Some of you heard it already in Split: the 5th edition of the Video Vortex conference series will be held in Brussels. Video Vortex V is announced for November 20-21 2009, and will be hosted by the Cimatics festival.

Previously Video Vortex conferences were held in Brussels, Amsterdam, Ankara and Split. With this second Brussels meeting the goal is also to set up Video Vortex as an organised network, making it more sustainable.

Let this be a first general open call for participation. But keep an eye on the list for a more detailed call soon, with deadlines and specific themes. Submissions can be sent to the email adress below or uploaded through the online submission form at cimatics.com/entries (category: ‘Video Vortex’)

For any further questions, recommendations or remarks you can contact me at bram.crevits@cimatics.com or just reply to the vv list.

The Video Vortex program has been updated! Check out the updated program here.

Video Vortex 4 includes contributions by: Perry Bard, Natalie Bookchin, Maarten Brinkerink, Vito Campanelli, David Clark, Dagan Cohen, Cym and the Aethernauts, Alejandro Duque, Albert Figurt, Stefan Heidenreich, Jasmina Kallay, Sarah Késsene, Lev Manovich, Dalibor Martinis, Gabriel Menotti, Ana Peraica, Valentina Rao, Shelly Silver, Jan Simons, Amir Soltani, Antanas Stancius, Evelin Stermitz, David Teh, Vera Tollmann, Andreas Treske, Saša Vojković, Nenad Vukušić Sebastijan, Linda Wallace, Paul Wiersbinski, Kuros Yalpani, Emile Zile

Organized by the Department of Film and Video at the Academy of Arts University of Split and Platforma 9.81, in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam.

(updated on May 17, 2009)

VIDEO VORTEX 4 IN SPLIT,
SCHEDULE 21 - 23 May 2009

///DAY ZERO: THURSDAY 21 MAY 2009

17:00 Screenings 1
Location: Kinoteka Zlatna Vrata
Trip – Natalie Bookchin (63 min.)
Q&A – Natalie Bookchin (Los Angeles), (20 min.)

19:00 Opening evening
Location: Multimedia Cultural Center
19:00 Word of Welcome by Geert Lovink, Miranda Veljačić and Dan Oki
19:10 Introduction speech by Lev Manovich (San Diego)
20:00 Exhibition opening with food/buffet
21:00 Emile Zile - Post-It Kino Performance
21: 45 Nenad Vukušić Sebastijan - VJ Performance

///DAY ONE: FRIDAY 22 MAY

Video Vortex Conference
Location: Multimedia Cultural Center

9:45 - 11:30 Tele-Image Research Strategies (Moderator Sabine Niederer)
- Andreas Treske (Ankara)
- Nathalie Bookchin (Los Angeles)
- Dalibor Martinis (Zagreb)
Discussion

COFFEE

11:45 – 13:45 The Database (Moderator Tomislav Medak)
- Maarten Brinkerink (Amsterdam)
- Kuros Yalpani (Munich)
- Albert Figurt (Rome)
- Alejandro Duque (Zurich)
Discussion

LUNCH

14:30 – 16:30 Video Art meets Web Aesthetics (Moderator Leila Topić)
- Vera Tollmann (Berlin)
- Vito Campanelli (Napoli)
- Sarah Késsene (Gent)
- Linda Wallace (Sydney/Amsterdam)
Discussion

BREAK

17:30 – 18:45 Screenings 2
Location: Kinoteka Zlatna Vrata
Shelly Silver - In complete world (53 min.)
Q&A - Shelly Silver (New York), (20 min.)

19:00 CONFERENCE DINNER

21:00 – 22:30 SCREENING 3 (presented by Dagan Cohen)
Location: Kinoteka Zlatna Vrata
Upload Cinema, http://www.uploadcinema.nl, March 2009 Edition ‘Engineering the Body,’ (90 min.).

///DAY TWO: SATURDAY 23 MAY 2009
(First bus to the Conference: 8:45, Second bus to the Conference: 9:00)

Video Vortex Conference
Location: Multimedia Cultural Center

09:45 – 11:45 Online Video Theories (Moderator Geert Lovink)
- Jan Simons (Amsterdam)
- Gabriel Menotti (London)
- Amir Soltani (Manchester)
- Stefan Heidenreich (Berlin)
Discussion

COFFEE

12:00 – 14:00 Online Video Narratives (Moderator Brian Willems)
- Jasmina Kallay (Dublin)
- David Clark (Halifax)
- Valentina Rao (Pisa)
- Paul Wiersbinski (Frankfurt)
Discussion

LUNCH

14:45 – 16:45 Politics of the Moving Image (Moderator Petar Milat)
- Saša Vojković (Zagreb)
- David Teh (Bangkok)
- Ana Peraica (Split)
- Antanas Stancius (Vilnius)
Discussion

COFFEE

17:00 – 18:30 Social Cinema (Moderator Dan Oki)
- Perry Bard (New York)
- Evelin Stermitz (Villach/Ljubljana)
- Dagan Cohen (Amsterdam)
Discussion

19:00 PERFORMANCE
Location: Multimedia Cultural Center
- ‘Cym and the Aethernauts’ (Walkersdorf / All over the world) (performance 30 min.)

20:00 CONFERENCE DINNER

22:00 CONFERENCE PARTY
Location: KOCKA CLUB

On 22-23 May, 2009 the fourth edition of Video Vortex will take place in Split, Croatia. The Department of Film and Video at the Academy of Arts University of Split and Platforma 9.81 will organize the event, in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. After previous events on online video and responses to YouTube in Brussels, Amsterdam and Ankara, this event will focus on the moving image on the Web.

