Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen | solitude.dk

David Wolf has made his MA Exegesis—Vidgets: The Development and Use of Interactive, Network Based Video Works—available online and it's worth a read. The paper deals with these questions:

• How can new audio-visual works (vidgets) be created to explore and utilise the capacity for real time interactivity and network awareness found in everyday computer technology?
• What can we learn by looking at the use of real time interactivity and network/environmental awareness in the histories of media and art practice and how can these this inform the development of new works?
• What happens when video media art works shift from being fixed and self contained ‘objects’ to dynamic, distributed systems inviting user interaction and performance?

David has been working with interactive works using QuickTime for years using both LiveStage Pro and Quartz Composer. This is an excellent overview, be sure not to miss the appendix containing a complete list of his works.

I'm doing my final project at the graduate program for Communication about videobloggers and their viewers. As a part of that project I have created a survey that I hope any videobloggers or videoblog viewers will fill out. Go to The Great Videoblogger Documentation '06 website to do so. It will only take you 10-15 minutes and I promise you eternal gratitude.

In a temporary fit of insanity I have vowed to do a cat vlog if I get 250 responses, and to film myself talking to the camera if I get 500 responses. I hope that videobloggers will blog about this survey, as I think that's the only way I can reach my goals.

Feel free to contact me at ahpe01@hum.aau.dk if you have any questions.

For my videoblogging paper I wanted to get from-the-hip videoblogging definitions from videobloggers. I thought it would reveal the mood of the community. Nine people were kind enough to help me out, and I picked the six that fitted my layout. Below are the unedited versions. You can see how I used these on page two of my paper.

Adam Quirk says:

Videoblogging is a seaworthy craft full of leaky people. Videoblogging is what people do who can't get on TV. Videoblogging is personal media: for the people, by the people. Videoblogging is the best way I've found to express myself creatively.

Randolfe Wicker says:

Videoblogging is my key to sharing my life experiences without being filtered, censored, packaged, edited, bought and sold by commercial third parties. Videoblogging is the real me, warts and all. Videoblogging is my truth, my life.

Paul Knight says:

Vlogging to me is, dreaming the impossible dream and then making it on final cut and posting for all to love.

Jack Nelson says:

Videoblogging is whatever you want it to be. Personal, political, funny, serious, structured, unstructured; there are no rules.

Richard Hall says:

Videoblogging is my connection with real people around the world. Videoblogging is my passion. Videoblogging is my obsession. Videoblogging is my creative outlet. Videoblogging is the people's art.

Gabriel McIntyre says:

Videoblogging is the 2nd step in democratization of media. The free distribution of media. The first step was inexpensive, high quality recording and editing equipment and software that is now available. The 3rd is finding and supporting a standard that everyone can play the media on any media device anywhere, anytime.

Ron Langdon says:

Videoblogging is… an organic, digitally aroused piece of real life.

Robert says:

Video blogging is yet another Interweb-enabled transformation to public performance of a private undertaking, of course not dissimilar to its popular-in-some-circles and exhibitionistic predecessors text blogging and photo blogging, and is not as some have speculated a conqueror of and replacement for main stream media; that being said, public performance of skilful auteurs' videography on the Interweb has a potential for disseminating and cultivating ideas which, due to the chosen networked platform, the power images have on the mind and the voyeuristic predisposition of many, should not be ignored.

Joel Mannheim says:

Videoblogging is vlove.

There you have it.

I'm a student, and they make students write papers. This semester I wrote a semiotic analysis of weblogs and videoblogs. It's an attempt at defining the two media — mostly because I couldn't get my head around them. My paper was due before Christmas, but I've been holding out putting it up for download becuase I haven't been graded for it yet. Of course now I realize that my paper will be available in the university project database regardless so I might as well host it here also.

