My one-minute rant for the Open Spectrum Quality/Control symposium held at the Melbourne State Library today. I lined up with 10 others and raced the clock to open the event. Documentation was done using a live blogging tool Cover it Live.

There is no content on the web!
on the web, content is a king (stripped naked)
content is everybody, content is communities…
content is creating accounts
sign in, sign out, log in, log out
passwords, more passwords…
content is social, content is friends, fans
content is connecting, networking, linking, traffic…
sharing, embedding, uploading, downloading…
content is comments…
searching, searching, searching
content is naming, tagging, categorising
favourites…love this track!
content is channels, playlists, slideshows, sets
organising…content is management…
content is piracy, bootlegging, plagiarism
copy, copy, copy
all rights reserved, attribution, non-commercial, no derivative works, share-alike, public domain…open…copyright…
content is dirty, noisy, messy
cheap, amateur, trash
content is remixing, cut n’ paste
content is user-generated
on the web, content is no king, it is a pawn (in virtual drag)

Started thinking about a one-minute presentation for the Open Spectrum symposium coming up at next week. Ellie Rennie is one of the key people behind the event and has written this supporting argument ‘Quality control: a new system for ethical media’. This article by Tim Berners_Lee Warning sounded on web’s future was circulated as coming from similar directions.

Tank TV have brought together with the curator Ian White, The Whole World exhibition.

A selection of artists’ film and video that feature lists or different kinds of taxonomies – visual, audio or textual – are presented as an online exhibition of extracts. Works by Dalia Neis, Uriel Orlow, Jean-Gabirel Périot, Michael Robinson and Valerie Tevere take as their subject such wildly diverse lists as depictions of saints, everything on Ebay, magazine advertising, our mediated world, protest, violence and war, the pages of National Geographic magazine and the words spoken by people on the streets of New York. Text scrolls across the screen, images flash past, immersive landscapes ultimately disintegrate. Many things are logged and something is undone.

EngageMedia emailed out some updates to the FOSS video codecs they are working on.

It is a review of available tools for the creation, playback and embedding of online video using FOSS codecs, and a look at the most pressing areas for development to enhance their adoption by social change video projects on the web.

PDF version.
Summary of Recommendations
wiki feedback
Report licensed under the GNU FDL.

They have also revamped their site with a tagging and call outs feature amongst others.

The transmission network put out their final publicity for their event VX:transmission that coincides with the VV conference.

VX:mission will look at how distribution of Social Justice Video is happening using Free and Open Source technology. It is a chance to find out about existing distribution projects, get feedback for your own projects or ideas, find collaborators and scheme about how best to distribute your video.

Associated organisations are FlossManuals.net and clearerchannel.org. Included is a demonstration of http://if iwatch.tv

Magazine OPEN release appeared on the vv list. The article, The Rise of the Informal Media How Search Engines, Weblogs and YouTube Change Public Opinion I need to follow up on.

I also had a close look at the opening 24/7 a DIY Video Summit, video clip (that ironically has no poster/thumbnail/preview image as it downloads when the web page is opened). The clip a vox-pox of grabs from speakers and artists attending the event provides an insight into what to expect. Following is links to some of the organisations and people featured in the opening clip. Interesting that remixing as an approach features in many of the videos selected. In the publicity information provided in an interview with the summit co-chair Mimo Ito there is a focus on remixing:

One of the most interesting aspects of online video sharing is the fact that videos are created in an almost conversational mode, where one video is a commentary on or a response to another video, and so on. We see this kind of video and response sequence with popular remix source footage…

As part of selecting these works, curating as a practice is a feature at the summit. Links provided in the introduction video:

Anne Bray (Executive Director) – freewaves.org an alternative exhibition platform

sacha costanza chock who is involved with http://video.indymedia.org/

The Goal and Idea of the Video Network is the distribution of High Quality Videos (vhs/dvd quality) over the Internet. It is based on the Open Publishing principle of Indymedia and will allow the Publishing of Copyright Free Videos under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

eric saks who runs an “alternative cinema” site called flicker He says his aim with his work is to subvert “pop culture”, mainstream approaches towards audiovisual media.

Jonathan McIntosh media artist, activist who is building a website called rebellious pixels. These could be described as activist orientated re-mixes of adverts and news.

tim park doki doki productionshttp://www.doki.ca/ Anime remixes that use text to subvert the message.

laura shapiro whose thing is vidding. From wikipedia:

Vidding is the practice of creating fan-made music videos (sometimes called songvids or fanvids) that edit clips from favorite TV shows, anime series, movies, or even official music videos, to another song. It is a cross between narrative story-telling and visual poetry and their content can range from a simple tribute to a favorite character or delve into shipping/slash.

Paul Marino Thinking Machinima blog

Not long after getting up the first prototype version of videodefunct published, the Palabras project appeared on the video vortex mailing list:

Palabras, which means “words” in Spanish, is a set of software tools and interfaces designed to facilitate collective self-representation, and promote social inclusion through participatory media production. Typically, in workshops at local cultural centers at each Palabras site, participants learn to use inexpensive digital video cameras to document their daily lives and a custom-built web application to edit, organize, and share their videos online.

There is a demo video of screenshots to show how it works. The emphasis on tags and participatory content creation is excellent.

The web application was devised to facilitate the discovery of connections between participants’ personal stories, at each site and across cultures, allowing participants to label or “tag” their own video content and create an emergent, social taxonomy – or “folksonomy” (folk+taxonomy).

Beppe Grillo a well known Italian satirist utilises the full functionality of a blog to create dialogue and conversation with his audience. He also uses a blog as a powerful autonomous political platform in terms of distribution and spreading his perspective.
Equally he ties in other sharing websites and social software resources. For example video is distributed via street-tv and YouTube. (Beppe’s YouTube channel) The video seem to be a mix of his own speeches and interviews, along with linking in videos made by people he invites to contact him and comment on his blog. For example there are links to a post on a disabled student’s perspective of trying to get into a lecture space, posted on his blog and viewed on YouTube.

Bootlab

Bootlab is a non-profit organisation for the advancement of independent projects. Founded in 2000 and located in the historic Telegrafenamt in Berlin-Mitte, bootlab provides studio, production and office space for groups and individuals (activists, artists, curators, engineers, filmmakers, programmers, publishers, writers etc.) working with old and/or new media technology.