Video Vortex Exhibition

Video Vortex exhibition I, from 20-10-2007 until 02-12-2007
Video Vortex exhibition II, from 07-12-2007 until 03-02-2008

The exhibition Video Vortex is the Netherlands Media Art Institute’s response to the Web2.0 phenomenon. Web2.0 stands for power to the user and democracy for everyone. It has led to innovative forms of media use in which an open and playful collaboration can lead to critical positions and new ideas.

The Netherlands Media Art Institute seizes upon these developments with a new exhibition model. Stimulation and participation within network environments is the point of departure. In addition to presenting existing installations, short workshops and presentations are given every day. In some cases the artworks form the starting point for a workshop, while in other cases the medium used is the subject of a workshop. Collective experience and building shared knowledge is an important focus in all the projects. In this manner, in the form of continual exchange of ideas, culture can change, renew itself and survive.

The Netherlands Media Art Institute has recently emerged as an experimental place where projects with a participatory aspect can be presented: in other words: do it yourself, with others! The artists are responding to developments such as YouTube, MySpace and Blogger, mobile video telephones and the influence of live webcam streams.

Video Vortex I
20-10-2007 until 02-12-2007

‘curator for a day’ For the duration of the project everyone can take on the role of curator. For this period the Netherlands Media Art Institute is making its whole collection available to the public. Through the Institute’s online catalog one can make a selection from the more than 2000 video works. By means of a specially developed interface, in the gallery space one can choose a maximum of six video works to be shown on a day one selects. The only condition is that a rationale be given for the selection. This statement and the video works selected are then screened for the rest of the visitors for a whole day.
Graham Harwood (UK) – Netmonster. How is a network image created? NetMonster is a software developed by Graham Harwood (Mongrel / Mediashed). The software was developed to generate, edit and continually update content. The outcome is a complex of visual compositions comprised of results from internet searches. Collectively individuals build a ‘networked’ image that consists of a collection of pictures and texts that come from all over the internet.
Giselle Beiguelman (Brazil) – Sometimes. Giselle makes degenerative video that disintegrates and changes as a result of input from the users. Video images that were made with a mobile telephone can be edited with a keyboard and mouse in the exhibition space. After that a new montage is created live, in which the order of the original frames changes.
Beatrice Valentine Amrhein (France) – Video Lustre. For Beatrice Valentine Amrhein the mobile telephone symbolizes intimacy, intrusiveness and directness. She sees the video in the mobile telephone as her third eye, with which she looks at reality in a different way. She also employs the low resolution that is inherent to the medium in order to alter our perception. The installation Video Lustre is comprised of dozens of mobile telephones that hang from the ceiling like a chandelier. The mobile videos show various fragments of the body in close-up. A new interpretation of the body is created through this netwerk of mobile telephones.
Walczak & Wattenberg (Sweden & ???) – NoPlace. People are creating and collecting information all over the world. Blogs, online photo albums and social bookmark pages such as del.isio.us supply an enormous diversity of data. The installation No Place uses the raw material from all these data streams to create various versions of a paradise. New worlds are created, built up in an architecture that refers to the future.
Check the website for the precise dates and times!

Participating artists:
Beatrice Valentine Amrhein – http://www.beatricevalentineamrhein.com/
Giselle Beiguelman – http://www.desvirtual.com/
Susan Collins- http://www.susan-collins.net/
Jonathan Harris & Sepandar Kamvar http://www.number27.org http://www.stanford.edu/%7Esdkamvar/
Graham Harwood, Mediashed / Mongrel- http://netmonster.mongrel.org.uk
MW2MW (Marek Walczak & Martin Wattenberg) – http://noplace.mw2mw.com/proposal/
Sonic()bject – http://www.sonicobject.com/

During the opening, Friday, October 19: FLOSS Party!!!
FLOSS stands for Free/Libre/Open-Source Software. FLOSS Manuals provide instructions for open source software, and, in addition, seek to make sharing informatie about software easier. http://nl.flossmanuals.net/

video vortex & Museum Night
Saturday, November 3

YouTube DJ/VJ performance: “A wild ride through the biggest audiovisual jukebox ever”
Max Schneider and Alex Fahl demonstrate that short video fragments are the dominant art form in our visual culture. They use the open content of You Tube: scratching, sampling, mixing, meta tagging, or “Video Slamming”!

Video Vortex workshops
Diverse short workshops: MobVideo and Uploading, led by artists. Get to know your mobile telephone in new ways!

