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Web 2.0 Studies // Critical Internet Theory

Published

seth.keen

on December 15, 2008

in Internet

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Image by David Holmes the missing attendee.

I am in the middle of attending a master class with Geert Lovink at Melbourne University titled ‘Web 2.0 Studies // Critical Internet Theory’. The summary of the workshop:

In relation to the current Internet, there is an obvious need to move beyond cultural studies approaches to fandom, where active consumption is simply recast as participatory culture without any assessment of the economic and technological forces driving usergenerated content. Rather than relying on the Jenkins-style models of convergence and the notion of collective intelligence, this workshop will encourage participants to consider the alternative possibilities and theoretical problems facing a materialist understanding of network culture.

For instance, to what extent can software studies move from engineering issues and technologically-focused specifications to outline a broader analytics of power? What sort of creative concepts are available for understanding the everyday practices of blogging? How can organized networks transform their dependence on free labor to reach greater economic sustainability?

Readings:

Geert Lovink, ‘The Society of the Query and the Googlization of our Lives’, Eurozine, September 2008, originally published in German, in Lettre International 81, Berlin, 2008, translated into Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Danish.

Geert Lovink, ‘Blogging, the Nihilist Impulse,’ Eurozine, January, 2007, originally published in German, in Lettre International 73, Berlin, 2006, translated into French,Swedish, Italian, Danish, Swedish.

Geert Lovink and Anna Munster, ‘Distributed Aesthetics, Or, What a Network is Not’, Fibreculture Journal 7 (2005)

Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter, ‘The Dawn of Organised Networks’, Fibreculture Journal 5 (2005).

Matteo Pasquinelli, ‘The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage’ (2008),

technical pleasure

Published

seth.keen

on January 31, 2008

in Uncategorized

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In responding to a comment today I realised there is a “tension I believe that we work with as larger entities aim to simplify things to get a mass user base while the alternative-independent media community and artists work on more personal control which comes with more technical skills.” With this in mind I was introduced to project Warum 2.0. In reading the about I came across a similar perspective:

This arena 2.0 stands for the tension between the consumer in us (wanting tools & services and wanting them cheap and fast) and the producer in us (wanting access, open source & content, upload capacity, privacy and personal freedom to move and set up as we please).

Here we are then, in between parts and values, midst the logics which determine our lives and those we try to disrupt; between us and the digital, between those who have the skills and those who don’t; in between that which happens without our knowledge and that we do know and succeed in changing.

Video Art is a cat

Published

seth.keen

on January 23, 2008

in video vortex

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Following is my immediate response to the opening presentation by Tom Sherman at the Video Vortex conference in Amsterdam. Vernacular Video: Nine Lives of Video Art. I made lots of notes as it was inspiring to see Tom speak in the flesh. In condensed form what interested me where these concepts, which could be developed more (and checked for accuracy) when the video recordings of the event are released and published on the INC website.

His view on the evolving death and resurrection of video art in its many variations as part of adjusting to developments in technology and the changing politics of the art scene. My understanding is that with the growth of what he called “video culture”, for example through YouTube, there is a real risk of video art being obliterarated. This ties in with the change in practice where video production and distribution is accessible to all rather than a few artists.

Historically, he pointed out that video has always been a medium of “process rather than product”. Also he stated that “…many of the challenges of video has been the semantic challenges…”. These are concepts that I would like to expand on as they tie in I think with his later point on video art needing to react to the Internet. Some quotes taken from the end of the presentation that follow this concept:

“…[disregards the] potential as a communication medium ignoring its cybernetic strengths”
“…video art will be the response to the web.”
“…as the web delivers plurailty it must deliver video art”

The concept that the term ‘new media’ is what he called commercially motivated not only for business but also for art institution funding and education purposes. The term provided the potential to pigeon-hole certain activities for the purpose of establishing “marginal” funding and as he described was seen as “a set of technologies that filled the space between other technologies”. It is interesting from my point-of-view that this term is now loosing the aura it had and in Australia has been made obselete (Feb-March 2005) by the arts council and folded back into visuals arts. In Australia and perhaps elsewhere there seems to be a kind of hiatus around the term ‘new media’, with the expectation that like the arts council example new media will be seen as part of existing established disciplines. Perhaps this is a display of maturity or new media is looking death in the eye?

