Video Vortex#7, is covered by local newspaper, Tribun Jogja (Kompas group) in Art and Culture section.

As a follow-up to his visit and great presentation at Video Vortex #6, Dr. Michael Strangelove put together these video postcards of the experience. If you weren’t able to come to Amsterdam for the event, these audiovisual impressions will give you a quick glimpse into the happenings of Video Vortex #6. Thanks again to everyone for making it a great conference!

Video registration of all the talks will be posted to the blog soon! Come back for more!

On Wednesday March 10th, at the Netherlands Media Art Institute, artist Evan Roth hosted a workshop as part of Video Vortex #6.  Over 6 hours, participants worked fervently to collaboratively put together a mashup of their favourite animated gifs, resulting in a music video. Participants learned about the open source animated mashup software Roth built, how to search and download animated gifs, and how to put together their own compilations. After a fun day of sharing and showing their favourite gifs, suggesting what order they should go in, and collectively deciding what music to use, and with Roth doing the final editing, the group of 20 participants created this great number:

For more documentation about the day, check out Evan’s site here.

Program Out Now!

Download here the program for the VVV closing party.

Reflecting on our growing digital culture and its increasing audiovisual presence in our daily lives, artists CONSTANT DULLAART, ANJA MASLING, GIORGI TABATADZE, EMILE ZILE, and YELLOW GOOGLE HEAD AND MACACOSTAILEY and DJ 4LCH3MY (aka Katja Novitskova), reveal the possibilities and playfulness of online video to explore, appropriate, and create.Slamming, mixing, melding, mashing, stalling, freezing and buffering will ensue as artists drawing from moving images on the Web beckon you into the vortices of our online video world. From the live collision of video clips to the manipulation of the YouTube interface, the Institute of Network Cultures welcomes you to a closing night of visual sensory over-load through performances and projections.

Dear All,

the Institute of Network Cultures is pleased to announce the publication of Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube. The printed copies have arrived safe and sound at the INC headquarters as we wait excitedly to launch the book at the Video Vortex #6 conference on Saturday.

If you are unable to attend the event, you can order a copy of the reader by emailing: books@networkcultures.org

The reader is also available as a PDF download in the Video Vortex Readers page

Out in public:
An evening screening and Q&A with media artist Natalie Bookchin, moderated by Bart Rutten (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam)

Date: Tuesday 15 March, 19.30-21:30 hrs
Location: SMART Project Space, Arie Biemondstraat 101-111 (Auditorium)
Tickets: 4 euros at the door

As part of the Video Vortex #6 conference in Amsterdam (March 11-12), the Institute of Network Cultures in association with SMART Project Space invite you to join in an evening screening and discussion with internationally exhibited media artist Natalie Bookchin. Using webcam footage, YouTube videos and vlogs as source material throughout her work, Bookchin’s video installations explore new forms of documentary, address conditions of individuality, mass connectivity and isolation, and uncover the stories we are telling about ourselves and the world.

As a follow-up to the on-stage conversation with Bookchin at Video Vortex #6  on Saturday, March 12th, where she will discuss the relationship between the culture of video on the internet and her artistic practice, this evening invites the public to a ‘show and tell’ of her recent works. Natalie will screen and discuss her work, with Bart Rutten (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) moderating the Q&A session.

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Works screened and discussed during the evening:

Mass Ornament, 2009

Mass Ornament (2009, 7 min), single-channel HD video installation.
Taking hundreds of clips from YouTube of people dancing alone in their rooms, Mass Ornament edits together and choreographs these bodies into waves of coordinated movement. Creating a mass dance reminiscent of historical representations of synchronized bodies in formation, from the Tiller Girls and Busby Berkeley to Leni Riefenstahl, Mass Ornament speaks to Siegfried Kracauer’s 1927 essay, from which the video installation takes its name. In his text, Kracauer argued that the synchronized movement of chorus line dancers reflected the logic of a Fordist economic system. Shifting between depictions of masses and individuals, the work explores how these YouTube dancers, alone in their rooms, perform a dance that is simultaneously both extremely private and extraordinarily public and is, in its way, a perfect expression of our age. Just as rows of spectators once sat in theaters and stadiums watching rows of bodies moving in formation, today, millions of viewers sit alone in front of their computers watching individual dancers voluntarily move in formation alone in their rooms.

