Archive for December, 2007

Video Addiction

Published
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seth.keen
on December 31, 2007
in YouTube, critique, forecasts, online video and video vortex
. 0 Comments

Video Addiction: A confession by Seth Keen, written for the Video Vortex conference (January 18-19-2008).

“I don’t use YouTube much…”

Video Vortex happened for me as a researcher and collaborator through my PhD research into online video practice that I started at RMIT University in Melbourne at the beginning of 2006. I was interested in being part of a project that generated a current critical perspective on what is occurring around video on the Internet. In terms of my own research, which is project-based the Video Vortex Amsterdam conference, the Argos forum in Brussels and the Montevideo exhibition program provided a platform to examine online video practice from a number of perspectives. The participants across all these events include not only theoreticians but also hands-on practitioners including artists, activists, hacktivists, media producers and web developers.

Hooked on video, I have a history of contact with video practice from early pioneering single-handed write, shoot, direct and edit TV documentaries shot on the Hi8 format, through to previous MA research that focused on the influences of the Internet on audiovisual narrative structures. Examining online video directly was a natural progression from these earlier experiences. Focusing on alternative and independent platforms is influenced by my interest in documentaries, the democratisation of access to production and autonomous methods of distribution made possible by the Internet. With the Internet, there is the potential for a diversity of content that is not centralised like mass media. I have always remained critical of populist genres, favouring instead avant-garde approaches that consider both form and content in their realisation. My passion is exploring new audiovisual territories as way to critique the status quo. I think it is important to continually question the way media is articulated and digested.

Craving a new direction, I made the decision as a practising TV documentary maker to either consolidate my practice or put myself in a position that enabled me to examine change and developments in audiovisual practice. Teaching and researching provided a fantastic space to pursue a position of reflection and critique. I currently teach in a very progressive media department that has been prepared to face up to the enormous changes occurring in media, as part of negotiating the influences of the Internet and new digital technologies. An integral part of the program focuses on the nexus between practice and theory. I teach courses that engage directly with the production and distribution of online video content. Exposure to both the hands-on technical aspects and theoretical context of this teaching feeds directly into my research and this topic.

There is a strong emphasis in the department and broader School of Applied Communication I teach in towards project-based research. A mode of research influenced by developments in this area within the School of Architecture and Design. I have been encouraged to think about the way that practice can be used to generate research. This can be research through practice, research on practice and research about practice. The Video Vortex events provide platforms to examine and critique existing online video practice. Alongside this event the collective videodefunct project that I am working on utilises an iterative approach to generate new types of practice. Each prototype is used to inform the next experiment. These hybrid vlogs critique online video practice by examining the adaptation of video for Internet publication and storytelling within this environment.

The research behind this conference spans almost two years through a significant period of growth in online video practice. The topic itself covers an enormous amount of developments at a pace that only occurs on the Internet. A pace that can really only be managed through a collective flexible process of inquiry. This is research that relies on a network of people working together towards a specific focus. Social software tools like social bookmarking and mail lists play an integral role in this type of approach, where the sharing and transparency of information is paramount.

It is hard to ignore the pivotal role YouTube has played in making video the medium of the moment on the Internet. Economic success stories like YouTube generate a flurry of copycat activity and reappropriation as developers look for the next latest thing that will get users flocking to their address. At the same time a website like YouTube raises all sorts of other questions around things like ethics, copyright and aesthetics to name a few. YouTube represents a significant shift in how people are beginning to understand the potential of the Internet. But, unfortunately due to the speed of these developments and the hype, there are very few critical points of view. It is the unnoticed small-scale alternative developments that often provide a contradictory viewpoint. With the conference interested in both the success and failure of YouTube, the research has revealed many projects that respond to YouTube from a questioning critical position. It is the close analysis of these projects that provides crucial insights into this topic.

I don’t use YouTube much unlike some of my students who are 24-7 addicts or even a colleague who has given up TV and uses editorial services like videosift to do long chill-out sessions after work. I tend to work across all of the video archive websites and the Internet in search of online video content that I think provides useful context in my teaching and research, these I bookmark on delicious. I think online video provides great opportunities to distribute presentations and interviews as part of the open knowledge mandate. These opportunities I think are still yet to be fully realised in terms of archiving and the metadata tagging of the video timeline as part of accessing information in smaller non-linear units rather than in the larger traditional linear form.