• Download “Videoblogging Is... en tekstanalyse af weblogs og videoblogs” (705KB; 28 pages)

The paper is in Danish and it is a school paper, not a paper for a journal (so some boredom is to be expected). The version linked above is the same I turned in, missing words and grammatical mistakes included. I know they're there and you don't have to tell me about them (it's too late to fix anyway). If you quote this, let me know. I like reading about weblogs and videoblogs.

The main difference between blogging and traditional mass media lies in the amount of control the reciever has. Traditionally the reciepient has had very little control: Turn on radio, turn off radio. Look at poster, don't look at poster. This situation is different on (video)blogs. Here the reciepient has a great deal of control. By clicking through links the recipient controls the assembly of the parts that make up the physical text. The value of this shift should not be underestimated.

The “Text” is an abstract text — a combination of the physical signs created by different senders, assembled by the recipient and the sender's intension and the reciepient's reception/interpretation. Genre consists of predetermined norms and rules acknowledged by a discourse community. It influences the interpretation of the text, but only if both the sender and reciepient recognize a given genre. Since there are multiple senders the genre can shift quite dramatically as the Text is assembled.

The Medium, blog or videoblog, is the enviroment in which the communication occurs. Meaning is attached to the Medium and it is a target of interpretation just as the physical signs. The blog is characterized by a connectedness. Both a connectedness with other texts via links and a connectedness with the world it represents. This connectedness with the world it represents is especially apparent on videoblogs where the representation is a more immediate fit.

But most of all the blog is characterized by the fact that any recipient can also function as a sender. Access to the network is equal and the reciepient can provide content by posting comments or blog entries of his own thus becoming an influence in someone else's communication situation. These continually changing sender and recipient relationships makes it pointless at times to speak of sender and recipients on the general case — participants is a better word. This fluctuating relationship result in a living in the medium rather than a communication passing through the medium.

One of the nice things about writing a project about (video)blogs is that blog researchers have a tendency to put their works online for download. No more trying to use the article database at the library. My preliminary list of online article is as follows — more will be added I bet. Links go directly to PDFs.

• Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs (Susan Herring)
• Videoblogs as ‘Collective Documentary’ (Jon Hoem)
• Blogs: Distributed Documentaries of the Everyday (Adrian Miles)
• Cinematic Paradigms for Hypertext (Adrian Miles)
• Media Rich versus Rich Media (or why video in a blog is not the same as a video blog) (Adrian Miles)
• Hypertext Syntagmas: Cinematic Narration with Links (Adrian Miles)
• Distributed Narrative: Telling Stories Across Networks (Jill Walker)
• Feral Hypertext: When Hypertext Literature Escapes Control (Jill Walker)

In addition I have found two collections of articles online:

• Into the Blogosphere
• BROG The (We)blog Research on Genre Project

Don't worry. I've also been reading books — as old-fashioned as that seems.

Adrian Miles' BlogTalk paper “Media Rich versus Rich Media (or why video in a blog is not the same as a video blog)” is online now. It's too late in the day to being reading it, but I will enjoy reading it over the course of this week. The paper is written in hypertext (though a long, single version is also available). Reading these hypertext papers is both very rewarding and very frustrating. As Adrian himself mentions during the introduction:

I recognise that this causes many anxieties for academic and casual readers, where a culture of exhaustive (that is complete) reading is the norm.

I kind of like the fact that I can take a paper like this, and start reading one day. When I'm done for the day I can just bookmark the last page I was at, and then continue the next. That way I can ‘swim” around the text for days, reading and re-reading. It's very fascinating, but at the same some I do have that anxiety that I am missing out on something. It's weird because I don't have the problem when I sit with today's newspaper — there I happily accept the fact that I won't be reading the whole thing.

Deirdré, I and the rest of the videoblogging.info editors have created a videoblogger survey. If you are a videoblogger I'd love if you'd take the 5-10 minutes it takes to fill out the survey. Hopefully getting to know the community videoblogging.info represents will allow us to server better content in the future.

We'll be sharing our findings (including graphs and all that good stuff) in a later article at videoblogging.info.