video is the vernacular form of the era–it is the common and everyday way that people communicate. Video is the way people place themselves at events and describe what happened. (locate) (situate) In existential terms (your own meaning), video has become everyperson’s POV (point of view). It is an instrument for framing existence and identity.

How does this affect video content? Sherman proposes a list of characteristics that will emerge as part of what he has called this ‘vernacular video’ form. His objective in pointing out these characteristics, I suggest is not necessarily to endorse them, in fact he possibly does not look on many of them favourably. Instead the idea is to draw attention to them with the objective to encourage practitioners to explore in his words “elegant” appropriations of these characteristics. Sherman suggests that under the current mode of ubiquity, where video production and distribution is accessible to anyone with a camera, computer and Internet access, ‘vernacular video’ will take on a number of distinctive characteristics. In the following notes I have added in my own interpretations, examples and ideas that come to mind in response to these characteristics that Sherman proposes.

Video works are already and will become inevitably “shorter” which also means all sorts of durations in between the TVC and longer form television. The documentary form may be packed down into 3,5,7 minutes for example. These durations will be about producing content for platforms like YouTube, ipods and mobiles. The skill will be the ability to work in different ways within shorter time frames, along with accommodating the characteristics of varying platforms, delivery speeds and screen sizes.

“Canned music”: Sherman argues that the branding attributes of advertising will play a key role where the aim is to tap into getting messages across that are memorable and powerful. A big part of successful moving-image advertising is about simplifying the message and using repetition. A soap for example has a consistent theme tune and opening and closing credits, all part of branding and creating identity awareness around the content. The popular vlog Chasing Windmills title sequence is an example.

“Recombinant” video aesthetics Recombinant here is the re-use of video through sampling and remixing. I like Bernard Schutze’s article titled ‘Ideas in the Mix: the heap’ and his argument that we function in a remix culture, he writes

Mix, mix again, remix: copyleft, cut ‘n’ paste, digital jumble, cross-fade, dub, tweak the knob, drop the needle, spin, merge, morph, bootleg, pirate, plagiarize, enrich, sample, break down, reassemble, multiply input source, merge output, decompose, recompose, erase borders, remix again.

Sherman points out that a recombinant approach relies heavily on repetition and he refers again to chorus lines in pop music as an example of this repetitive approach. In a more refined form, I can’t help but think of electronic music loops. Early Steve Reich tunes come to mind.

“Real-time on the fly voice-overs”: These are narration tracks that are done spontaneously a bit like a blog post, written as you think it and experience it, you post it. These narration tracks are possibly more self-reflexive rather than necessarily being story driven or even informative. They are recorded and added in a number of varying styles that suit that moment in time. These styles are exploratory and experimental, even poetic.

“On-screen text”: Like written languages that are being developed around SMS, email and chat rooms. Sherman proposes that the text applied to ‘vernacular video’ through a spontaneous approach and configured immediately within the video software being used morphs into a type of text-based video language that contains a fair degree of noise and idiosyncratic grammar.

“Crude animation”: Animation either independent or mixed in with real-life video content he argues will be influenced by amateur type aesthetics. Sherman states that “Crude is cool, opposed to slick.” Adrian Miles in a recent integrated media lecture (2007) listed these attributes as part of what he named ‘dirty media’:

dirty; messy; noisy; other; amateur; prosumer; general; post-industrial; minor; debate

…as opposed to traditional media:

clean; tidy; quiet; same; professional; freelance; restricted; industrial; major; sedentary

(Adrian Miles’ Video Vortex/argos softvideo presentation recorded on video)

“Slow-mo-Acceleration”: Sherman simply states that these techniques will be over-used. I know that problem, I have to take a snack break to stop myself pushing the speed effect button and rendering. Working with the everyday in videodefunct pedestrian recently was an interesting experiment in avoiding the effects palette.

This also ties in with his discussion on “digital effects”. It is so easy to rely on an effect as a “fix all” as Sherman points out and to create a sense of dislocation, a dream like induced state that has connotations of what he calls “dirty surrealism”. A recent example of a more sophisticated approach towards speeds and effects is this work by Peter Horvath in the work TRIPTYCH: MOTION STILLNESS RESISTANCE (2006) (Peter Horvath’s Video Vortex/argos presentation recorded on video)

“Travelogues” will dictate as a genre Sherman suggests. This characteristic creeps into Keith Deverell’s Australian travels as fragmented looped clips in pedestrian. Speaking of blogged travel I am on the email list for the German online documentary maker Florian Thalhofer who is travelling across the States recording people’s stories in the 1000 stories project on a BMW motorbike.

Finally, the genres will collide and mix Sherman argues into what he calls “mediated horror”. Some content that comes to mind is some local video installations that where done by a Melbourne arts collective. They appropriated and curated terrorist head chopping and throat cutting online video as part of very didactic approach towards politicising the terrorist debate.

The challenge Sherman puts out there in this article as mentioned earlier is for practitioners to be able to engage with these aesthetics with some degree of finesse that makes their work exemplary amongst a video overload of user-generated content. Video content that as was stated in a recent presentation review by Michael Stevenson on the Masters of Media blog, provides an alternative to the YouTube piano-playing-cat video.

Reference:
Tom Sherman, ‘Video Vernacular’, www.nettime.org, Nettime mailing list archives,

http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0701/msg00080.html,

January, 2007 (accessed October, 2007)