Testament, multi-channel installation, 2009

Testament (2009), series of video installations.
Testament is an ongoing series of video installations made from fragments of online video diaries that explore contemporary expressions of self, and the stories we currently tell online about our lives and circumstances. In its different chapters, the work explores personal proclamations of sexuality in I Am Not (2009, 2 min), the struggles of being fired in Laid Off (2009, 4 min), and the grocery list-like ordering of personal pharmaceutical use in My Meds (2009, 1’06 min). Clips are edited and placed in sequence, offering streams and patterns of self-revelation, narrative and language as they flow across the internet. As in a Greek chorus, individuals echo, respond to, contradict, add refrains, iterations, variations, join in, and complete solo narrations. Using personally recorded declarations, the Testament series reflects on the peculiar blend of intimacy and anonymity, of simultaneous connectivity and isolation that characterizes social relations today.

Laid Off, from Testament series, 2009

Now he’s out in public, and everyone can see (in progress), multi-channel video installation.
As a work in progress, Natalie will show parts of the newest chapter of Testament called, Now he’s out in public, and everyone can see. In this multi-channel video installation fragments of found online video diaries in which speakers describe and evaluate four very prominent African American public figures, as they recount a number highly charged, racialized media scandals, are turned into a collective performance. Through interweaving clips as they intersect around themes of race and class identity, a narrative exploring current popular attitudes, anxieties and conflicts about race emerges.

Download the digital version here!

The INC is pleased to announce the contributors and contents of the upcoming Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube (Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, March 2011).

The reader will be launched at the Video Vortex #6 conference in Amsterdam on Sat., March 12th at 5:15pm.

A number of contributors to the reader will be speaking as part of the conference, as well as many others will be in attendance!

Video Vortex Reader II contributors speaking at the conference include: Natalie Bookchin, Vito Campanelli (who will be present for the launch of his book, Web Aesthetics: How Digital Media Affect Culture and Society, taking place at the conference ), Andrew Clay, Sandra Fauconnier (NIMk), Sam Gregory (WITNESS), Mél Hogan, Nuraini Juliastuti and Ferdiansyah Thajib (KUNCI), Geert Lovink, Andrew Lowenthal (EngageMedia), Rachel Somers Miles, Teague Schneiter (IsumaTV), Andreas Treske, and Matthew Williamson. Also, the video installation series YouTube as a Subject by artist Constant Dullaart, discussed in an interview with Cecilia Guida in the reader, will be exhibited at the VeniVidiVortex:Closing Party.

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INTRODUCTION

Geert Lovink
Engage in Destiny Design: Online Video Beyond Hypergrowth
Introduction to Video Vortex Reader II

THEORY & AESTHETICS

Stefan Heidenreich
Vision Possible: A Methodological Quest for Online Video

Andreas Treske
Frames within Frames – Windows and Doors

Robrecht Vanderbeeken
Web Video and the Screen as a Mediator and Generator of Reality

Vito Campanelli
The DivX Experience

Sarah Késenne
Regarding the Sex, Lies and Videotapes of Others: Memory, Counter-Memory,
and Mystified Relations

IMAGES ON THE MOVE

Gabriel Menotti
Objets Propagés: The Internet Video as an Audiovisual Format

Andrew Gryf Paterson
From a Pull-down Screen, Fold-up Chairs, a Laptop and a Projector:
The Development of Clip Kino Screenings, Workshops and Roles in Finland

Jan Simons
Between iPhone and YouTube: Movies on the Move?

COLLECTION CASE STUDIES

Sandra Fauconnier
Video Art Distribution in the Era of Online Video

Evelin Stermitz
ArtFem.TV: Feminist Artistic Infiltration of a Male Net Culture

Mél Hogan
Crashing the Archive/Archiving the Crash: The Case of SAW Video’s Mediatheque

Teague Schneiter
Ethical Presentation of Indigenous Media in the Age of Open Video:
Cultivating Collaboration, Sovereignty and Sustainability

ASIA ONLINE

David Teh
The Video Agenda in Southeast Asia, or, ‘Digital, So Not Digital’

Ferdiansyah Thajib, Nuraini Juliastuti, Andrew Lowenthal and Alexandra Crosby
A Chronicle of Video Activism and Online Distribution in Post-New Order Indonesia

Larissa Hjorth
Still Mobile: Networked Mobile Media, Video Content and Users in Seoul

