Seth Keen

Grayson’s k-film/online documentary ‘Live Audio-Visual performance in Australia‘.

Engage Media are looking for a Video Lingua Coordinator, to work on subtitling and translation of video. Using the description ‘Video Lingua’ got me thinking about a description for a videographer that works on annotating video content as a key part of the storytelling process.

Also Universal subtitles is mentioned as the program to use for subtitling which is really useful.

Lingua on wiktionary.

Here comes spatial montage maybe with a YouTube doubler tool.

Check out the favourites for more SM is going off!

Taking this another step HD Attention Deficit Cinema — in full on digg – High Efficiency Wide Definition Episodic Attention Deficit Multilinear Narrative with Digital THC Mastered Tri-Channel Stereo Sound Ultra Wide Format

http://delicious.com/sethkeen/design_hub_project

In defining student participation and an online presence for a documentary on the construction of the design hub without background research at this point, I have brought together the following thoughts. Most of these ideas are based around current research, projects and teaching.

Many online documentaries are developed as purpose-built websites which requires reasonable funding and resources. The other option is to use existing systems and social media tools.

Some purpose-built examples of online documentary ACMI real life documentaries (2006)

Koroskow online documentary system.

From the website:

The Korsakow-System is an easy-to-use computer program for the creation of database films. Korsakow-Films are films with a twist: They are interactive – the viewer has influence on the K-Film. They are rule-based – the author decides on the rules by which the scenes relate to each other, but s/he does not create fixed paths. K-Films are generative – the order of the scenes is calculated while viewing.

Invented by Florian Thalhofer This is web system has been around for a decade and recently went through intensive development at Concordia University in Montreal. Stabilised for general use and GNU licensed this system is now finally available for making online documentary projects. From a blog post on a korsakow workshop run at University of Southern California for the international Visible Evidence documentary conference.

Korsakow projects are database projects that function through tagging. Rather than arranging a series of video clips to make a linear story, Korsakow users instead give keyword tags to the clips, which appear in a multi-window interface, generally with one large image at the top, which plays; underneath are three related clips, from which the viewer chooses. In this way, the video unfolds based on the tagging system and through the viewer’s sequence of choices.

Korsakow documentary examples. Almost Architecture is one example. This project has a participatory aspect that contribution framework asking artists to make specific content.

Social Media Tools

Also connected to this project is some publicity on a blog called urban photo. This blog has photo collections around specific themes organised into sets on Flickr. I think this is were social media tools could be used to collate supporting material around an online documentary as well as involving participatory collaboration.

The ABC Pool interaction design project is an example of using Flickr sets to document process and progressive development of a project.

The sweets brand Skittles is an example of using social media tools to brand a product.Skittles on wikipedia sweets branding. All the branding uses outside sources for hosting and sharing product information.

Videoblog Documentaries

Videoblogs that take on a larger documentary position are ones that are subject orientated and used to document a specific subject or theme.

Lost in Light
Swanjana Life in India
Shadow World Columbia Migration Project

Specific videoblog themes are emerging as potential themes to explore this type of videoblog. i.e. Videopress an upgrade for WordPress blogs. (including hosting and compression, embed all built in etc)

Press 75 video themes Miles’ diptych interactive video example using a press75 theme.

Participatory Video

Framing student projects for participatory content development. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_video From the wikipedia definition:

Whilst there are forms of documentary filmmaking that are able to sensitively represent the realities of their subjects’ lives and even to voice their concerns, documentary films very much remain the authored products of a documentary filmmaker. As such, the subjects of documentaries rarely have any say (or sometimes have some limited say) in how they will ultimately be represented. By contrast, in PV the subjects make their own film in which they can shape issues according to their own sense of what is important, and they can also control how they will be represented.

Online video framework

In terms of student participation what I have learnt from the third year studio project PROD! is that the student’s need to have ownership in the project. Involvement in the research which includes their ideas and input on what is being explored/examined. The freedom to creatively interpret the brief and experiment with the interpretation of how that brief should be represented as a creative work/works.

This has meant setting up a constrained framework but then allowing creativity to run wild within that framework. This is an approach that is open to how the brief may be interpreted. The other learning curve has been making the video camera the pen, the scripting and sketching device to explore ideas. All of this process is transparent and available online for ongoing feedback from the teacher and other students. Reblogging as an ongoing collation and curation process really helps with understanding the development of the response to the creative brief and were it may be steered over time.

In this project I think the online video content could potentially explore cultural heritage and historical information connected to the place – the site itself. These would be short anecdotes, excerpts that can be reproduced in a short form that work together as a larger collection.

Digital Photography and Video

In regards to time-lapse I have made some notes in this post about the influence that digital photography is having on video including the development of video hardware.

Digital photography offers the opportunity even at the smallest frame size to capture high quality images that can be reproduced in the HD format. (1920 x1080) Also, there is talk of moving on from the restrictions of interlacing to working with progressive scan as way to make the most of the HD format.

I relation to this project it is worth exploring how digital photography and time-lapse could be used to tell stories rather than mainly being seen as a device for capturing the passing of time.

