By Cecilia Guida

Constant Dullaart (the Netherlands, 1979) is a visual artist who ironically explores new modes of imagining and using the internet as a medium. His research is focused on the contemporary language of images and re-contextualizing material found on the Web. For him, the Web is a space, a landscape, a world to investigate in all its various parts, from the ‘default’ style of the platform, to its contents, and its popularity and widespread use. His works are widely discussed online and have been shown internationally. Having participated in 2009 at Video Vortex #5 in Brussels where he presented on his artistic practice that uses online video, this interview connects the ideas presented there through focusing particularly on his series ‘YouTube as a Subject’. Taking his work on the image of the YouTube play button as a point of departure, the conversation reflects on the social theories of Marshall McLuhan, perceptions of artwork on the YouTube platform, questions regarding the position of the artist, the relationship between online and physical spaces, and the interaction of the audience in the era of the ‘participatory culture’ of the Net.

The website of Constant Dullaart: http://www.constantdullaart.com/

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Cecilia Guida: In your series of short videos titled ‘YouTube as a Subject’ (2008) no people are visible in the work. On a black background the familiar image of the YouTube play button falls off the screen, bounces as a ball, grows out of focus or changes colour by the sound of techno music. The button is at the same time the starting point and subject of the work. Through a simple and smart gesture you reflect upon the digitalization of our contemporary visual culture, and call the spectators’ attention to meditate upon the relationship between the user interface and the moving image in logical and semiotic terms. For you, where did the idea for ‘YouTube as a Subject’ emerge?

Constant Dullaart: First of all I have to say that I disliked the YouTube design and video quality in 2005 when it started to come out—the chaotic site structure, the badly designed layout, and the obnoxious play button. After a few years it was clear that YouTube had won the battle of online video hosting companies, and it started to function as an archive (practical contemporary rights issues that avoid it from functioning in this way, and the 10 minute time limit aside), not only as a medium that was breaking with the authority of the expensive craft of the moving image professional. This caused me to wonder why the obnoxious play button had not been used as a subject since it was the first image people would see before watching all these important reference videos, art, wedding, news, etc. The play button is the starting point regardless of whether it’s a meme video, a Joseph Beuys performance, a Warhol screen test, or an instructional video. Every single one starts with the same image.

CG: In the Sixties early video art united negative and positive criticism about the technology, and offered alternatives for a traditional approach to the medium. Fluxus artists were pioneers in these investigations. Among them, Wolf Vostell and Nam June Paik used techniques such as détournement, manipulation, repetition, slowing down and speeding up images, etc. in order to explore the technical limits and possibilities of the medium. In particular, Paik incorporated the ideas of Marshall McLuhan in his work, specifically exploring video as a form of social experiment to bring people closer together and a suitable medium for audience participation. Do you relate to these strategies of technical investigation, and to video as a form of social practice, in your work?

CD: Comparisons between media are often made around a whole range of issues, from the anxieties and fears during their establishment in society (such as the predominantly negative influence on children of video games, television, graphic novels or even books),  to the celebration of a medium’s influence on a better future, to the announcements of their so called deaths or exits from daily use in society.

To apply this comparison to an artist’s research of a medium is a simple step.

For this artist’s research, first, the technical possibilities of the medium are often explored, and art is made to exhibit these capabilities. These works tend to catch the attention of the general public more often in the beginning establishment of a medium. Why this works in this way exactly I have never understood. It seems like the medium is still suffering from a lack of original medium specific content, and needs to attract attention by showcasing its capabilities. These conclusions are difficult to draw between the internet as a medium and older media such as painting. But the comparisons can be made between the birth of the film camera, the influence of photography on contemporary western image language, and very recently,
video art. But then the internet contains several developing social media, like mail and text driven media, so it is hard to compare it to a single older medium, especially since it is so dynamic.

The second step would be to find the boundaries of the technical capabilities, whether it’s human / user related or medium related.