The characteristics of ‘vernacular video‘ where outlined. These I have written about before in a previous post as part of extending some of these ideas and locating examples that are familiar. It is interesting to make a connection here between the text based characteristic and the Japanese Nico comment videos shown in the last presentation of the event by Dominick Chen. What is new is Sherman’s concept of a video being effected by the process of messaging. Tom suggested that, “the desire for interactivity will transform into message exchange sites”. I look forward to seeing more of his thinking and writing on this concept.

Video Addiction

Published

seth.keen

on December 31, 2007

in YouTube and video vortex

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Video Addiction: A confession by Seth Keen, written for the Video Vortex conference (January 18-19-2008).

“I don’t use YouTube much…”

Video Vortex happened for me as a researcher and collaborator through my PhD research into online video practice that I started at RMIT University in Melbourne at the beginning of 2006. I was interested in being part of a project that generated a current critical perspective on what is occurring around video on the Internet. In terms of my own research, which is project-based the Video Vortex Amsterdam conference, the Argos forum in Brussels and the Montevideo exhibition program provided a platform to examine online video practice from a number of perspectives. The participants across all these events include not only theoreticians but also hands-on practitioners including artists, activists, hacktivists, media producers and web developers.

Hooked on video, I have a history of contact with video practice from early pioneering single-handed write, shoot, direct and edit TV documentaries shot on the Hi8 format, through to previous MA research that focused on the influences of the Internet on audiovisual narrative structures. Examining online video directly was a natural progression from these earlier experiences. Focusing on alternative and independent platforms is influenced by my interest in documentaries, the democratisation of access to production and autonomous methods of distribution made possible by the Internet. With the Internet, there is the potential for a diversity of content that is not centralised like mass media. I have always remained critical of populist genres, favouring instead avant-garde approaches that consider both form and content in their realisation. My passion is exploring new audiovisual territories as way to critique the status quo. I think it is important to continually question the way media is articulated and digested.

Craving a new direction, I made the decision as a practising TV documentary maker to either consolidate my practice or put myself in a position that enabled me to examine change and developments in audiovisual practice. Teaching and researching provided a fantastic space to pursue a position of reflection and critique. I currently teach in a very progressive media department that has been prepared to face up to the enormous changes occurring in media, as part of negotiating the influences of the Internet and new digital technologies. An integral part of the program focuses on the nexus between practice and theory. I teach courses that engage directly with the production and distribution of online video content. Exposure to both the hands-on technical aspects and theoretical context of this teaching feeds directly into my research and this topic.

There is a strong emphasis in the department and broader School of Applied Communication I teach in towards project-based research. A mode of research influenced by developments in this area within the School of Architecture and Design. I have been encouraged to think about the way that practice can be used to generate research. This can be research through practice, research on practice and research about practice. The Video Vortex events provide platforms to examine and critique existing online video practice. Alongside this event the collective videodefunct project that I am working on utilises an iterative approach to generate new types of practice. Each prototype is used to inform the next experiment. These hybrid vlogs critique online video practice by examining the adaptation of video for Internet publication and storytelling within this environment.

The research behind this conference spans almost two years through a significant period of growth in online video practice. The topic itself covers an enormous amount of developments at a pace that only occurs on the Internet. A pace that can really only be managed through a collective flexible process of inquiry. This is research that relies on a network of people working together towards a specific focus. Social software tools like social bookmarking and mail lists play an integral role in this type of approach, where the sharing and transparency of information is paramount.

It is hard to ignore the pivotal role YouTube has played in making video the medium of the moment on the Internet. Economic success stories like YouTube generate a flurry of copycat activity and reappropriation as developers look for the next latest thing that will get users flocking to their address. At the same time a website like YouTube raises all sorts of other questions around things like ethics, copyright and aesthetics to name a few. YouTube represents a significant shift in how people are beginning to understand the potential of the Internet. But, unfortunately due to the speed of these developments and the hype, there are very few critical points of view. It is the unnoticed small-scale alternative developments that often provide a contradictory viewpoint. With the conference interested in both the success and failure of YouTube, the research has revealed many projects that respond to YouTube from a questioning critical position. It is the close analysis of these projects that provides crucial insights into this topic.