These works using a tilt lens technique are an example of this idea. Capturing an event from a number of varying perspectives. But, also moving beyond music video type soundtracks to sound design that enhances that narrative.

Keith Loutit photoblog
Vimeo channel
Beached

The development of the time-based photo-journalism genre is also another area for consideration. It is now not uncommon for journalism photographers (with large storage capabilities on digital cameras) to record a scene from varying perspectives, with over-saturated coverage – knowing the result will be time-based rather than just one selected photo.

On http://mediastorm.org/ this can be a mix of photos and video. ‘Common Ground’ example.

It is worth noting that the interview approach is a popular approach in an online context. Interview project David Lynch and his son Austin.

Experimental Geography – Digital Cultural Mapping

From the exhibition website:

Geography benefits from the study of specific histories, sites, and memories. Every estuary, landfill, and cul-de-sac has a story to tell. The task of the geographer is to alert us to what is directly in front of us, while the task of the experimental geographer—an amalgam of scientist, artist, and explorer—is to do so in a manner that deploys aesthetics, ambiguity, poetry, and a dash of empiricism.

Bookmark tag for websites that reflect these types of works.

hypercities example
Cyark 3-D scanner
locative painting page – a hybrid crossover of experimental geography with documentary using google maps and video content.

A curated collection of political remix from the 2008 24/7 DIY video summit.

The best viewing of the curated political remix material is on the 24/7 DIY video summit website down the bottom of the political remix webpage as separate videos rather than in the long presentation video on YouTube.

The speakers blog – http://www.politicalremixvideo.com/ – Jonathan McIntosh a remix artist, media activist, curator, photographer and pop culture hacker – http://www.rebelliouspixels.com/

Political Remix Video is an emerging genre of DIY media production in which creators critique power structures, deconstruct cultural norms and challenge dominate social narratives by transforming fragments of mainstream media and pop culture. These works have their roots in the tradition détournement where artists twist and subvert mass media – re-purposing it to present alternative messages. Political remixers provide critical (and often humorous) perspectives on politics, war, news, economics, culture, gender, sexuality and environmental issues. The form has grown considerably in recently years thanks to the increasing accessibility and popularity online video sharing tools. This program traces the history of the genre and present resent online highlights

View on YouTube the full uncut screening of presentation and curated political videos from ’24/7 DIY’.

24/7 DIY video summit has finally posted the curated selections and presentations that went with them, from the summit in early 2008. The videoblogging selection which can be viewed in one long hit on YouTube or as singular clips down the bottom of the page.

Been catching up with Jay and Ryanne who are over from the states in Melbourne. They have come to hang out with Adrian Miles. So, there has been lots of video talk with some inspiring future visions surfacing on the fringes of conversations. There has been kangaroo mobs, a lecture in intergrated media amongst other catch ups.

These are my quick notes from Adrian Miles’ recent lecture for the course Intergrated Media One in the Media department at RMITR University. I have attempted to quote what was said vrebatim and paraphrase other points from my own perspective.

The three references being referred to below:

Lumiere Manifesto
Softvideo
Vernacular Video

Lumiere Manifesto

“What would it be to think about the Internet as a studio?”

This reading in context is related specifically to video blogging practice rather than online video more broadly. There is an understanding that video blogging is seen as a type of documentary practice. Miles has written about this previously and identifies blogging as a documentary practice in that essay.

Miles, Adrian. “Blogging and Documentary.” OzDox. Sydney, November 9th, 2006.

The Lumiere Manifesto, Miles suggests focuses on the camera as a recording device where the camera records what is in front of it. But, they are not stating that this is treated as being a direct recording of reality, instead it is about looking at what is around you and capturing moments that have significance for you personally.

“Simply stop and look around at the world…”

What they promote as a manifesto is easily carried out due to accessibility to hardware and software but also because the treatment of the content is simple and does not require complicated scripting, expensive hardware/software and post-production.

In this manifesto what these writers and makers advocate has a very different approach to video –sharing websites like YouTube, which is dependent on the constant addition of content. In comparison the are wanting content producers within the specific constraints outlined to make short duration videos that have a certain beauty, resonance, poetics amongst the plethora of video content online.

The emphasis is not about narrative in this manifesto, with the focus more on the “subjective and objective” with a connection to the personal.

Softvideo

In this overview of Miles’ own essay he opened with the comment that video should be seen as having the same qualities as a blog. Key characteristics here is granularity, time and links.

Granularity in nutshell, is about video being more porous, like the way you can have access to copy and paste parts (quoting) with text. In the end this is about systems that allow video to be more granular.

Miles writes more about this idea of granularity in a section in a book chapter titled ‘Programmatic Statements for a Facetted Videography’ available in the Video Vortex reader pdf download.

Miles argues that softvideo in a simplified analysis is about video content being highly granular, made up of small bits that remain self-contained, enabling the ability to arrange them into a multitude of configurations. Miles, using the example of a linear edited sequence being made of a number of shots on the timeline, argues that a potential softvideo quality is lost, when all these individual shots are merged together when the final edit is exported into one video file.

