Time is moving fast on the net. The medium changes so fast, that it already has lived through several transitions. For example, can you still remember how the Internet was before YouTube? When was that? Back in the 90ies? Of course not, YouTube went online on february 15th, 2005, so that’s 3 years only!!! Moreover, look at YouTube itself, haven’t there even been several generations of the platform in this short time?
But what role do time and temporality play in a medium like YouTube, when every second 10 hours of video footage is uploaded? You always see a very moment of the history of YouTube, symbolized through the “videos beeing watched right now” feature on the front page.
As the platform is changing it’s content so fast, it’s very hard to witness changes, e.g. the development of certain genres or the influences of videos onto each other. A software mashup called TimeTube tries to make the history of YouTube visible.
When you type in a keyword, the software shows you temporal relations between videos tagged with this word. Although, TimeTube is still missing lots of relations, you can use it to make some interesting observations. I typed in “dove evolution”, a very successful viral, which entailed numerous mashups, remakes and video answers. Through TimeTube I learned that it took 5 month until the first prominent remake (slob evolution) was released. I made another interesting observation on the “lifetime” of YouTube videos. “Dove Evolution” was release on October 6th, 2006. Most of the mashups and remakes were born between month 6-12 after the first release, but there are still reaction to the video after 1,5 years right now.
Ok, so go to TimeTube and become a YouTube historian yourself!
Mashups havent been on my radius so much in the past, by I’m getting into it lately.
The point about mashups is the old story of found footage. If you want to reach a certain level of complexity you need to get to know the material in detail. There seems to be a serious potential in political mashups because there are quite some foundations layed. First, there is a good amount of material available. Second, the material offers a certain density. That results in complex structure of rearanging and quoting.
…check Political Remix Video.
…and if your interested in Sampling Culture check Lev Manovich.
…and once again, all the great photos in this entry are made by the very talented Anne Helmond!
And on yet another rainy morning in Amsterdam (not surprising, you get used to it after a while!), full of curiosity and hopes for the day, I went to the second day of the Video Vortex - Responses to YouTube conference. I was hoping that today would be more fruitful than yesterday, and indeed, what a pleasant surprise! Well, call me selfish, but instead of giving a general overview I will focus on the session that was the most interesting for me personally: Curating Online Video.
On a rainy morning in Amsterdam (that demanded lots of coffee!), the Video Vortex - Responses to YouTube Conference was kicked off at Club 11. I will be blogging on the conference for movingweb, but I was also there because I have been involved with the project through my work at the Netherlands Media Art Institute where we made an exhibition with the same title and related topics. Well, the program of the conference is quite extensive, and I was very disappointed by some of the presentations today (that seemed unprepared, unfocused, had nothing new to say…a total contrast with the first Video Vortex conference in Brussels!). So I will focus on the gems of today’s presentations!
MySpaceTV is hosting a new web show of dating guru Neil Strauss called Rules of the Game.
The first episode shows two guys and their efforts to get some telephone numbers. After every episode there’s a mission for the viewers, which they are supposed to tape and upload it as a video answer.
Passing By is a NetArt project by James Tindall, using YouTube content and good coding. The theme of journey seems to become quite popular lately. (also here)
“Passing By presents two films that piece together brief segments from many different journeys into ever growing sequences of sights-seen-along-the-way, while looking out of the window of a car, a train, a plane or even just pushing a shopping trolley around the local super market.”
via Hi-Res!
During the New Cultural Networks Conference in Amsterdam (Friday 2nd of November, organized by Stifo@Sandberg), PIPS:lab presented diespace , the first internet community for people who have passed away!
PIPS:lab are a group of artists from Amsterdam based Sandberg Institute, and what they do is a mixture of new media art projects, theater, performance, (live!) music,…well, it’s really an experience and it really stirred up the audience of the conference!
“A Swarm of Angels is a groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members. By subscribing for £25 members become part of a revolutionary process to make an open source feature film.”
Berlin based web TV station Hobnox goes online today!
Right now they’re running four channels, all connected to youth culture. What separates them from other web tv stations is the massive amount of self produced content. They’re having a handful of hosts, running different show formats. They recruited some german MTV-faces for that. Reminds a little bit of G4, although they are shifting the focus from game-related-content to music, film and street culture.
To push the whole web2.0-participatory thing they are having a contest where you can win 25.000 Euro to realise your project!
The Blog/MySpace-Widget of German female rap-artist Sabrina Setlur is a conceptual mix of an audi/video guestbook and a fan mashup/remix of her current single (probably becoming the worlds longest music single ever).