The first article is online here!
As more and more websites use video content, linear narrative structures compete with the decentral logic of the hypertextual internet.
It the first part of three papers on the growing importance of storytelling on the web.
May 9th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
test
May 9th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Hello Simon,
you’re setting up an interesting site about an important topic. As you might know, I’m not that much into movies and films and might change to the readers’ side when the discussion will advance at this place.
I hope you don’t take this personal, but before talking about videos in the so-called “web 2.0” you should consider thinking about text. I know you have an artistic approach to designing webpages which isn’t bad in any way, but please make the site a little bit user-friendlier.
Please:
increase the font size. The text is hardly readable on my screen. 12px is the absolute minimum, 14px would be great. I really don’t want to do that myself every time I visit the site.
Why the heck must visitors write their comments black on black? And please, declare if some type of markup is allowed in comments
Check your markup: text enthusiasts will take you more seriously when you use proper markup, for instance:
<blockquote lang=en_GB”>
<p>Narrative has [...] organizing data.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<cite>Edward Branigan in <a href=”…”>Narrative Comprehension and Film</a>.</cite>
</p>
But I’ll get down to the article:
The form:
First, it’s too bad readers can’t comment on the article’s page directly, I think that would take the discussion further (and would just be so web-two-oh).
And the content:
I don’t share your opinion the web has borne down the heritage of storytelling found in “classical media”. As a text-based medium the web can embody any stylistic form printed (or hand-written) text can. To reduce it to an information medium is just the same as considering printed text being an information medium just because newspapers and encyclopaedia exist.
My point of view is that hyperlinks have been born with a form of text that refers to another; scholarly and philosophical texts have been doing that for hundreds of years. The electronic (or: binary encoded) form of hyperlinks just transforms your computer into your personal librarian. The effect emerging from this constellation is, that non-linear reading has become extremely faster. But I’m talking about text, you wanted to talk about video.
At this point, I must pick at the indetermination of your terminology. I don’t know whether (or: in which degree) your approach shall be scholarly, but it is, in my opinion, necessary not to mix up the terms “World Wide Web”/”web” and “Internet”.
The Internet can be considered a meta-medium which can enclose different types of media, or, in technical terms: services. It is neutral concerning the medial form it delivers from one node to another.
The Web is one of those services and has in fact been text-based from it’s very beginnings.
The bare fact, that video has become available on the web, is nothing spectacular. Internet-based video services have been available since the nineties with streaming media.
Web browsers capable to show media other than text and images exist since the early nineties (Viola, Mosaic).
Now, as people are talking about “web 2.0”, what has changed?
User-generated content, mostly … text. Ok, I have to admit: flickr exists.
This year, the first experimental flash-applications are tested in which users can add comments, “hot spots”, and even hyperlinks to videos. But they can not alter the video itself, as they can with text in a wiki.
This derives from the fact that text is a privileged medial mode: The series of characters it consists of can be represented both in printed (as “letters”) and in binary form (note: we’re not talking about the text design!).
Also, it might not be sufficient for current stylistic forms used in movies or videos to offer non-linear viewing to viewers, because all of this forms are based on linear narrations — contrary to texts which have a broader range of stiles.
I don’t think any kind of video website will push back the hypertext paradigm, because this paradigm is the foundation of the internet as well as the web. Non-linked media are aliens in a net environment. I think video makers (or authors) will have to develop new stylistic forms to comply to the hypertext paradigm.
–David
May 11th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Hey David,
thanks for your detailed comment.
Form:
- The black on black thing was a bug, thanks for the clue.
- Comments directly on the articles page, good idea, we’ll try to get this going.
- Font size: On resolutions 1280 and smaller 12 point just looks ugly. Yeah, I know it’s not this user friendly, but I go for the aesthetic this time, sorry.
Content:
- Determination Internet/WWW: This is thing which is often discussed in academic texts, but I don’t see the need for a seperation. The WWW is the main Internet service (besides Email), if I talk about the Internet, it’s quite clear that I use it as a synonym for the http://WWW. Besides that, the movingwebblog does not serve academic standards. It’s a meant to be a more casual approach to the subject
-Video vs. Text: I don’t want to make it an either…or descission. Text and Video will always exist next to each other. Yeah, you’re right, non-linked media are aliens. What I’m talking about is a general shift of the user expectation. Until now, most of the usage is information orientated. But with more emotional video content, there could be a shift to a more immersive and entertaining medium, don’t you think so? For lifestyle companies video is more convenient than text to trasfer brand images.
- Simon
May 12th, 2007 at 12:39 am
hi, there
i would appreciate a bigger font, too.
it´s hard to read.
like ur blog
regards
May 13th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Simon! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the moving web!
Of course streaming video was available on the internet since the very beginning. Still, early usage of video was limited by play-back-performance and plug-in-issues.
The great boom of online-video in the recent years mainly relies on the great availability of the flash plug-in, which today integrates in every modern browser. Furthermore, Flash itself changed a lot since the “early days” by adding advanced video editing capabilities and even its own codecs. I like how flash has developed. Today it is perhaps the most important tool for bringing creative content on the web.
By bringing up this subject you seem to have touched a quite old discussion about the difference between text and image based media. There is a great faction of internet professionals and scholars who believe that the web is in its core a text based medium, which is implied by the bit-based-coding (0/1) of every computer mediated communication. This conservative argument remains popular, especially in informatics. Personally, I do not agree with this point of view, as it falls short of analyzing the diverse media forms and individual usage patterns that exist on the internet nowadays.
The point about web 2.0 is: it is getting simple!
Your statement of the “moving web” seems to be a fruitful entry point in discussing these trends, and I am curious how you will analyze the need for narrative contents in your future papers.
May 13th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Hey guys, as for the font size, you know that magic trick: Pressing CTRL and moving your MOUSE WHEEL at the same time! Adaptive content rules.