The third step of this medium research would be to view the young medium on a metaphysical level: not only what is the use of the medium, but also how is it being used, and what is the meaning of this usage? After this, the medium’s content could escape the process as described above and it should be able to be used with more authentic or medium specific content. An example to understand it would be the filmmaker Andrej Tarkowski. As the formal and technical possibilities of the cinema movie had been researched in the 20’s, he found an ‘adult’ medium to work with knowing a lot of the medium implications and playing with it in more detail. He used the medium specific qualities to enhance the content and tell an authentic story disconnected from the medium itself. Let’s say that for now in relation to internet: the medium is more interesting than most of its content.

My ‘YouTube as a Subject’ work can be seen as a reference to Marshall McLuhan’s ‘the Medium is the message’, although I thought of the work more as purely formal in the sense that the form was the content. You could say that if the form is the medium, then form became the message. But, I think this series of my work was not about the implications of the social web or of mass social online video hosting, it was not dealing with the hotness or the coldness of the medium as McLuhan would describe it. It was more about the specificity of one corporation existing within the medium. YouTube itself is not a medium. To have the work exist outside of YouTube was important to me. To collect my videos and contextualize them outside of YouTube (on an html page with embedded videos) meant it was about the player, and not so much about the social part of the website, to separate it more from ‘the Medium is the Message’ idea.

*** Interview to be continued in the second Video Vortex Reader, currently in production at the INC***

The world of the ordinary people and their extraordinary videos

‘I like to watch. I confess’ says Michael Strangelove, adjunct professor in the department of communication at the University of Ottawa, opening his book Watching YouTube by divulging his enjoyment of any kind of video on YouTube and other internet sites – laughing babies, home-made cartoons, dancing girls, clever student art projects, amateur documentaries, real-life actions.

Watching Youtube, as Strangelove positions, cannot capture all of the ‘Tube’ but rather offers a detailed survey of its broader social patterns and significances. Weaving a thread throughout the book, the first chapter offers a brief overview of the golden age of home movies, describing how online digital video is both similar to, and different from, traditional home movie making, and concludes the last chapter by arguing that we are moving into post-television era characterized by mass digital cultural production.

His analysis focuses on videos made by ordinary people, the ‘amateur videographers’ as the author calls them, who work outside the institutional structures of the television and movie industry providing an alternative to commercially driven content produced by professionals. Considering that ever since Adorno and Horkheimer (1947) denounced amateurs as irrelevant and meaningless, and that media theorists have had great difficulty reincorporating amateur culture into the centre of history, Strangelove’s aim to give such a significant role to amateur cultural production seems to be quite hard to achieve – at the beginning of the reading, at least. But he fully reaches his objective by developing a consistent study about the transformation of the audience (the main theme of the book), drawing a clear distinction between the active audience of mass media (as Ien Ang envisioned in Living Room Wars, 1996) and the contemporary hyperactive audience of online media.

Amateur online videography undermines the professionally-made, privately-owned and broadcast-based old media of the twentieth century. If the analogue audience was active as interpreter of meanings, the new digital audience has dual stance as producer and consumer of ‘video’ texts. Their videos capture aspects of everyday existence. They are adolescent (there is a trend among teenagers to post videos of themselves vomiting); sentimental (weddings); domestic (pets get millions of views); consciousness-raising (as the chapter ‘Women of the ‘Tube’ shows in relation to the subcultures of discussion and self-expression that YouTube inspires in every social minority), and are even Freudian if one considers the modes of self-construction that feature popular video diaries, also known as ‘video blogging’ or ‘vlogs’. The production and representation of reality in the new millennium is in the hands of amateurs. As a space that represents all activities of everyday life with all its differences and its conflicts, YouTube is a field where marginal voices are moving centre-stage and threaten the mainstream media’s influence. Having said this, Strangelove knows well that amateur cultural production is deeply entwined with commercial media and is co-opted by the marketplace, but also recognizes that ‘it does not have to submit to the imperatives of economic exchange. There is no state or corporal mechanism that can ensure that amateur cultural production will serve as propaganda for democracy or capitalism. As a meaning-production system, amateur online video is free from economic and ideological control mechanisms. It is free to produce resistance’. (p. 183)

As already said, Watching YouTube is a book about the audience, particularly in the final chapter where Strangelove presents features of this emerging ‘post-television audience’ discussing a key activity on Youtube: the technique of appropriation. Whereas the television audience can only interpret, the YouTube audience has now the privileged position of easily taking content, changing it and turning it into their own video creation – something sociologically significant that could be deemed the ‘democratization of moviemaking’. A well-known example of this occurred during the American presidential race of 2008, where various people took a clip from the 2004 German movie Downfall and inserted English-language subtitles into a scene where Hitler explodes in the face of defeat. The lines viciously parodied Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin and many others. This appropriation became so popular that it has even been mentioned in The New York Times.