I don’t use YouTube much unlike some of my students who are 24-7 addicts or even a colleague who has given up TV and uses editorial services like videosift to do long chill-out sessions after work. I tend to work across all of the video archive websites and the Internet in search of online video content that I think provides useful context in my teaching and research, these I bookmark on delicious. I think online video provides great opportunities to distribute presentations and interviews as part of the open knowledge mandate. These opportunities I think are still yet to be fully realised in terms of archiving and the metadata tagging of the video timeline as part of accessing information in smaller non-linear units rather than in the larger traditional linear form.

What I do notice with teaching in this area is some of the issues that students encounter with YouTube. There is very little consciousness of the terms and conditions that YouTube imposes and other social media websites like MySpace and Facebook. In most cases it takes students awhile to realise that just because a website is fashionable and seen as being successful due to popularity, that this does not necessarily make it bona fide. Over time there is this realisation that there are other services that may offer more for the user in terms of respecting their rights and aesthetic needs. These other options are often located by tuning into online discussions that critique and lay out the pros and cons.

Somehow there is also a blindness to the aesthetic restrictions that a website like YouTube places on producers of online video content. YouTube has frame size, file type and compression quality control over the video uploads which leaves no room for individual aesthetic input from the producer. I see this as setting publishing standards, a referral to old media like TV broadcasting. Also, it seems to early in the development of online video to grasp the concept that online video could move beyond the YouTube regurgitated TV-cinema model of single-channel linear clips. Ironically, to demonstrate this point, I heard recently that there was TV program that was broadcasting YouTube videos in the funniest home video style. Beyond this direct translation, I believe there are types of online video that can be more responsive to the materialities of the Internet, exploring linking, networked structures and other multi-channel forms of presentation.

Understanding the friction around copyright on YouTube and more broadly the Internet is another significant hurdle. Discussions on copyright has produced some of the most vocal input from students, it is a topic that attracts a lot of interest and passionate debate. Initially, the laissez faire attitude of YouTube towards copyright is really attractive and offers a lot of freedom. Often the most important requirement seems to be having the option to grab a copy and get it onto your own website or blog. Exposure to the varying approaches towards copyright from copyleft, creative commons through to conglomerates like Hollywood aiming for total control, raises all sorts of questions for students who are aiming to become media professionals. YouTube does not offer the user a choice when it comes to being able to choose some of these alternatives, like applying creative commons licenses for example.

A more hidden aspect is questioning the way YouTube as a commercial enterprise utilises creative labour for economic gain. The huge financial success of YouTube and other websites like MySpace for example have brought more attention onto this issue. But, from what I can tell, for the moment, this is restricted to a minority of theorists rather than becoming a significant public debate. It is intriguing that all the creative activities from making, uploading to favourite lists and beyond are all taking place under one roof, like a factory plant. A minority of owners at one centralised address have the power to remove users and their content. But, these websites offer free storage space, along with the prospect of public exposure and possible celebrity status. These attractive qualities for users often overshadow the economic inquiry.

vernacular video

Published

seth.keen

on November 14, 2007

in design

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These are some notes from a lecture I gave recently in Integrated Media (2007) on Tom Sherman’s article ‘vernacular video’. I used this quote as a starting point for discussion:

Video in 2007 is not the exclusive medium of technicians or specialists or journalists or artists–it is the peoples’ medium. The potential of video as a decentralized communications tool for the masses has been realized, and the twenty-first century will be remembered as the video age. Surveillance and counter-surveillance aside, video is the vernacular form of the era–it is the common and everyday way that people communicate. Video is the way people place themselves at events and describe what happened. (locate) (situate) In existential terms (your own meaning), video has become everyperson’s POV (point of view). It is an instrument for framing existence and identity.