Video Vortex II
07-12-2007 until 03-02-2008

Web2.0 stands for power to the user and democracy for everyone. It has led to innovative forms of media use in which open and friendly cooperation stimulates critical reflection and new ideas. In Video Vortex.2, attention is given to a different side of the democratic movement. How are artists reacting to this democratization process? To what extent does the democratic movement in Web 2.0 differ from previous utopias around radio and television? How can artists retain their autonomy and diversity outside the mass media? Is the esthetic of amateurism the new genre? Once again, artists will be responding to Web2.0, with special attention this time being given to the situation in The Netherlands and Belgium.
Participating artists:
Johan Grimonprez & Charlotte Léouzon, Martijn Hendriks, Jaap de Jonge, Meta.Live.Nu presents DFM RTV INT, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Oog Volkskrant Online, Park 4DTV, Rabotnik, Sonic()bject, Martin Takken, Thomson & Craighead.

Growing out of the desire to do one’s own thing in a space annexed for oneself, in the early 1980s various initiatives arose in Amsterdam that focused on making and exhibiting images and sound. Art, politics and media came together for the first time. Alas, it was not long before the coherence and mutual solidarity were lost, but the tone had been set and a great deal of effort had been put into dynamic and socially and culturally subversive radio and television broadcasts. Both Rabotnik and Meta.Live.Nu presents DFM RTV INT http://meta.live.nu will be showing things which were made during those years. In the presentation the emphasis will be on the significance of these media initiatives for the internet today and what they could mean for those making idiosyncratic productions now. Rabotnik goes online, making its archives accessible and shwoing will be showing things which were made during those years. The experimental virtual lab Meta.Live.Nu takes us with an interactive installation concept through the metaverse Second Life to DFM RTV INT. (http://dfm.nu/) DFM RTV INT is the first 24/7 online station runned by media-artsist themselves. The unsubsidized and noncommercial DFM RTV INT exchanges and broadcasts old and new material from various independent vision and sound artists.

PARK4DTV, established later and known for its slogan “TAPE THIS! STEAL THIS!”, also opens its archives in the PARK4DDD (Digitale Data Dump) 1991-2007. Any visitor to Video Vortex can copy texts, short films, codes, pictures and audio from PARK to a USB stick there, on the spot. PARK4DTV is an artists’ initiative which has been distributing Pure Image and Sound for every imaginable sort of screen since 1991. See http://www.park.nl/4ddd

In the tradition of PARK, with his installation O.T.S. (Open Televisie Station) Jaap de Jonge has remixed a number of PARK videos in an extraordinary manner. The work is comprised of a hooked-up glass cabinet containing thirty-two glass balls. These act as prisms to distort the image, creating new images and image combinations. The video works come from the artists’ initiative PARK4DTV, which has been distributing Pure Image and Sound for every imaginable sort of screen since 1991. The work is a commentary on the superabundance of images in our culture. De Jonge took his inspiration for this remarkable database from 19th century natural history museums and their presentations of butterflies and insects. The works used are by Jan Dietvorst, Jop Horst, Claudia Kolgen, Dick Tuinder, Jasper van den Brink, Dr. Duvals, Jaap de Jonge, Maarten Sprenger, Bill Spinhoven, Linda van Boven, Ryu Tajiri, Yntse Vughts, Arjen Westerdiep, A.M.Kopper, Yariv Alter Fin, Sluik Kurpershoek, Chiel Snijders, Jeroen Kooijmans, Nirit Peled, Winfried Evers, Peter Mertens, Maarten Ploeg, Elspeth Diederix, Dirk Paesman, R.E.L., Martin Takken, Wiel Seuskens, Max Kisman, Harco Haagsma, Renee Beekman, de Rijke/de Rooij, Kaap and Boris Le Bouffe. http://www.jaapdejonge.nl

The You-Tube-o-thèque, designed by Johan Grimonprez and Charlotte Léouzon, is a sort of television playing a program improvised with films from YouTube, Podcasts, online television, mobile telephones, Ipod video, blogs and other sources. The films are selected on the basis of events surrounding 9/11. The You-Tube-o-thèque is a unruly contemporary podium.

