A Vienna media group CONT3XT.NET contacted me to see about putting an rss feed from net-video in their sidebar. They are getting up a project called MOVING.IMG About:

CONT3XT.NET is a Vienna-based organisation founded in 2006 as a collaborative platform for the discussion and presentation of issues related to Media Art. Against the background of an interdisciplinary theoretical approach to all forms of communications technologies its mission is the critical investigation and documentation of actual tendencies in contemporary art production.

On this site they include a post on videodefunct.

The selected works for the JavaMuseum art + blog curated series are online. The launch of these blogs is officially tomorrow on the 1st November. Videodefucnt – Pedestrian is almost completed as a version, with a few minor tweaks to go.

Montevideo are well underway with an exhibition program for the exhibition side of video vortex.

20 October 2007 – 3 February 2008: Video Vortex Exhibition
Location: Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam http://www.montevideo.nl
Curated by: Annet Dekker
Artists: Beatrice Valentine Amrhein, Giselle Beiguelman, Susan Collins, Jonathan Harris & Sepandar Kamvar, Graham Harwood, MW2MW, Sonic()ject, and more.
Workshops by: Bricolabs, Furtherfield, Mediashed, and more.
Opening: 19 October 2007, 17:00 FLOSS Party!

The final overview of the first Video Vortex: Responses to YouTube Conference being held in Brussels this week.

Over the past years the moving image has claimed an increasingly prominent place on the internet. Thanks to a wide range of technologies and web applications it has become possible, not only to record and distribute video, but to edit and remix it on-line as well. With this world of possibilities within reach of a multitude of social actors, the potential of video as a personal means of expression has arrived at a totally new dimension. How is this potential being used? How do artists and activists react to the popularity of YouTube and other ‘user-generated-content’ websites? What is the impact of the availability of massive on-line images and sound databases on aesthetics and narrativity? How is Cinema, as an art form and experience, influenced by the development of widely spreading internet practices? What does YouTube tell us about the state of art in visual culture? And how does the participation culture of video-sharing and vlogging reach some degree of autonomy and diversity, escaping the laws of the mass media and the strong grip of media conglomerates?

This Video Vortex conference is the first in a series of international events, aimed at critical research and reflection surrounding the production and distribution of on-line video content, at the instigation of the Institute of Network Cultures (INC).

JOHAN GRIMONPREZ, PETER HORVATH, LEV MANOVICH, ANA KRONSCHNABL & TOMAS RAWLINGS, ADRIAN MILES, SIMON RUSCHMEYER, KEITH SANBORN, PETER WESTENBERG.

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.

Michel Bauwens is visiting Melbourne to lecture to students in Networked Media
as well as give a public presentation and discussion. An event organised as a
collaboration between the Media department and MCD: studio to be held in the new
research studio.

Venue: bldg 4.level 5. room 1
Date: Wednesday August 1
Time: 6pm

A summary of the public presentation provided by Michel Bauwens:

Peer to peer is much more than just the sharing of music and film by
contemporary teenagers— it is in fact a new relational dynamic,
enabled by P2P- based infrastructures and organisational techniques,
which fundamentally changes the dynamic between institutions and the
peer- enabled individuals. No longer are institutions (companies,
governments, NGOs, mass media) communicating with isolated
individuals, but it is now the individuals who, assisted by their
peers, approach the institutional world from a totally different
perspective (pull and intention economy).

Far from limited to the co- creation of value with corporations and
media (think crowd sourcing and citizen journalism), it is creating a
whole new set of social processes such as peer production (think
Linux and Wikipedia), peer governance (how are these projects managed
without pre- established hierarchy?), and peer property (a new set of
licenses that protects the common production).

In this specific talk we want to focus more specifically on the
political implications of peer governance, and how it relates to
democratic models of governance.

Bio

Michel Bauwens was one of the internet pioneers in his home country
of Belgium, where he created two startups (e- Com and KyberCo)
respectively involved in the fields of intranet/extranet and
interactive marketing. He was also the eBusiness Strategy Director
for the country’s leading telecommunications company Belgacom as well
as European Director of Thought Leadership for the worldwide
webconsultancy USWeb/CKS- MarchFIRST. Prior to his involment in the
internet he was information analyst, and knowledge manager for BP.
Along the way, he has taught post- graduate MBA courses, been editor
in chief of a magazine (Wave), co- produced a 3- hour TV documentary
(TechnoCalyps), and co- edited two French- language volumes on the
anthropology of digital society.

In 2003, he moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, which is surrounded by 60%
of the world population in a 1,500 miles radius, and started the
Foundation for P2P Alternatives to research, document and promote
such practices as peer production and peer governance.

Testimonials

There is an extensive list of Testimonials.

– The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia ; Blog; Newsletter

Basic essay; interview video interview

The P2P Foundation is support

The video vortex conference has put a call out for papers. A short precis below of the topics visit the post for full description. Conference website. Deadline for submission of abstract (500-1000 words) and biography (100 words): August 14, 2007.

Suggested topics:
- database theory
- software studies
- online video analysis
- YouTube criticism
- alternative platforms/open standards
- theory of participatory culture
- collaboratory data generation

The conference aims to raise the following questions:
· How are people utilizing the potential to independently produce and
distribute independent video content on the Internet?
· What are the alternatives to the proprietary standards currently
being developed?
· What are the commercial objectives that mass media is imposing on
user-generated content and video-sharing databases?
· What is the underlying economics of online video in the age of
unlimited uploads?
· How autonomous are vloggers within the broader domain of mass media?
· How are cinema, television and video art being affected by the
development of a ubiquitous online video practice?
· What type of aesthetic and narrative issues does the database pose
for online video practice?

Good news!I made it into the still/open workshops being run by ANAT. A open/still group blog has been set up for the project. From the about:

Still Open will be as a series of free two-day workshops in Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane, each accompanied by a public evening forum. Facilitators will work with 15 artists, scientists, writers and developers in each city to introduce open source modes of thinking and resources for collaborative and distributed development; to provide hands on experience; and to initiate local networks and projects.

Still Open focuses on both the practice and theory of open source which can be applied through networked art and software development, print and online publishing, and in the scientific arena where the open science movement encourages a collaborative environment in which science can be pursued by anyone who is inspired to discover something new about the natural world.

The facilitators who will help run the workshops are:
Alessandro Ludovico (Italy) editor in chief Neural
Andy Nicholson (Australia) new media activist Engage Media
Beatriz da Costa (USA) interdisciplinary artist/researcher, open science

Finished a paper review for DAC recently. They have set up a reviewer page. A note to myself is to follow up some of the papers when they are released. The conference theme:

The Future of Digital Media Culture: In the early 1990s, the very term digital was new and novel. However, it has taken only fifteen years for e-mail, the Internet, mobile phones, the power of searchable databases, games, film and TV special effects and workplace software tools to become a common and essential part of modern life. Research has not only described the arrival of these new forms, but is increasingly addressing the unexpected social and cultural uses of digital communications and virtual work/play environments.

In the same historically brief time, popular attention has turned to the potentials and problems of the newer new technologies, bio and nano. In addition, the global phenomenon of terrorism, super-epidemics and climate change have developed from distant concerns to everyday realities. Thus the context for digitally mediated processes is also very different.