What I do notice with teaching in this area is some of the issues that students encounter with YouTube. There is very little consciousness of the terms and conditions that YouTube imposes and other social media websites like MySpace and Facebook. In most cases it takes students awhile to realise that just because a website is fashionable and seen as being successful due to popularity, that this does not necessarily make it bona fide. Over time there is this realisation that there are other services that may offer more for the user in terms of respecting their rights and aesthetic needs. These other options are often located by tuning into online discussions that critique and lay out the pros and cons.

Somehow there is also a blindness to the aesthetic restrictions that a website like YouTube places on producers of online video content. YouTube has frame size, file type and compression quality control over the video uploads which leaves no room for individual aesthetic input from the producer. I see this as setting publishing standards, a referral to old media like TV broadcasting. Also, it seems to early in the development of online video to grasp the concept that online video could move beyond the YouTube regurgitated TV-cinema model of single-channel linear clips. Ironically, to demonstrate this point, I heard recently that there was TV program that was broadcasting YouTube videos in the funniest home video style. Beyond this direct translation, I believe there are types of online video that can be more responsive to the materialities of the Internet, exploring linking, networked structures and other multi-channel forms of presentation.

Understanding the friction around copyright on YouTube and more broadly the Internet is another significant hurdle. Discussions on copyright has produced some of the most vocal input from students, it is a topic that attracts a lot of interest and passionate debate. Initially, the laissez faire attitude of YouTube towards copyright is really attractive and offers a lot of freedom. Often the most important requirement seems to be having the option to grab a copy and get it onto your own website or blog. Exposure to the varying approaches towards copyright from copyleft, creative commons through to conglomerates like Hollywood aiming for total control, raises all sorts of questions for students who are aiming to become media professionals. YouTube does not offer the user a choice when it comes to being able to choose some of these alternatives, like applying creative commons licenses for example.

A more hidden aspect is questioning the way YouTube as a commercial enterprise utilises creative labour for economic gain. The huge financial success of YouTube and other websites like MySpace for example have brought more attention onto this issue. But, from what I can tell, for the moment, this is restricted to a minority of theorists rather than becoming a significant public debate. It is intriguing that all the creative activities from making, uploading to favourite lists and beyond are all taking place under one roof, like a factory plant. A minority of owners at one centralised address have the power to remove users and their content. But, these websites offer free storage space, along with the prospect of public exposure and possible celebrity status. These attractive qualities for users often overshadow the economic inquiry.

multitude.tv: A YouTube parasite

Published
by
seth.keen
on December 30, 2007
in online video and video vortex
. 0 Comments

Here is Matthew Mitchem’s response to some questions I sent him about the multitude.tv project. Matthew is presenting at the Video Vortex conference on the Alternative Platforms and Software panel (Amsterdam, January 18/19).

SK - I am interested in the differences you are working on addressing in contrast to the way YouTube operates as part of offering an alternative. Along with the political motivations and undertones.

MM - Well we’re not entirely disconnected from Youtube, rather per a bit parasitic on it. YouTube is related to multitude.tv as more or less one host amongst other platforms. This is largely to reduce bandwidth, but also to exploit those particular platforms out of their own context. YouTube, I think, is an “alternative” largely in relation to “old media” particularly television. On the Internet YouTube (and other major hosts) are really large databases each with their own rules, and their own relations to each other and old media. I would agree with Geert that when we talk about YouTube were largely speaking of video on the Internet (not that this is accurate, but it is easy).

Then of course, multitude.tv has obvious activist undertones, There is with many members of the site an activist history, my personal history in this regard is largely tied up with a kind of late 1990s/early 2000’s Midwestern situationism of an “Adbusters” flavor.

Less, and perhaps unrecognizably political, is the broad range of interest, philosophy, art, science (lifted from Deleuze & Guattari’s “What is Philosophy”) and global, cultural, and media (arenas of activism). These aren’t the only reasons for these organizational choices, but this example reflexes some of the thought behind them. I think these are all intense points of political intersection, though not necessarily partisan. Also with Deleuze, and against Badiou, I would resist counting politics amongst the “disciplines” of “Philosophy, Art, and Science”.