How does this affect video content? Sherman proposes a list of characteristics that will emerge as part of what he has called this ‘vernacular video’ form. His objective in pointing out these characteristics, I suggest is not necessarily to endorse them, in fact he possibly does not look on many of them favourably. Instead the idea is to draw attention to them with the objective to encourage practitioners to explore in his words “elegant” appropriations of these characteristics. Sherman suggests that under the current mode of ubiquity, where video production and distribution is accessible to anyone with a camera, computer and Internet access, ‘vernacular video’ will take on a number of distinctive characteristics. In the following notes I have added in my own interpretations, examples and ideas that come to mind in response to these characteristics that Sherman proposes.

Video works are already and will become inevitably “shorter” which also means all sorts of durations in between the TVC and longer form television. The documentary form may be packed down into 3,5,7 minutes for example. These durations will be about producing content for platforms like YouTube, ipods and mobiles. The skill will be the ability to work in different ways within shorter time frames, along with accommodating the characteristics of varying platforms, delivery speeds and screen sizes.

“Canned music”: Sherman argues that the branding attributes of advertising will play a key role where the aim is to tap into getting messages across that are memorable and powerful. A big part of successful moving-image advertising is about simplifying the message and using repetition. A soap for example has a consistent theme tune and opening and closing credits, all part of branding and creating identity awareness around the content. The popular vlog Chasing Windmills title sequence is an example.

“Recombinant” video aesthetics Recombinant here is the re-use of video through sampling and remixing. I like Bernard Schutze’s article titled ‘Ideas in the Mix: the heap’ and his argument that we function in a remix culture, he writes

Mix, mix again, remix: copyleft, cut ‘n’ paste, digital jumble, cross-fade, dub, tweak the knob, drop the needle, spin, merge, morph, bootleg, pirate, plagiarize, enrich, sample, break down, reassemble, multiply input source, merge output, decompose, recompose, erase borders, remix again.

Sherman points out that a recombinant approach relies heavily on repetition and he refers again to chorus lines in pop music as an example of this repetitive approach. In a more refined form, I can’t help but think of electronic music loops. Early Steve Reich tunes come to mind.

“Real-time on the fly voice-overs”: These are narration tracks that are done spontaneously a bit like a blog post, written as you think it and experience it, you post it. These narration tracks are possibly more self-reflexive rather than necessarily being story driven or even informative. They are recorded and added in a number of varying styles that suit that moment in time. These styles are exploratory and experimental, even poetic.

“On-screen text”: Like written languages that are being developed around SMS, email and chat rooms. Sherman proposes that the text applied to ‘vernacular video’ through a spontaneous approach and configured immediately within the video software being used morphs into a type of text-based video language that contains a fair degree of noise and idiosyncratic grammar.

“Crude animation”: Animation either independent or mixed in with real-life video content he argues will be influenced by amateur type aesthetics. Sherman states that “Crude is cool, opposed to slick.” Adrian Miles in a recent integrated media lecture (2007) listed these attributes as part of what he named ‘dirty media’:

dirty; messy; noisy; other; amateur; prosumer; general; post-industrial; minor; debate

…as opposed to traditional media:

clean; tidy; quiet; same; professional; freelance; restricted; industrial; major; sedentary

(Adrian Miles’ Video Vortex/argos softvideo presentation recorded on video)

“Slow-mo-Acceleration”: Sherman simply states that these techniques will be over-used. I know that problem, I have to take a snack break to stop myself pushing the speed effect button and rendering. Working with the everyday in videodefunct pedestrian recently was an interesting experiment in avoiding the effects palette.

This also ties in with his discussion on “digital effects”. It is so easy to rely on an effect as a “fix all” as Sherman points out and to create a sense of dislocation, a dream like induced state that has connotations of what he calls “dirty surrealism”. A recent example of a more sophisticated approach towards speeds and effects is this work by Peter Horvath in the work TRIPTYCH: MOTION STILLNESS RESISTANCE (2006) (Peter Horvath’s Video Vortex/argos presentation recorded on video)

“Travelogues” will dictate as a genre Sherman suggests. This characteristic creeps into Keith Deverell’s Australian travels as fragmented looped clips in pedestrian. Speaking of blogged travel I am on the email list for the German online documentary maker Florian Thalhofer who is travelling across the States recording people’s stories in the 1000 stories project on a BMW motorbike.