The underlying motivation for the softvideo essay is that online video broadly should not just be seen as a delivery platform for old genres where the Internet is merely a distribution environment.

Podcasting was used as an example of this popular type of approach towards online video where nothing is changed in the content in terms of it being re-purposed for the Internet, as a different platform. wih different characteristics. A comment Miles used in a previous lecture “The ipod is treating your content like a book.” Turning this around – what is there beyond the podcasting approach?

“If we take the networks as the starting point for making – what will these objects look like?”

Time as a concept within these broadcast models radio, TV, cinema is transferred directly to the Internet and seen as being fixed and “industrial”. Within a networked environment like a computer and the Internet time does not need to be fixed in this way.

As an example of this argument, Miles has demonstrated the way QuickTime as a multimedia software, that includes video does not rely on the cinema editing software model of frames per second to playback a duration of time. QuickTime can hold a frame and play that frame for whatever set duration is created. This is an approach that responds to how time can be manipulated in a digital environment compared to transferring the film frames constraint in the analogue medium of film into non-linear software like iMovie and Final Cut Pro. This software approach towards video editing ties in with the similar approach taken towards the Internet being used as a distribution platform for TV and radio content.

Links are also an affordance, that need to be utilised in networked video. Granularity is a result of the ability to create multiple links between bits. Remembering as discussed above that film editing is fixed but also made up of whole lot of parts as shots that are edited together. In other words granularity has always been evident even in film editing but never been utilised as the focus remains on the end result, the large singular artefact rather than the parts that make up the edited film.

But, it seems to be an ongoing struggle to get online video to be seen as being anything else but a narrative that emulates previous media like cinema and televison. Software that has invigorated the potential to explore the softvideo affordances like granularity; time and links has come and gone. Ezedia the software we are currently using in this course stopped being updated a few weeks ago. Live Stage Pro has had a similar fate. What do we work in now (Keynote the Mac version of Powerpoint)? Perhaps there are some answers in the shift to open video being explored by Mozilla within the firefox browser? Making video a first class citizen of the Web

Softvideo as a concept in the end as Miles pointed out invigorates an inquiry to look at alternatives outside the status quo with the objective to find out why this may be important.

“What would you make, and why is it worth doing?”

strong>Vernacular Video

With this essay it pays to remember that it comes from the context of video art. Video art is what is being challenged here.

The accessibility of hardware and software has changed. In the past equipment was expensive and only accessed through arts funding. With this in place how does video art make itself special? – Could it be by making itself even more elitist as a “high art practice”? The response is not to continue the high-art elitist approach, which sees video art as being only made available in the white cube.

The difference being argued for is about aesthetics (to use Sherman’s word “elegance”), being used to differentiate the artist from the populist mass online video practice, taking place. Video Art takes itself into the ‘vernacular’ domain, with the challenge being to work out what type of approach makes aesthetics “relevant”.

Perhaps one approach could be focusing on form. The same formalist approaches that made video art distinct as arts practice in the gallery, could be applied within the environments where video is more broadly being articulated and distributed. Formalism in art responds to medium as a way of discerning an arts practice. For example in painting Pollock draws attention to paint as a viscous material. Painting as a practice moves to being more “self-reflexive” with the focus on form rather than content. The focus is on the medium itself as way of separating itself out from other arts practice like sculpture, for example.

What could eventuate if that formalist approach was taken in these new environments?

A while ago Jay sent across some information on HTML 5 which has functionality to include a video tag. – W3 HTML 5 video overview He talked about testing Firefox 3.1 which has video tagging and embedding built in – 3.1 is still in beta.

Using audio and video in Firefox supports ogg and wav for the moment. All looks early days still as many attributes do not seem to be supported yet. But, other tests seem to be appearing around the fringes to get this moving.

I am fishing for more information to bring this together with this post ending up being a bunch of links and me needing more information from people immersed in this stuff.

Before GL turned up in Melbourne awhile ago for the mc workshop there was some excitement from kein.org about firefox supporting OGG Theora (opens source video format) which hit the video vortex list. On the videoblogging list Michael Verdi’s test with OGG on Firefox, a video screencast even. Upcoming presentation by Chris Blizzard on behalf of Mozilla at the open video conference in NY June 19-20. and a welcome and informative why open video? post by Blizzard (Jan 26, 2009)

There’s one exception to this: video on the web. Although videos are available on the web via sites like youtube, they don’t share the same democratized characteristics that have made the web vibrant and distributed.

Mozilla and Wikimedia Join Forces to Support Open Video

In Support of Open Video

Why open video matters, and what we are trying to do about it

another fantastic open video demo

In this video screencast demo on OGG in firefox the HTML 5 canvas function is revealed…no flash or QT “the user can interact with the webpage while the video is being displayed” April 15, 2009. This is out there and potentially opens up what has been sort after for sometime in earlier hypervideo research – dynamic access to points within the video while it is playing.

other links:
original demo link – Making video a first class citizen of the Web
transparency camp – open video comments
video category – Chris Blizzard