In some ways I think this capacity of multitude.tv to be parasitical of the YouTubes of the net differentiates it from YouTube, and that it is healthier for the functioning of the site (in terms of database/directory load) to be parasitical is not without import. This I would suggest is part of its malleability.

Another consideration in organizing multitude.tv is a consideration of the flows of integrations on the site. For example, all of the comments are run through the same component as the forums (Communicate). While some information is less integrated (user profile information for example). There is also, in contrast to YouTube, a relatively transparent editorial organization, editors are more active members of the site who express interest in being editors.

Currently another site member and I are putting together editorial guidelines. All of this of course operates on a different organization than membership of YouTube. On YouTube members are more or less equal (there are corporate and promotional exceptions), but in terms of users they are equal; there are more administrative barriers to adding different kinds of content on multitude.tv (I don’t like it, it is managerial and I resist it), and like YouTube one does not have to be a member of multitude.tv to access most of its content (user profiles being major exception); and like YouTube one must be a member to add videos to the site.

However, the content of multitude.tv is placed within an organization around topics; in this way it acts more or less like a standard web 2.0 collective blog (wordpress, etc), especially in regards to News items. Furthermore, like those blogs, videos may also appear in the content. However, we also act as a video-filter for videos appearing throughout the Internet on multiple sites; bringing them together by and for a community.

For example, we’ve recently been bringing together videos on philosophers, longer documentaries, which are then searchable via the site; so that multitude.tv can act as a kind of interest filter for on-line video. (Philosophy professors for example may direct students to the site) This is a minor use of the site, but one that is concrete; a use that was an affect of the organization and presentation of the content.

SK - There seems a lot to work with and explain in relation to the motivations behind the project and the actual way these work within the framework of the website. It would be good to get a better understanding of how multitude.tv works - I read the ‘about’ and engaged with the website and wanted more explanation of what is taking place in this space and possibly how you see it being developed in the future. i.e. What has been learnt? What is being seen as a focal point for that development?

MM – Right now, we are busy getting the format of the on-line journal launched, it will be an on-line journal with Articles, Reviews and an Art section, replacing the current Articles and Reviews on the site. The focus of development at this point is to stir registered users to use the site, and to get new members. We have discussed the possibility of a conference, and we are participating in various forums. Though we are hesitant in being overtly political, largely due to the current polemical nature of politics, particularly in the US. Ideally the site could be a space for other projects to emerge from, for collaborations to form; the area called “Collaborate” is an area for users to create groups. In a similar way that myspace/faceboook etc work, but with an a priori interest in those fields through which the site is organized.

SK - In your earlier reference to open source software this could be seen as secondary maybe to the alternative platform focus - possible briefly covered as part of working with open source applications and integrating these with this type of initiative…even looking at the issues faced in doing this etc…

MM - This is the final major part of the redesign of the site, which included all kinds of lessons learned about operating and configuring a CMS, in this case Joomla. Many of the previous components that made up the old site were replaced… and the redesign went much deeper than the template. I might want to discuss particular components operating on the site, especially Seyret, the component that host and organizes, the video. This component more or less makes easy the creation of an online video site (much like YouTube), for free (there is a pro version available with more features and for a price). It lends itself to various ways of organizing and presenting videos from all over the net and is the video content poaching brain of our site. Furthermore it’s highly configurable by the user, our designer did a complete template overhaul for it (and for much of the site), which was with relatively straightforward modifications. I should also say that regardless of the parasitical relationship to YouTubes, multitude.tv can host videos, though we are limited in format (and unfortunately presently do not support ogg); and we encourage members to upload/submit their own work to the site.

Thanks for your notes on the ‘About’ page; I would agree that it is very ambiguous, and needs to continually be fleshed out, and it is my hope that as the community expands (slowly) and develops the about page will change… It is modified about every 6 months anyway, as strategies and interest moves in the user community.

SK - Some questions - How is editing and posting handled (is there gatekeeping?) When something is posted by multitude.tv is that one person or a group?