Strangelove seems funny – his website opens with a brief video on how the internet is like a good cigar. But he takes the internet seriously and his analysis of it is well-written and extensively researched. He has no interest in playing the role of a new media prophet and approaches online amateur video as a digital ethnographer who deeply participates in the community being studied, actively using the media technology under investigation. The book is an intimate exploration of a global phenomenon of ‘Tube’s’ culture (emerging genres, interactions and communities). What impresses the most is the huge variety of videos the author explores, analyses and reports. Along with the famous videos such as ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ there are many that are entirely new as examples that typify the social uses and significance of amateur online videography. The book is an extensive study supplemented by an online blog, and so, is ‘a must’ for scholars, professionals, students, online video makers and anyone else who wants to explore the significance of YouTube.

After reading Watching YouTube, follow Strangelove’ s advice: grab your video camera, turn on your cellular phone, launch your webcam, make a video and upload it to YouTube.
Tell us your story. We all like to watch!

Reviewed by Cecilia Guida

http://www.strangelove.com
http://www.strangelove.com/blog
http://www.twitter.com/Doc_Strangelove

From YouTube it came, and to YouTube it returned

‘Hypnoprism’ is the latest album by the eclectic artist and musician Momus aka Nick Currie. The title of the album, an intriguing combination of words, means a sort of hypnotic musical prism and refers to YouTube, the source of much of the inspiration for the album. Hypnotised by watching his favourite music videos on YouTube, Momus made songs aspiring to the same qualities – that mysterious rhythm you can’t stop playing back that sticks in your memory. He then made videos for them, posting them on YouTube.
The whole album will be released in the US and Europe on September 2010, however is available right now on YouTube (of course!).

http://imomus.com

Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake

“This film is an experiment in cinematic communication of real events without the aid of intertitles, without the aid of a scenario, without the aid of theatre. This experimental work aims at creating a truly international language of cinema based on its absolute separation from the language of theatre and literature.” This text is the beginning of  Dziga Vertov’s 1929 film ‘Man With A Movie Camera’ that records the progression of one full day, synthesizing footage shot in Moscow, Riga, and Kiev. The movie is often described as an urban documentary where the subject of the film is also the film itself – from the role of the cameraman/the ‘camera eye’ to that of the editor, its projection in a theatre, and the response of the audience. It is a film within a film, an endless burst of inventive effects – dissolves, split screen, slow motion, freeze frame.
Shot in the Russian industrial landscape of the 20’s, what images of Vertov’s footage translate in the world today?
This is the main question that Perry Bard was inspired by when she started the experimental project ‘Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake’. It is a participatory video shot by people around the world who are invited to record images that interpret Vertov’s original script and then upload them to the website. Software was developed specifically for this project to enable anyone to upload footage to the site and thus become part of the database. When the work streams, the contribution becomes part of a worldwide montage, in Vertov’s idea, the “decoding of life as it is”.
Every day a new version of the movie is built: on the left is Vertov’s original, on the right is a shot uploaded from a participant.

More info and the videos on http://dziga.perrybard.net
You can watch the original film on youtube. The version with cinematic orchestra is strongly recommended. It is truly beautiful!

October, 1-2, 2010, New York City

The Open Video Alliance is now accepting proposals for panels, presentations, workshop sessions, demo sessions and other programming for the next Open Video Conference.

The Open Video Conference (OVC) is a multi-day summit of thought leaders in business, academia, art, and activism to explore the future of online video not only as free and open technology but also as participatory medium.

