Arjon Dunnewind – 'Impakt Channel: Content with Context'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Being the festival, artistic and general director of Impakt, Arjon Dunnewind is in charge of a database of art related content for which he has to decide the most appropriate way of uploading to the web. An important factor to take into account, he explains, is that the audience on the web has different expectations than ‘offline audience’. Online archives are the next phase and make us rethink how we structure the art collection, connect both the online and offline audience  and exploit the merits of the online environment to use them in the best possible way.

How to involve an audience?
According to Dunnewind this can be done by providing the viewers quality instead of quantity. This means no comment space below the art content. Arjon would rather have a platform without any comments than low quality comments and spam on his channel. Moderation and hierarchy are keywords for the Impakt Channel, only inviting experts to give their opinion and opening little by little. Arjon wouldn’t mind never to open it for ordinary users though – as it can degrade the quality.

Legal issues
A struggle for Dunnewind are the legal issues. Foremost, who is responsible for the content and the legal issues is not always clear. While being online for supposedly 20 years, only since 5 years has there been options for artists as to in which degree their work is allowed to be published. There is no standard agreement with the artists (all permission has to be confirmed in direct contact with the artist) and more importantly: the artists themselves haven’t always cleared the legal issues of the materials used in their pieces. On the sunny side of the legal issues is that the organization is relatively small, so they don’t receive a lot of complaints. Also there is not much historical material in the database and the legal methods Impakt uses now actually bond the artist and the organization really well. Which results in allowing to put the work online.

The Impakt Channel : Give context to content. Or: how to make a difference
To differentiate yourself from video websites such as YouTube – which offer little to no context -  could be done in various ways. To Arjon, a way is to do that is to offer unique content. Also building a unique platform with alternate possibilities and limitations is a manner. Furthermore, connecting the online channel with the offline events, art projects and festivals, including bonus material for example, are adequate ways to create context. As are the display of background information, articles, introductions and comments by invited experts, interviews and curatorial texts from the original programs.

All that said, Arjon concludes with his wish for the online Impakt environment. ‘We want the Impakt Channel to become a new platform’, he says. A platform that creates exhibitions online, a flexible, dynamic, autonomous space on which can be experimented.

Annelies Termeer – 'Instant Cinema: Sharing the Screen'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Annelies Termeer was the third speaker during the lecture themed It’s Not a Dead Collection, It’s a Dynamic Database. She is ad interim head of digital presentation at the EYE Film Institute, formerly known as the Film Museum. The project she is affliated with is called InstantCinema. The goal of the website is to facilitate filmmakers with a platform that affords them to easily upload their films and connect with likeminded people. An important part of the target audience exists of experimental filmmakers, who now have a platform that has the ability to unite the separate spheres of the online communities, the art world and the film world.

The key subject in the overarching theme was that the preservation of works online offered a way in which the curators could add value through contextualizing the artists and their artwork, which is supposed to lead to a richer experience for the public engaging with those works. Furthermore, in the case of InstantCinema, a big factor in the succes was the establishing of a trusting relationship between the artists and the organization. The filmmakers would be offered an easy-to-use platform. As Termeer explained, InstantCinema wanted to make film widely available providing a complementary platform towards existing establishments such as the museum, specialized film festivals and cinémathèques

Termeer explained that the project came about through the shared inititiative of L.A. based Dutchmen Rene Daalder, who is a writer and filmmaker, and Folkert Gorter, and interaction designer. The technical framework, the content management system of the project, originated in a few of their earlier projects, namely SpaceCollective.org, a cross-media platform where the future of human existence is being discussed and CargoCollective.com, which functions as a platform on which graphic artists can easily share their work.

In Termeer’s view, InstantCinema has the important socio-cultural function to show the similarities between different forms of media-art. The site, located at www.instantcinema.org, has several features with which it tries to provide a quality alternative to commercial distribution platforms. It offers a high image quality and a solid content management system. It also has a feature that enables communitybuilding. As you can see on the image below, the left of the website exists of curated works, and the right side offers contributed work by artists:

After describing the website, Termeer expanded on what challenges the creators faced. One of the obstacles that arose, was that it was taking far more time than expected to finish the platform. Besides that, there were the usual problems surrounding intellectual property rights with curated works. They also had to adapt the Cargo systems, making them able to house videomaterial. As Termeer explained, much consideration went into which format was being used, keeping quality standards and such in mind. Video would have to be streamable, while the works would retain a high quality.

She went on to point out that, in order to grow organically while at the same time maintaining a high standard for the artwork that would be submitted, InstantCinema would use invitation models for the filmmakers, like Google used them for Gmail. Every artist would be allowed to invite 5 other artists, thereby granting them a degree of control over the content on the site. Moderation would therefore be a shared burden for the community and the owners.

Looking ahead, Termeer sees several further goals. She points out that the aim of the project is to establish an even closer connection between the site and other offline events that are being organised by EYE. InstantCinema seems to celebrate the openness and connectivity that the web has to offer. The question remains how big its repository will become. By granting an accessible platform to experimental filmmakers, and taking away the obscurity of the ‘art-film’ by offering the public 24/7 online access to this valuable resource, InstantCinema seems eager to see what the future holds in store for it and how big the community will turn out to be. The project is still in its early days and over time we will see if the caterpillar will gloriously emerge from its cocoon as a butterfly, or if it will remain modest in the safe surroundings of its protective shell a little while longer.

Further info:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/anneliestermeer
Contact InstantCinema: info@instantcinema.org

Annelies Termeer’s presentation can be found here (PDF format).