Finally, the genres will collide and mix Sherman argues into what he calls “mediated horror”. Some content that comes to mind is some local video installations that where done by a Melbourne arts collective. They appropriated and curated terrorist head chopping and throat cutting online video as part of very didactic approach towards politicising the terrorist debate.

The challenge Sherman puts out there in this article as mentioned earlier is for practitioners to be able to engage with these aesthetics with some degree of finesse that makes their work exemplary amongst a video overload of user-generated content. Video content that as was stated in a recent presentation review by Michael Stevenson on the Masters of Media blog, provides an alternative to the YouTube piano-playing-cat video.

Reference:
Tom Sherman, ‘Video Vernacular’, www.nettime.org, Nettime mailing list archives,
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0701/msg00080.html,
January, 2007 (accessed October, 2007)

myspace video and notes

Published

seth.keen

on October 5, 2007

in YouTube and references

. 0 Comments

Notes from the article, ‘The man who put teenagers lives online’, by Owen Gibson, Technology News, Guardian Weekly.

Firstly, for my own research specifically the move to video and the number of uploads per day is phenomenal. Quote:

MySpace can have a similar democratising effect in the world of short film with amateur film-makers building up a MySpace fanbase before being snapped up by a big studio or broadcaster - 50,000 to 60,000 new videos are already being uploaded per day.

Reading through this article on MySpace, I was intrigued by the way the original creators looked around at what they describe as “the best social features” of other social networking entities. It would be interesting to define these features in terms of a research inquiry. The sites Craigslist, Evite and MP3.com where key references for the creators. The community site craiglist is intersting from a community media perspective, about:

Local community classifieds and forums - a place to find jobs, housing, goods & services, social activities, a girlfriend or boyfriend, advice, community information, and just about anything else — all for free, and in a relatively non-commercial environment.

The design of the site states Chris DeWolfe was not driven by a technical imperative i.e. lots of bells and whistles. The objective instead simplicity, with a focus on activities that young people engage in everyday, like for example locating tracks on an mp3 player.

Other associated links intermix media; friendster; geocities; tripod; Then there are copies facebook; bebo.

Real time crisis

Published

seth.keen

on October 5, 2007

in Uncategorized

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Presentation at Melbourne University on New Media and Journalism by BBC World’s Anchor, Nik Gowing, BBC World. About:

BBC World is the BBC’s commercially funded international 24-hour news and information channel broadcasting around the world from its base at BBC Television Centre in London.

Nik Gowing is a major news anchor, presenter and works for BBC World a continuous news channel. The presentation titled ‘Community in Crisis New Media & New Real Time Tensions’. A excerpt from the brief for the talk sent out by email:

In the new, fast-changing information environment the traditional media are no longer alone in being witnesses of acute real-time crises. With the advent of camera phones, PDAs, broadband and ‘blog’ technologies, a new breed of ‘information doers’ have emerged. Illustrated by video examples, Nic will highlight the increasingly unresolved tensions in newsrooms, governments, military commands and corporate organisations.

Opening image for the presentation poster, a television with the cord pulled floating on an angle. Context given for the talk by Nik - political science, securities and new media. Title on his powerpoint, ‘Real Time Crisis - New Real Time Tensions’ These following notes are my own interpretation of what was presented and in some cases are direct quotes or my own short hand.

Tyranny of real time - previous paper online; other paper ‘War and Accountability - Media in conflict: the new reality not yet understood.’ The battle between rumours and news. News wants to deal with hard facts. How reliable are images from mobile uploads for example? The potential for a digital camera or mobile phone to challenge government policy. A “creditability crunch”. The issues centre around “immediacy”. His immediate example video taken of people arriving to the presentation dropped into his powerpoint.