MM - A post by “multitude.tv” is usually by me, though editable by anyone in the editorial collective (publisher status on the site). At one time we did have a more explicit membership structure, but now it is a reflection of organization and administration access to the site. I am more or less a fulcrum of the site, more as an administrator than as an executive; and different projects of the site have more active participants (I work principally with one user for design, a few others for editing, another for publishing of news items, and a few folks for translation, and one user that watches where our traffic comes from). I largely address technical concerns myself and don’t bother anyone until I can’t do anything more, though volunteers are always welcome. I don’t enjoy multitude.tv being referred to as my project, or my site, and I have a resistance to too much organization, and the “lessons learned” are all about making concessions to organization, and trying various strategies. It should also be noted I am not the only person with access to the backend structure of the site, there are other administrators. One has to be an idealist on some level to experiment like this…

Thanks a lot, I get a great deal out of thinking and writing about these things… We made the forum “multitude.tv” in the Communicate section (viewable when signed in) to discuss the site itself, discussions like this (though the forum has been fairly mute)…

vidgets

Published
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seth.keen
on December 21, 2007
in online video, practice-based research and references
. 0 Comments

David Wolf has made his MA exegesis available online as a pdf download. It is titled Vidgets: The Development and Use of Interactive, Network Based Video Works.

black sand

Published
by
seth.keen
on December 21, 2007
in moi
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Slipped back to NZ for a short holiday recently and Esme got to meet the whanau and see black sand on the west coast at Raglan.

esme_sand.jpg

New Media, Networks and New Pedagogies

Published
by
seth.keen
on December 20, 2007
in media education
. 0 Comments

FC just published New Media, Networks and New Pedagogies a journal publication edited by Adrian Miles. The summary outlining the topic for submissions.

It is easy to argue that much of the rhetoric attached to “new media” and the internet in relation to pedagogy has mistaken quantity for quality. It has been a conversation that has confused the qualitative changes that our new conceptions of media, knowledge, and networks afford with the quantitative changes beloved of those who confuse teaching and learning with instruction and consumption. These new qualities are the differences between the vector and commodity, blogs and books.

However, imagine if our universities had been invented now. What would pedagogy be? What form would teaching and learning take? What would count as knowledge? Expertise? What forms would this knowledge take?

Taking this as a departure this issue of the Fibreculture Journal invited those working in new media, internet studies, education, and cognate disciplines to discuss the strengths and celebrate the possibilities that new media and its networks affords teaching and learning. The emphasis in this issue is not on the criticism or description of existing models and paradigms but to invite the exploration and celebration of new possibilities, real or imagined. What new knowledge formations should there be? How would they be taught? How could they assessed (if at all)? What critical academic work, and in what forms, would our students be producing?

post industrial media

Published
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seth.keen
on December 20, 2007
in media education
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I managed to fit in a day at the research retreat that we have been planning for awhile before I headed off on holidays to NZ. We have named the research The Post Industrial Media project and have been working collaboratively in a wiki. The photo gallery for the retreat.

The Post Industrial Media project is a small collaborative project undertaken by staff within the RMIT media program. Post industrial media is a term that we have adopted to refers to the changes in media production, use, consumption, distribution and design that are the consequence of distributed networks, digitisation, and soft social systems. The project specifically deals with media education in the tertiary sector and describes teaching and learning experiments and probes undertaken within the media program to develop appropriate curriculum content and methods for teaching graduates who intend to enter the post industrial media landscape. We term this ‘media literacy 2.0′.

Connected with this work is a Carrick project that AM has been working on called The Digital Learning Communities Project, a drupal site.

The Digital Learning Communities Project is exploring the role of social software and social networking in supporting peer learning in higher education.

embed quicktime jquery plugin

Published
by
seth.keen
on December 19, 2007
in tools
. 0 Comments

AM sent across this plugin update for the embed quicktime jquery plugin. This is the full step-by-step instructions. Anything to get around flash.

Embed QuickTime is a jQuery plugin that helps you embed QuickTime movies to play directly on your webpage, instead of redirecting your video to a separate page or forcing you to embed a video using Flash. It changes regular image links to the embedded QuickTime video when they are clicked. It works with .mov, .mp4 and .m4v files.

argos video vortex presentations

Published
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seth.keen
on December 17, 2007
in online video and video vortex
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Video coverage of the video vortex ARGOS presentations are available on the ARGOS blog Video Vortex video documentation post.