[spectre] please register now for videovortex, amsterdam, january 18-19

[Geert Lovink]

Dear Spectre list,

as we expect a lot of audience, it is important to register now if you 
want to come to Amsterdam to attend the Videovortex event/conference on 
January 18/19: http://www.networkcultures.org/videovortex/?page_id=12

Here is the program: http://www.networkcultures.org/videovortex/

Friday January 18, PostCS11

09.30 Doors open, coffee and tea

10.00 Welcome

10.15 - 12.30 Opening Session
  Moderator: Geert Lovink

Tom Sherman
  Geoffrey Bowker
  Florian Schneider

12.30 - 13.30 Lunch

13.30 - 15.30 Online Video Aesthetics
  Moderator: Patricia Pisters

Helen Kambouri
  Andreas Treske
  Tal Sterngast
  Stefaan Decostere

15.30 - 15.45 Coffee, tea

15.45 - 17.45 Alternative Platforms and Software
  Moderator: Seth Keen

Matthew Mitchem
  Valentin Spirik
  Philine von Guretzky
  Jay Dedman

Saturday January 19, PostCS11

10.00 - 12.00 Cinema and Narrativity
Moderator: Sonja de Leeuw

Thomas Elsaesser
  Jan Simons
  Dan Oki
  Rosemary Comella

12.00 - 13.00 Lunch

13.00 - 15.00 Curating Online Video
  Moderator: Vera Tollmann

Patrick Lichty
  Emma Quinn
  Thomas Thiel
  Sarah Cook

15.00 - 15.15 Coffee, tea

15.15 - 17.15 Participatory Culture
Moderator: Monique van Dusseldorp

Tilman Baumgärtel
  Dominick Chen
  Ana Peraica

20.00-00.00 Evening programme: Video Slamming

Opening Session

YouTube made 2006 the year of Internet video. The video content is 
produced bottom-up, with an emphasis on participation, sharing and 
community networking. But inevitably, like Flickr being consumed by 
Yahoo, Google purchased YouTube. What is the future for the production 
and distribution of independent online video content? How can a 
participatory culture achieve a certain degree of autonomy and 
diversity outside mass media? What is the artistic potential of video 
databases and online filmmaking?

Online Video Aesthetics

Looking at the videos on YouTube, what aesthetics do we find? Is there 
a homogeneous style that mainly builds on eyewitness tv, candid camera 
formats and webcam diaries? And now that music videos and commercials 
increasingly resemble video art, can we define how artistic practices 
influence the look of online footage? Is YouTube a medium and platform 
in itself for art works, or is it merely used as a promotional device?

Participatory Culture

Web 2.0 promises new levels of participatory culture in which all users 
are producers, sharing their homemade content with their networks of 
friends. In this utopian approach, the user has the potential to 
overcome centralized top-down media and create dialogue. To which 
extent can this be considered citizen journalism? Is the increased user 
participation a sign of a new socio-political culture or is it a mere 
special effect of technological change?

Cinema and Narrativity

Do fragmented video databases lead to new narratives and genres? Does a 
database like YouTube evoke new media skills or rather contemporary 
conditions such as ADD? Against the latter, scholars have put the 
ability of users to reassemble short stories into larger new 
narratives. The bricolage is assembled by the end-user, not the 
producer. Does this add up to a new cinematic experience?

Curating Online Video

 From 16mm film and video to the Internet and back, artists have always 
used the moving image to produce critical and innovative work. This 
session will explore early examples of Internet video and investigate 
how artists and curators have responded to the YouTube challenge. 
Online video databases seemingly are the ideal artist portfolio online, 
with unlimited uploads and a massive audience. MySpace is inhabited by 
bands and musicians, but why don’t video artists and filmmakers occupy 
YouTube? On the other hand, where would this leave the curator?

Alternative Platforms and Software

This session will investigate developments in the field of open source 
software in creating alternatives to proprietary software like Windows 
Media Player. Through investigating Peer2Peer alternatives and open 
licenses, both users and programmers aim to create a truly distributed 
network, in which content can freely float around without having to use 
centralized servers and sign strings of user agreements.

Evening programme: Video Slamming

Much like poetry slamming the use of short video fragments has become a 
dominant mode in visual culture. Where are the video files found and 
how are they used and played with? Is ‘video slamming’ the new way of 
watching audiovisual files? This evening session is all about the new 
ways of watching, using, and playing with moving images, such as 
scratching, sampling, mixing, (meta)tagging and recommending.