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…
Archive for the 'PhD' Category
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.
I spent some time with Michel Bauwens over the weekend as he is visiting to do presentations on his research into peer-to-peer (P2P) at Melbourne University, RMIT and Monash. In our conversations I have not only learnt about his research into P2P but also the methods he uses to do his research. For example, using the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us as means to develop networks and then utilise those bookmarking networks for specific research. This is similar to using RSS to scan blogs, except in this instance the idea is to develop a focused list of bookmarkers who have connections with your research interests. Another aspect that I fund intriguing is Michel’s library training and experience as a researcher which enables him to set up comprehensive approaches towards categorising information. A good example of this is in the structure and layout of the P2P foundation wiki. This wiki is an example of huge resource of material collated and documented around a topic. A key aspect of developing an online resource like this or even as part of the broader process of tagging - folksonomy - categorising is working out relative categories that do not disappear into the information overload. Even tagging bookmarks for del.icio.us is an example of this skill.
I was inspired by the use of a wiki as a place to document and build research. Michel explained how he may start with a simple quote from a source which is collated into a category with referencing recorded back to the source. Quotes around the same subject could be built up under this topic heading which eventually may lead to a more comprehensive personal written response around that specific subject or idea. Using a wiki like this represents the traditional literature review and note-taking of research offline but also provides the ability to link to sources and at the same time shares that research pubically on an ongoing basis. The wiki as a larger resource over time provides an excellent starting point for publishing in other forms.
So, yes I have set up my own wiki ‘net-video’ and will trial this wiki as place to document and build my own research. Up to this point I have been building a significant resource around the video vortex conference using my del.icio.us address, but have felt the need to start funneling this exposure into more substantial outcomes. Of course the blog is tied in with this process where cross references flow back and forth across the two. For example with the P2P Foundation blog, which kind of acts through regular posts as morsels that lead to more substantial meals on the wiki.
A net-art proposal appeared on the fc list. An initiative run by the JavaMuseum and netEX - networked experience.
Whether blogs and/or blogging can be tools for creating a new type of net based art.The launch of this new project…The new show “a + b = ba ? [art + blog = blogart?]” will be presented in sequence on divers festivals…For a + b = ba?, JavaMuseum is inviting
artists to submit such an art project which is using the blogging technology.
Entry details are here.
There is an extensive audiovisual resource on the p2p foundation wiki, which has an audiovisual category. The supporting article ‘The construction of an alternative media infrastructure’ provides the ideology behind the initiative.
I have been keeping my eyes out for media literacies resources for teaching networked media.
Michel Bauwens sent some links to me recently which I would like to follow up. First the work by the peer-to-peer foundation on education. The New Media Literacies project list of skills for younger people on engaging with participatory media, along with David Warlick’s writing ‘Redefining Literacies for the 21st Century’.
I found a useful social media report on Adrian’s blog. The sections on blogging provide an overview and follow up links. The white paper Social Media: or “How I learned to stop worrying and love communication”, is written by Trevor Cook (Trevor’s blog Corporate Engagement) and Lee Hopkins. It tackles as the sub-heading states “An introduction to the power of “web 2.0″. The blogging section covers tips on writing for blogs. The extra reading suggestions are this Stephen Downes paper E-learning 2.0. (includes a useful video version) and James Torio’s article Blogs: A Global Conservation which is a pdf (the links is down for the moment?) plus slight aside on podcasting Kevin Dugan’s post 20 Creative Uses for Podcasts. The white paper and many other extra sources provide a pragmatic, current overview on social media from a more commercial perspective.
I was up in Sydney and bumped into Peter at an artspace opening a performance by Guy Benfield, Maximum Commune (Ugly Business… on the basis of disbelief.) Peter produces a panoramic VR weblog. Turns out he winds down by hitting YouTube for hours on end and he put me onto videosift a site he uses to sort out his viewing. It looks like in the about on the site they only work with the Flash format which ties in with the YouTube connection. Also, they utilise the voting system as way to promote certain viewing for users.
VideoSift is a website that allows its members to submit interesting videos from around the web. Submitted videos are posted in the VideoSift Queue for the consideration of other VideoSift members. Users may vote on videos that they like. When a certain level of votes for a video is reached, the video will be published on the front page.
The site acts as the name suggests as an editor for large random sites like YouTube by using user-geneerated votes.
As part of contextualising both the methodology of my research and the practice this quote by Peter Downton, is useful in terms of remembering the basics of what is expected of the practice. Also, the importance of reflecting on previous practice and “The identification of themes…”
Peter Downton, ‘Reflections on reflective practices’, Design Research, RMIT University Press, 2003. p.126-7.
These candidates are practitioners who have a substantial body of work and an established trajectory of practice…
These candidates are expected to engage in reflection on the assembled evidence of of their achievements to date…They are encouraged to search for themes that have informed their practice…The identification of themes that have evolved usually clarifies for them a number of issues about the nature of their design activity and the practice knowledge evident in it. They begin to tell new stories about their work, new stories elaborate new patterns of inquiry.
As well as making the nature of their work rather clearer as a result of curation and reflection, participants in this program are expected to produce new work through which they find a means to summarise their position at this point and which facilitates ways for them to move forward in their practice. They are encouraged to produce a work of focused speculative power that can contribute to the knowledge of the field.
I noticed awhile back that Jean Burgess was doing some research on YouTube. A description from her blog research page:
I’m currently designing a major case study of YouTube as a complex system that sits within the history of the emergence, mass popularisation and marketisation of new media technologies and literacies (from the printing press to the Kodak camera and the domestication of personal computing).
In a recent post titled YouTube Research Gazette Jean brings together a great collection of YouTube research. First up, the Infoscape Research Lab who have on their site a section with the url name ‘videopolitics’. A description on the project titled ‘Code Politics: Party Leaders and Partisans on YouTube.’
Where do issues in virtual public spheres come from during an election? This research project aims to examine the movement of issues through media over time via coding, archival and analytical research into online media processes, understood as code politics. When and how do parties set the agenda, or do they? How does the blogosphere deploy new media formats such as embedded video or RSS, and how do aggregators (such as www.YouTube.com) that provide these formats influence agendas? What is the relationship between political parties, mainstream media, bloggers and the blogosphere?
There is other things to explore here but what caught my eye in the meantime was Chuck Tyron’s writing published on Flow TV. Chuck is profiled on his Chutry blog and he has an extensive delicious tag on YouTube. He is also participating on braintrustdv. About braintrustdv:
BRAINTRUSTdv is an ongoing attempt to understand electronic cinema on its own terms as well as through the prism of the twentieth-century art form from which it derives.
BRAINTRUSTdv is more concerned with the history of video technology than with the latest development; more concerned with aesthetic debates than with technical specifications; more concerned with articulate arguments than with terse weblog exchanges.
Back to Tryon’s writing on Flow TV which covers a number of socio-political perspectives.