TECHNOLOGICAL APPROACHES

Matthew Williamson
Degeneracy in Online Video Platforms

Andrew Clay
Blocking, Tracking, and Monetizing: YouTube Copyright Control and the
Downfall Parodies

Tara Zepel
Cultural Analytics at Work: The 2008 U.S. Presidential Online Video Ads

Rachel Somers Miles
Free, Open and Online: An Interview with Denis Roio aka Jaromil

Alejandro Duque
Streaming Counter Currents: ‘W.A.S.T.E’

POLITICS & HUMAN RIGHTS

Sam Gregory
Cameras Everywhere: Ubiquitous Video Documentation of Human Rights, New Forms
of Video Advocacy, and Considerations of Safety, Security, Dignity and Consent

Elizabeth Losh
Shooting for the Public: YouTube, Flickr, and the Mavi Marmara Shootings

ONLINE VIDEO ART

Brian Willems
Increasing the Visibility of Blindness: Natalie Bookchin’s Mass Ornament

Natalie Bookchin and Blake Stimson
Out in public: Natalie Bookchin in Conversation with Blake Stimson

Linda Wallace
non-western and garland

Perry Bard
When Film and Database Collide

Cecilia Guida
YouTube as a Subject: Interview with Constant Dullaart

Rosa Menkman
Glitch Studies Manifesto

Albert Figurt
The Thin Line Between On and Off: a (re:)cyclothymic exploration

Team Thursday (Loes van Esch and Simone Trum) have been very busy over the last weeks to finalize the program booklet of the Video Vortex#6 conference. Here you can download the program.

From February 19th – April 29th, 2011, the exhibition CLOUD SOUNDS will be on at the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) in Amsterdam.

Included in the exhibition will be artists Evan Roth and Roel Wouters who will both be speaking at the upcoming Video Vortex #6 conference, in the “Online Video Art” session taking place on Friday, March 11th. As part of Video Vortex #6 Evan Roth will also be offering a workshop hosted at NIMk on Thursday, March 10th about animate GIF mashups and collaborative video making.

Jonas Bohatsch, vinyl (2009-2010)

CLOUD SOUNDS

Opening: Friday, 18 February
5:00 pm –  Performance Offener Schaltkreis in the Melkweg
6:00 pm –  Opening of exhibition at  Netherlands Media Art Institute. At 6:30 pm an electronic experimental audiovisual set by Funckarma & VJ Loudanov

**For more information on the opening: http://nimk.nl/eng/cloud-sounds-opening

Exhibition: 19 February – 29 April
WITH:  HARM VAN DEN BERG, JONAS BOHATSCH, STIJN DEMEULENAERE, ALEKSANDRA DOMANOVIC, AARON KOBLIN & CHRIS MILK, LOVID, HAAG/RUMORI/WINDISCH/ZELLER, JÖRG PIRINGER, EVAN ROTH, THOMSON & CRAIGHEAD, ROEL WOUTERS & JONATHAN PUCKEY

The eleventh edition of the annual 5 Days Off festival will take place from March 2-6, 2011, showcasing the latest developments surrounding electronic music. 5 DAYS ON is the title of the arts programme of the festival. The culture of electronic music, DJs and VJs, remixing and clips is also the starting point for the exhibition CLOUD SOUNDS at NIMk, Paradiso and Melkweg, opening on 18 February.

In CLOUD SOUNDS, the participating artists use musical subjects and processes for their work. Cloud Sounds explores production methods in the visual arts in which input from the public is essential. Social media and other Web 2.0 participatory processes on the internet create new possibilities for the production of art. A number of artists make use of  online possibilities such as crowdsourcing or mechanical turking, in which internet users cooperate and enable the realisation of the artwork. In this context, at various points, visitors, fans or online participants wittingly or unwittingly join in ‘producing’ the end result. The admonition ‘don’t touch’ is replaced by ‘join in’.

**For more information on the works in the exhibition: http://nimk.nl/eng/cloud-sounds-works

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CLOUD SOUNDS  is part of 5 Days On. There will be special performances, presentations and workshops during the 5 Days Off festival (2–6 March) by Duncan Speakman & Émilie Grenier, Nomadic Sound System (Benjamin Newland) and Dirk Oosterbosch, Mark Wubben & Elco Wagenaar.