Martin Takken makes use of the do-it-yourself principle that is increasingly popular, both on the internet and in exhibitions. His Es Ist Ein Gesamtkunstwerk concept is a collective, constantly changing artwork that is made by international artists. Every day a different selection of colors is available, the kind of brush changes every hour, and various rules imposing limits or creating new possibilities are introduced and modified at random moments. Each day’s results are stored in the archive and can be purchased for 25 euro, but you can also make a print for yourself. http://www.gesamtkunstwerk.nl/

In his work Video as a Suburban Condition Martijn Hendriks investigates the relation between what is socially conceivable and our experience of urban public space. Using found videos from YouTube and comparable internet sites he shows how people deal with their immediate environment. Against a background of parking places, gardens, roofs and shopping centers people reveal themselves to others. Video as Suburban Condition repeats a cycle of actions and imitations, as the most banal surroundings become the stage for the most exceptional actions. http://www.martijnhendriks.com/

New tools such as wireless and mobile telephones outfitted with photo and video cameras afford new ways of working, in which the process is more important than the end product and the content is created only through unstable netwerk platforms. The work MythEngine by Nancy Mauro-Flude is a good example of this. MythEngine is a webcast that transmits live video and stills. Referring to our compulsion to tell stories, MythEngine shows how over time, with the rise of digital photography and video, our collective memory is increasingly becoming a database. http://sistero.sysx.org/verbo/index.html

Thomson & Craighead present their desktop documentary Flat Earth. Using fragments from existing blogs, Flat Earth takes the viewer around the world in seven minutes. An individual discourse is created by weaving the fragments to, through and over one another. http://www.thomson-craighead.net/docs/flat_earth.html

The mobile telephone is one of the first electronic objects that large numbers of people have personalized with sound. The ‘ringtone’ has become a familiar personal insignia. For both composers and users it provides a unique opportunity to do something with sound. The mission of Sonic()bject is to take advantage of this common interest and to let users become acquainted with never previously heard and experimental sound. The artists that Sonic()bject has selected for devising new sounds and ringtone compositions are professionals from all over the world who are involved in creating with sound: audio designers, audio artists, contemporary composers, classic or electro, jazz, pop … real “sonic objects” that have their roots in the history of auditory art. Tones or melodies, instrumental, noise or pure vibrations, recorded or synthetic, these sounds all have a strong auditory character and are make for ‘calling’. The ringtones can easily be downloaded from the website. Sonic()bject was set up by Antoine Schmitt and Adrian Johnson.
http://www.sonicobject.com

Oog Volkskrant online is an op-ed podium and part of the online edition of the Volkskrant. Oog (Eye) asks audiovisual artists to share their views on the news and current events, and on the role, function and composition of the news and current events. In this way artists can take on the role of opinion makers in a news environment. Oog began in September, 2005, and each week shows the work of a different artist. After that, the work can be found in the accompanying archive. Nanette Hoogslag, Oog’s initiator and curator, has made a selection from the archive especially for Video Vortex.2. The works are shown via an interface specially developed by Joes Koppers and Bente van Bourgondiën. With work by De Ruimte designers, Han Hoogerbrugge, Max Kisman, Michael Takeo Magruder, Jody Zellen, Bik van der Pol, PJ Roggeband & VJ Hummer, jimpunk, Motomichi Nakamura, Carolien Hermans, Marjolijn Ruyg and Willem van Weelden, Babette Wagenvoort, Berend Strik, Jeroen Kooijmans, eddie d, De Geuzen, Studio Frank & Lisa, Lust and others. Oog Volkskrant online: http://extra.volkskrant.nl/oog/

During the opening on December 7, at 6:15 p.m.
Video Response by Constant Dullaart
Constant Dullaart makes a selection from his archive, and in 30 minutes, using visual rhyming, reveals not only the democratization of video as a medium, but also of authorship. In short, 30 minutes of videos from artists, advertising agencies and lots of amateurs. http://www.constantdullaart.nl/

Video Vortex Workspace
In the Workspace everyone can get acquainted with open and free software (FLOSS, in collaboration with Derek Holzer), Vlogging (under the guidance of Seth Keen), network mapping (Govcom.org), take part in the Furtherfield Visitors Studio and more. See the website for the latest program.

Curator for One Day
And of course you can still become Curator for One Day! www.curatorforoneday.nl

Video Vortex international conference
January 18 and 19, 2008, PostCS Amsterdam
Organized by the Institute of Network Cultures www.networkcultures.org

Video Vortex is a collaboration among the Netherlands Media Art Institute, the Institute of Network Cultures and Argos, Brussels.

Tuesday through Saturday + the first Sunday of the month, 1:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Closed December 23, 2007 through January 7, 2008.
Open extra hours on Sunday, January 20, in connection with the Video Vortex Conference.

Admission: 3,00 euro (with discount 2,00 euro). Entry includes USB stick.

Thanks to:
David Garcia (advisor), VSBfonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Powered by BeamSystems