The first Open Video Conference was host to over 800 guests, including 150 workshop leaders, panelists and speakers. Over 8,000 viewers tuned in from home to watch the live broadcast. The event earned coverage in WIRED, NewTeeVee, BBC News, Filmmaker Magazine, and The New Yorker.

This year OVC is expanding. In addition to highlighting the industry’s progress toward open video, OVC 2010 will feature inspiring talks, hands-on workshops, technology working groups, film screenings, and much more. It’s as much about the underlying technologies as the people and projects who use them.

Check out the 2009 conference program and confirmed speakers for 2010, or go here for submissions.

On May 1st in the popular website Chatroulette thousands of people watched a man hanging from the ceiling, slowly swinging, for hours and hours. It was not a real suicide but a performance by Brooklyn-based artist Franco Mattes.

Eva and Franco Mattes are already known in the contemporary art world for similar interventions done under the name 0100101110101101.ORG. This time what they wanted to achieve with their challenging ‘online performance’, as they call it, is not clear. ‘Since we live online’ declared Franco Mattes ‘than we should get used to die online’.

The action provoked many and diverse reactions: some laughed – believing it was a joke, some insulted, some took pictures,and apparently, only one called the police.

An interesting discussion on the meaning of a piece of art as such, hyperreality and spectacularization of daily life is followed on this discussion thread on rhizome.org.

To watch ‘No Fun’ go here

Still from online performance No Fun by Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG

http://videoonwikipedia.org

Wouldn’t it be great if a Wikipedia entry could communicate the motion of a pirouette? Or the kinetic buzz of New York City’s Grand Central Terminal? Or even how to blow a raspberry?

Anyone can edit an article on Wikipedia making it a constantly growing and improving resource. But a text article can only convey so much. Right now very few articles have videos.

Video on Wikipedia is a new project combining the technology of video with the open content framework of Wikipedia. Starting now, anyone may experiment with the possibilities of collaborative video, posting it here and contributing to make the free encyclopaedia a more dynamic source of information.

Lots of videos on various topics – from everyday life to science to literature – can already be watched on the site, or on Wikipedia articles where they have been included.

So, what are waiting for?

Go to http://videos.videoonwikipedia.org and look for them!

Like the ‘special features’ commentary on a commercial DVD, the ‘YouTube Commentary Project’ is a curatorial initiative that involves injecting ideas, critique and comments recorded by artists and curators about a YouTube video of their choice. After overlaying the recorded audio onto the video, the results are then uploaded back onto YouTube and presented there.
The project is part of Artists Space’s new WebCast: internet and computer-based cultural content co-produced with artists around the world.

Below the commentary of the independent curator Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy where she considers YouTube as a research vehicle, fan culture and a newfound Tom Cruise…

So far many interesting commentaries have been published. See them at the Artists Space YouTube channel and enjoy!

Audiovisual Thinking is a pioneering forum where academics and educators can articulate, conceptualize and disseminate their research about audiovisuality and audiovisual culture through the medium of video.

International in scope and multidisciplinary in approach, the purpose of Audiovisual Thinking is to develop and promote academic thinking in and about all aspects of audiovisuality and audiovisual culture.

Advised by a board of leading academics and thinkers in the fields of audiovisuality, communication and the media, the journal seeks to set the standard for academic audiovisual essays now and in the future.

For more information go here:

http://www.audiovisualthinking.org

In response to the increasing potential for video as a significant form of personal media on the Internet, the Video Vortex program examines key issues that are emerging around the independent production and distribution of online video content. With the rise of YouTube and alternative platforms, the moving image on the Internet has become expansively more prominent and popular. As a wide range of technologies is now broadly available, the potential of video as a personal means of expression has reached a totally new dimension.

Following the success of the first Video Vortex reader (published late 2008, second edition, 4000 copies in total), recent Video Vortex conferences in Ankara (Oct. 2008), Split (May 2009) and Brussels (Nov. 2009) have sparked a number of new insights, debates and conversations regarding the politics, aesthetics, and artistic possibilities of online video. Since these issues develop with the rapidly changing landscape of online video and its use, we want to open up a space once again for interested people to contribute to this critical conversation in a second issue of the Video Vortex reader.

