All this got me thinking about a design where categories are tags becoming a simple tag cloud like in the archives section.
The tags on the left and right become clip titles instead loosing a level. Categories are wiped. Categories in this interface are like making a batch or set in Flickr. The user selects content instead using the tag cloud directly.
I have got most of the clips into the ‘Glasshouse Birdman’ prototype and are now starting to look at how the categories and tags work in terms of how I would like the user to engage with the themes that have emerged in the content. I realised that clips could be kept in separate categories by controlling cross-overs with tag names, but sometimes a clip has something to offer in other categories. For example, giving a clip a tag name that features strongly in another category brings all those clips from that category across with it into the original category that has been selected. Often from my perspective this makes the theme to random if this is not the desired effect. One way around this within this interface design is to post the same clip twice with the same title but in a different category and with a different tag name.
category = birdman; tag = animal lover; clip title = big brown snake
category = feeding; tag = aviary; clip title = big brown snake
This means clips can be repeated to appear elsewhere while still having some control over themes. In a hidden kind of way clips that seemed more important that others could be repeated to appear in a number of places. Repetition becomes a feature of the narrative structure.
PAD.MA - short for Public Access Digital Media Archive - is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films. The entire collection is searchable and viewable online, and is free to download for non- commercial use.
We see PAD.MA as a way of opening up a set of images, intentions and effects present in video footage, resources that conventions of video- making, editing and spectatorship have tended to suppress, or leave behind. This expanded treatment then points to other, political potentials for such material, and leads us into lesser-known territory for video itself… beyond the finite documentary film or the online video clip.
The design of the archive makes possible various types of “viewing”, and contextualisation: from an overview of themes and timelines to much closer readings of transcribed dialogue and geographical locations, to layers of “writing” on top of the image material. Descriptions, keywords and other annotations have been placed on timelines by both archive contributors and users. At the moment, PAD.MA has approximately 160 “events” on video, mostly from Mumbai and Bangalore. This adds up to about 100 hours of fully transcribed video footage, which we expect to grow to more than 400 hours by early 2009.
Notes: Pad.ma uses a lot of text-annotating to provide extra information on video content across the timeline.
Q 4.1: What is annotation?
A 4.1: Annotation is the adding of textual information, in this case to parts or the whole of a video event. This is similar to the general concepts: comments, commentary, or marginalia.
Q 4.2: Who has put in the current annotations?
A 5.2: The first layer of annotations have been put in by the original contributors of the video event.
They also have a map function as an overview which utlises google map functionality. The videos are kept at full length and have a scrolling feature for accessing the timeline at any point. Once a point in the timeline is accessed an overview of where you are on the timeline is provided along with a lot of annotated text, including keywords. In a way the features normally hidden in video editing software are revealed in the interface. The application seems to rely on Python and JavaScript programming with the source code available https://wiki.pad.ma/wiki/Source. They are not bothering with supporting IE and there are plans to support Ogg theora.
Q 2.1: Which browsers do you support, on which platforms?
A 2.1: We currently support Firefox and Safari, on Linux, MacOS and Windows. We do not support Internet Explorer. However, if you wish to endeavour to make the site work on IE, please appeal to IE to support web standards in their next version.
Q 2.2: Do I need to install anything to view the videos on pad.ma?
A 2.2: Yes, currently you need to install either the VLC plugin (ensure you tick the “Install Mozilla Plugin” box while installing) for Firefox/Safari on Windows or OSX, or the OggPlay plugin for Firefox on OSX or Linux machines, to play the videos. In the near future, Firefox plans to support Ogg Theora (the open source video codec we are using) natively, and you should not need to download anything to view videos on pad.ma.
Notes on their position in terms of software development:
PAD.MA is not intended as a software product, but you are free to use the code to create your own instance, if you like. Obviously it would be more interesting if these instances fed into each other, if people’s annotations could layer and combine rather than exist in artificially separated environments.
Daniel a student in Integrated Media this semester has done a lengthy critique of the pedestrian - videodefunct prototype on his blog. The closing paragraph taken from his review:
This is purely explorational; a writerly text. A conversation is in progress between the creators and the functionality and capabilities of multiple-streaming, interactive video. Its creators on the frontier, finding future pathways for video experience. It’s amazing to examine what forms and meanings videos take on when configured this way. Vlogging is evolving at breakneck speeds, video|defunct suggest where this evolution may be taking us.
I did some research on this korsakow application awhile back and wanted to note the link. There is certain flexibility like creating rule scenes. From the abput page:
They are interactive - the viewer has influence on the film. They are rule-based - the author decides on the rules scenes relate to each other, he does not create a fixed order. They are generative - the order of the scenes is calculated while the viewer looks at a Korsakow-project. Korsakow-projects can only be viewed on a computer. They are delivered via internet-streaming, DVD-Rom or CD-Rom.
The Creativity and Cognition studios (@ UTS) write about what they see as the differences between practice-based and practice-led research. From the summary:
If a creative artefact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge, the research is practice-based
If the research leads primarily to new understandings about practice, it is practice-led.
expanded overview
Three key areas to consider in practice-related research referenced by C&C studios from the UK, the Arts and Humanities Research Board (now Council) (AHRB, 2000 ):
1. It must define a series of research questions or problems that will be addressed in the course of the research. It must also define its objectives in terms of seeking to enhance knowledge and understanding relating to the questions or problems to be addressed.
2. It must specify a research context for the questions or problems to be addressed. It must specify why it is important that these particular questions or problems should be addressed, what other research is being or has been conducted in this area and what particular contribution this project will make to the advancement of creativity, insights, knowledge and understanding in this area.
3. It must specify the research methods for addressing and answering the research questions or problems. In the course of the research project, how to seek to answer the questions, or advance available knowledge and understanding of the problems must be shown. It should also explain the rationale for the chosen research methods and why they provide the most appropriate means by which to answer the research questions.
I had these thoughts on some similarities between AM’s rhizomes and the v-defunct player, when I was replying to a videoblogging mail list post.
The project certainly has been influenced by Adrian’s work with vogs and his writing on softvideography and the VD collective are similarily interested in exploring video on the Internet beyond being single-channel and linear like a version of TV and cinema on the web.
VD simply breaks down what would normally be a larger linear video as you say into smaller granular clips, that are tagged and categorised on posting in the vlog/blog format. The user then uses this metadata to reassemble these clips in a player attached to the vlog as a page. The vlog as a larger thematic video work is made up of smaller clips.
In Adrian’s rhizomes that he is currently refining I think a similar type of interactivity and granularity occurs where Quicktime in this case is used as a container to bring in a number of varying content types in varying order. Rhizomes in way are configured in a variety of ways to display this content like the customized player page in VD. Both often explore video being displayed simultaneously in more than one frame. (multi-channel)