Transparency, the connected networked nature of the world. Level of denial. What do I mean about real-time? Governments believe that they will be able to control real-time events. Example given of President Bush receiving news on television while he was on-air, of major events he was not aware had taken place. Governments, officials trying to shut down public and personal media coverage when events take place. The issue of perceptions sticking when news breaks (often based on personal media coverage) which may not be accurate.

Much of the points around immediacy in relation to video reminded me of the theorists Paul Virilio’s (Open Sky. London: Verso, 1997) comments on real-time video technologies and their effect on perception. Another theorist Jean Balludriard and his ideas on Simulacra and Simulation.

Back to Nik. The battle that goes on to secure the air waves (media) during and after a crisis. The acute difficulty of getting accurate real-time facts in a crisis situation. Transparency, the ability to transfer into the airwaves instantly from isolated high security locations through broadband, the Internet. A live feed in Lebanon is being streamed in real-time from a mobile phone from the Syria border. In detail in this example the video is delayed (called Store and forward video held on a laptop). The audio is real-time (when it was received - broadcast to the on-air TV news desk).

Transformation of the media by personal media producers. What is the status of personal media content? - the ability for anyone to record and upload. Serial deceivers. A real issue with accuracy. “A proliferation of attempts to confuse and mislead.” “Insurgents as media producers.” Stressing the trend of validation, working out what is accurate. Validation, trying to work out the source proves to be more and more difficult and a paramount issue. Also, concerns that journalists are being targeted, camera people recording events.

Digital divide - journalism - personal media making governments accountable. “Creditability Crunch” - the openness is leading to “law-fare rather than warfare”. The military needs to be aware due to “omni media” that they have to be accountable for everything.

Conclusion - We need to get smarter in regards to the battles emerging in the contemporary media sphere. “Asymmetric power”. The new empowerment creates ad-hoc groupings in a time of crisis. In the final example he showed mobile phone video recordings of the explosions underground in the London bombings. The way people are prepared to record events in a time of crisis in very insecure environments. From a news perspective there is working with what he calls a “user centered hub” at BBC world. During and after the bombings, they where barraged with personal media content (”1000 images, 20 video clips, 20,000 emails, 3000 text messages”). Dilemma for the news room, who do you run with the government who is behind what is actually going on, or the material coming from people at the scene? But, eyewitnesses also exaggerate or misinterpret and some are eager to get their faces in the media. How do you check what they are claiming? Where will it all lead? Next development will be live broadcasts streamed live on the Internet.

We need to question what the media is today. “Media ?” The technical definition of media. The ability to reveal. YouTube, Flickr, Crikey ..they are all becoming significant broadcast platforms.

www ethics (future video)

Published

seth.keen

on October 5, 2007

in web2.0

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An article in NYT titled by Adam Cohen titled “Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End” which references video:

Consider online video, which depends on the availability of higher-speed connections. Internet users can now watch channels, like BBC World, that are not available on their own cable systems, and they have access to video blogs and Web sites like YouTube.com, where people upload videos of their own creation. Under tiered pricing, Internet users might be able to get videos only from major corporate channels.

Sir Tim expects that there are great Internet innovations yet to come, many involving video. He believes people at the scene of an accident — or a political protest — will one day be able to take pictures with their cellphones that could be pieced together to create a three-dimensional image of what happened. That sort of innovation could be blocked by fees for the high-speed connections required to relay video images.

It is not film it is video

Published

seth.keen

on October 5, 2007

in cinema and references

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I enjoyed Tom Sherman’s (Spring 2005) articles on video in the Canadian Art Magazine. His frustration with the video being called film brought a smile. In the article ‘Video No Film’, he states:

Fuck film. The dead ideas of film are being heaped onto video, Cinematic history is like a ball and chain. Video, as an inclusive soluble medium, is having difficulty defending itself from the weight of this affliction. It has become fashionable to declare, I “filmed this or that with my digital camcorder.” In this ahistorical time, it has become common to use the nomenclature of film, the predominant medium of the 20th century, to declare one’s existence in the 21st. Everyone is going retro. p. 5 of 6

His outspoken views prompted more discussion on the list nettime, by Alan Sondheim. And more here by Sherman, Is the new video ‘film,’ video or film? More on Tom’s video work here.