POSSIBLE TOPICS
Taking its lead from the first Video Vortex reader, and based on the issues raised at the latest three Video Vortex conferences as well as recent developments, possible topics include:

Theories of online video and Web cinema // Politics of online video // YouTube and the state of contemporary visual culture // Database aesthetics // Video art meets web aesthetics // Autonomous participatory culture for art and activism // Artist engagement with ‘user-generated-content’ sites: content and architecture // Changing modes of video distribution and what this means for artists and activists // Open-source and open-content initiatives // Alternatives to proprietary standards // Censorship and YouTube // The ethics and politics of indigenous knowledge and online video // The use of online video within government practices (election campaigning, censorship etc.) // Democracy, citizen journalism and online video // Social Cinema // Educational practices and online video in the classroom // New and changing economic models // Google, YouTube and the economics of online video // Commercial objectives imposed by mass media on user-generated and video-sharing databases // Effect of ubiquitous online video practice on cinema, television and video art.

WE INVITE
Internet, visual culture and media scholars, researchers, artists, curators, producers, lawyers, engineers, open-source and open-content advocates, activists, Video Vortex conference participants, and others to submit materials and proposals.

FORMATS

We welcome interviews, dialogues, essays and articles, images (b/w), email exchanges, manifestos, with a max of 8,000 words. For scope and style, take a look at the previous INC readers (Video Vortex Reader, Urban Screens, Incommunicado Reader, MyCreativity Reader) and the style guide at: http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/videovortex_styleguide.pdf

This publication is produced by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam and will be launched early 2011.

DEADLINE: May 10, 2010

SEND CONTRIBUTIONS TO: rachel(at)networkcultures(dot)org

MORE INFORMATION
Video Vortex: 
http://networkcultures.org/videovortex/
INC readers: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/inc-readers/
Or email: rachel(at)networkcultures(dot)org

____________
ABOUT THE READER SERIES
The INC reader series are derived from conference contributions and produced by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. They are available (for free) in print and pdf form on http://networkcultures.org/publications/inc-readers/

Previously published in this series:

INC Reader #5: Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Niederer (eds.), Urban Screens Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009. The Urban Screens Reader is the first book to focus entirely on the topic of urban screens. A collection of texts from leading theorists, and a series of case studies that deal with artists’ projects, and screen operators’ and curators’ experiences, offering a rich resource at the intersections between digital media, cultural practices and urban space.

INC Reader #4: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (eds.), Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2008.
The Video Vortex Reader is the first collection of critical texts to deal with the rapidly emerging world of online video – from its explosive rise in 2005 with YouTube, to its future as a significant form of personal media.

INC Reader #3: Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter (eds.), MyCreativity Reader: A Critique of Creative Industries, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2007.
The MyCreativity Reader is a collection of critical research into the creative industries. The material develops out of the MyCreativity Convention on International Creative Industries Research held in Amsterdam, November 2006 (no longer available in print; pdf online).

INC Reader #2: Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen and Matteo Pasquinelli (eds.), C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2007.
C’lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader is an anthology that collects the best material from two years of debate from The Art and Politics of Netporn 2005 conference to the 2007 C’Lick Me festival (no longer available in print; pdf online).

INC Reader #1: Geert Lovink and Soenke Zehle (eds.), Incommunicado Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2005.
The Incommunicado Reader brings together papers written for the June 2005 event, and includes a CD-ROM of interviews with speakers (no longer available in print; pdf online).

ABOUT VIDEO VORTEX EVENTS
Video Vortex V: Brussels, Belgium (November 20-21, 2009) was organized by Cimatics festival 2009 in cooperation with the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam and supported by KASK (Faculty of Fine Arts, University College Ghent) and the Center Leo Apostel (CLEA).

Video Vortex IV: Split, Croatia (May 22-23, 2009) was 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.

Video Vortex III: Ankara, Turkey (October 10-11, 2008) was organized by Bilkent University Department of Communication and Design, in cooperation with the Institute of Network Cultures.

Planned Events: Video Vortex Budapest (Oct. 2010), Leicester, Amsterdam (March 2011), Croatia (September 2011).