Seth Keen » aesthetics

Online documentary aesthetics

seth.keen — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 03:19:36 +0000

I have been searching around looking more broadly at the notion of online video aesthetics for the prod studio I teach in 2nd semester. Video Vortex 6 had a panel which focused on aesthetics. I found Florian Schneider’s talk on Open Source Documentary useful. His comment about how annotation sounds a death knell for documentary is a useful against argument for the types of works that I have been making. From a review of the presentation by Catalina Iorga.

He then expressed a series of concerns about how film is made in the networked environment. In this context, there is a tension between legible and illegible, with a strong tendency for making things readable and decipherable in order to be searched, found, categorised, indexed tagged and subjected to an algorithmic process. Schneider controversially claims that text-to-image hybrids (i.e. subtitles), which can be indexed, represent death to film since they make everything calculable. This anti-computationalist perspective continues with his recommendation of an algorithm that produces difference rather than sameness, multiplicity instead of identity, since online aesthetics are all about weaving items into a mesh of similarities instead of discontinuities.

Online Video Aesthetics

seth.keen — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 22:14:42 +0000

Video Vortex 6# is covering a session on online video aesthetics:

In response to the ubiquitous presence of video on an array of websites and platforms, this session seeks to explore the development of the diverse and distinctive aesthetics of online video. Tackling the tenuous relationship between amateur and professional video production, particularly with respect to the question of ‘quality’, have amateur and professional video grown closer further erasing the ability to distinguish between distinct visual tropes and operating within similar economic arenas, or are they still in competition? Furthermore, how do mechanisms of monetization on many video platforms effect the collision between professional and amateur content and its creation? What techniques aesthetics, genres, structures and practices exist in the realms of amateur and professional online video creation, and where through the maze of the internet are unique forms and practices emerging?

mosaic-screen

seth.keen — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:25:45 +0000

Came across this recent article The Mosaic-Screen: Exploration and Definition by Sergio Dias Branco , 27 Dec, 2008 on the refractory blog on the concept of the mosaic screen, which provides another way to define the use of spatial montage in the creation of moving-image narratives, in addition to the term split-screen. From the article:

This essay arises from these introductory ideas and aims to explore and define a new term that can be contrasted with split-screen: that is, mosaic-screen. In this stylistic device, used in regular moments of the television series 24 (Fox Network, 2001-), images that commonly vary in characteristics are arranged on screen.

This article is one of a number of artilces in the ‘Double Trouble – Special Issue on Split and Double Screens’

other links:
24 wikipedia
fox 24 website

fast film – disposable media

seth.keen — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:24:16 +0000

A post fast film on the Cause Global: Social Media for Social Change sent to me by MB.

Some of the biggest global dramas of recent times—the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Burma, the China earthquake, suicide bombers in Israel, the hanging of Sadaam Hussein—all were filmed on cell phones, snippets of strife seen and shared by people all over the world, thanks to digital video.

But there also is creativity in these ephemeral, on-the-fly images of our accelerated times—and a new artistic medium for both filmmakers and social advocates…

Vortex 4

seth.keen — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:10:09 +0000

Call for papers for Video Vortex 4 in Split, Croatia – 22-23 May, 2009.

Please send in a 500-word abstract and a short bio to Dan Oki (danoki [at] xs4all.nl) before February 5, 2009.

New themes are:
Telepresence and Web Aesthetics
Social Cinema
Architecture and Moving Image
Video Sharing
Technology and politics of the moving image
Literature and video online narrative

design and cinema crossover

seth.keen — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:35:20 +0000

A conference that explores the intersection between design and cinema:

…while interrogating the place of design disciplines within cinema. The attention drawn by this conference showed the necessity of evaluating the knowledge that existed in the intersection of these two disciplines.

The theme for the 2008 conference:

Theoretical studies have become more and more interested in our experiences in those designed environments, both real and fantasized, as distinctions between them became blurred. We have chosen the real, the hyper-real and the virtual, as our topics via which a number of issues are expected to unfold. These issues could be defined both as personal experiences and as social practices. When stated in terms of the experiences of the individual, philosophically and psychologically based studies will unavoidably be on the scene. When taken in terms of our social existence in a post-modern world, our experience of the uncanny, of alienation, and genuineness, in short, our mixed feelings about what is real would likely emerge as issues to be discussed.

Real

Designing of objects and environments

Experience of designed objects and environments

Hyper-real

Manipulation of the real

Blurring of the real

Virtual

Creation of a parallel universe Implementation Hybrid existences

flickr video example

seth.keen — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:16:18 +0000

Intergrated Media 2 students this semester are being asked to produce moving-image (time-based) content for mobile phone distribution through an engagement with second life. The mobile platform asks for differing approaches to this type of content that possibly moves away from the real-life recordings that are prolific on YouTube. Here is one response to the flickr video platform, ‘Zoom through some of my pics’ by Timo Arnall (Timo ironically is involved in mobile research), which I found through the Creativity Machine post, WHAT IS FLICKR VIDEO FOR?.

anti-video

seth.keen — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:15:09 +0000

Some Flickr users are protesting against Flickr (Yahoo) adding video to their services. “We Say NO to Videos on Flickr”

interaction design, design interaction

seth.keen — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:09:19 +0000

http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4802.asp

Which came first, the Interaction or the Design?, Source: Interaction-Design.org, 18 June 2008
Submitted by Mads Soegaard, by Jonas Lowgren

Interaction Design” refers to the shaping of interactive products and services with a specific focus on their use. Broadly speaking, there are two main senses of the concept, coming out of different intellectual traditions but increasingly converging in practice and research.

one minute video

seth.keen — Tue, 13 May 2008 03:18:21 +0000

A video interview collection of opinions on the duration of one minute for video for the oneminutes project.