We invite contributions for the following themes:

Telepresence and Web Aesthetics
Video meets Web aesthetics: how is the phenomenon of ‘telepresence’ incorporated in various art forms, such as music, theater, visual arts, literature and cinema? What are underlying aesthetics and what are the specific interface contexts?

Social Cinema
Has cinema found its way onto the Web? Did it change the essential features of cinema? What are the new possibilities of collaborative production? Does the future of film museums and cinematheques lie in online cinematic databases?

Architecture and Moving Image
Online video offers an immense database of moving images, which could be displayed in urban public space. What are the existing cinematographic visions of the future of the moving image in public space? (In films such as Blade Runner, Minority Report, Children of Men, etc.) Which visions can be directly implemented, and which will remain film scenography?

Video Sharing
What are the standards and alternatives for sharing, licensing and hosting moving images on the Web? This theme explores issues around the distribution, licensing, collaborative production, and video hosting.

Technology and politics of the moving image
What is the future of visual browsers? How does moving image production relate to cultural, technological and political dominance? Open standards and codex politics. Surveillance issues.

Literature and video online narrative
Narrative strategies on the Web. From screenplay writing with hypertext, the broadcasted self and narrative avatars to collective narrative processes leading to Web literature, tag based video narrativity, public journalism and performative real-time literature.

Please send in a 500-word abstract and a short bio to Dan Oki (danoki [at] xs4all.nl) before February 5, 2009.

During the Video Vortex in Split we will present five cinema events:
1) upload cinema 2) mobile phone cinema 3) social cinema 4) cinematic data base 5) performative cinema

///
Please check out the Video Vortex reader: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (eds.), Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures,
2008. ISBN: 978-90-78146-05-6.
Available as a pdf here.

On October 10-11 2008, the third Video Vortex event will take place in Ankara, Turkey, organised by Bilkent University (Department of Communication and Design), in cooperation with the Institute of Network Cultures. The event will feature a two-day international conference, evening program, live performances and new media art exhibition. As a follow-up to the Amsterdam conference, held in January 2008, and the Brussels conference, held in October 2007, Video Vortex Ankara aims to continue and deepen the debates, while bringing together a wide range of scholars, artists and curators as well as lawyers, producers and engineers.

The deadline for submissions is June 15 2008, please find the call for participation here.

We are very pleased to announce that audio and video documentation for all Amsterdam Video Vortex sessions are now available on this website. The files can be found on the Documentation page. Each presentation is available to be viewed individually as a flash video. The Documentation page also contains all presentations as mp3 audio files. These can be played in your Internet browser, or be downloaded. Many thanks again to everyone who helped make Video Vortex a successful event!

Video Vortex Amsterdam has ended. The INC thanks all speakers, audience, funds, crew and technicians for their participation in making it a memorable event!

Video Vortex has been blogged extensively by the tireless Masters of Media bloggers: http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/

Pictures taken at the event can be found on Flickr, feel free to join the photo pool and upload your own Video Vortex photographs: http://www.flickr.com/groups/videovortex/pool/

Audio and video documentation will become available shortly, please keep an eye on the conference website or join the Video Vortex discussion list, which will be continued after this conference:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/videovortex_listcultures.org.

We hope to see you all at future events,
INC and Video Vortex team

Much like poetry slamming the use of short video fragments has become a dominant mode in visual culture. Where are the video files found and how are they used and played with? Is ‘video slamming’ the new way of watching audiovisual files? This evening session is all about the new ways of watching, using, and playing with moving images, such as scratching, sampling, mixing, (meta)tagging and recommending.Presented by Sabine Niederer and Michael Stevenson

20.00 Screenings: YouTube favourites

21.00 Presentations of video databases and VJ software. With Killer TV, Rosa Menkman, Tatiana de la O, and Emile Zile.

21.30 Performances by Rosa Menkman, Tatiana de la O, and Emile Zile.

Today, the Video Vortex conference started at PostCS11. We’ve closed registration, tickets are available at the venue.
Hope to see you there!

The conference is blogged by the Masters of Media at http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl. Conference photography by Anne Helmond: http://www.flickr.com/photos/video_vortex/. Video documentation of the conference will soon be available at http://www.networkcultures.org/archive/.

On Thursday January 17, the Video Vortex vlogging workshop will be hosted by Seth Keen, the Videodefunct Collective and Showinabox at the Netherlands Media Art Institute.

Videodefunct and Showinabox: Hitting vlogging with a hammer
date: Thursday Jan 17 from 12.00 – 17.00
place: Workspace in the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Keizersgracht 264 Amsterdam

A workshop presented in two parts that looks at knocking vlogging into shape and bashing it into oblivion. The videodefunct collective focus on poetic approaches towards the way video is presented and curated by inverting the blog interface. Showinthebox aim to improve vlogging accessibility and aesthetic control with a user-friendly toolkit. Both projects use the open source blogging application WordPress and question whether vlogs need to move beyond the constraints of blogs.

1200 – 1400 Videodefunct (Seth Keen and Keith Deverell)
1400 – 1600 Showinabox (Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson)
1600 – 1700 Vlogging panel discussion

more information:
http://www.montevideo.nl
http://www.sethkeen.net/blog/
http://greyspace.com.au/blog/
http://www.videodefunct.net/
http://jaydedman.com
http://ryanedit.blogspot.com
http://ryanishungry.com
http://showinabox.tv/

Please note: Register for the workshop by contacting malka@nimk.nl!