Monthly Archives: March 2011

Free and Open: Unfolding the politics

Levien Rocha | 14 March 2011, 11:41 pm | 2 comments | tags: , , , , , ,

Lets talk about the supposedly free and open Web again, not ‘again’ in the sense that it has been discussed too much or too abundantly but in the sense that maybe new and other frameworks have to be introduced or at least need to be considered. While I am not trying to speak on anybody’s behalf, certainly when following Latour’…


Risky Business: How Microsoft Turns the Threat of Contagion into a Profit

Niels Kerssens | 14 March 2011, 5:54 pm | tags: , , ,

Computer viruses have posed a threat to the Windows operating system and its users since its earliest versions. The security update, often integrated in the infamous service packs, is the never-ending temporal solution for those that want to minimize the risk of contagion. However, as the title of a recent article on Nu.nl reads, “1.2 Million Dutch make…


Imogen Heap is crowdsourcing your sounds for new album

Janice Wong | 14 March 2011, 3:04 pm | 9 comments | tags: , , , , , , , ,

Imogen Heap is crowdsourcing your sounds for new album Imogen Heap, two-time grammy award winner and known for her innovative online practices to connect with her fans, has just kicked off her fourth studio album with sounds from her fans, called ’seeds’.


Video Vortex #6: Sam Gregory on video activism and advocacy

Janice Wong | 13 March 2011, 11:55 pm | tags: , , , , , ,

Sam Gregory, program director at WITNESS presented his thoughts on using online video as a political tool at Video Vortex #6 in Amsterdam yesterday.


Video Vortex #6: Florian Cramer: Bokeh Porn Poetics, On the Internet Film Genre of DSLR Video Camera Tests

Ourania Dalalaki | 13 March 2011, 11:30 pm | tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

(A blogpost on Florian Cramer’s presentation, originally published @ Video Vortex #6 website. The original text can be found here )

Florian Cramer (media theorist, director of the Piet Zwart Institute) participated in the first day of Video Vortex to provide the audience with an insightful overview of the  Bokeh Porn concept. In his presentation he

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Holmes Wilson on Universal Subtitles: Collaborative, Volunteer Subtitling for any Video on the Web Using Free Software

Ourania Dalalaki | 13 March 2011, 11:24 pm | tags: , , , , , ,
(A blogpost on Holmes Wilson’s presentation, originally published @ Video Vortex #6 website. The original text can be found here)

The importance of subtitles is an undeniable fact for Holmes Wilson, co-founder of the Participatory Culture Foundation. Through the foundation’s  latest open source, software-based project

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Augmented reality: the first steps to a society of control?

Chris Hoogeveen | 13 March 2011, 10:20 pm | 2 comments | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Layla van Daalen, Chris Hoogeveen, Hanneke Mertens

Every aspect of the world has an extra layer of information. It may not always be obvious, but these extra layers are most certainly present. Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis describe these extra layers as a form of augmented space.  This is an extra layer of information, of data visualization on top of…


Online Video Art at Video Vortex 6: Conditional Design

Caroline Goralczyk | 13 March 2011, 1:58 pm | tags: , , , ,

In his presentation at the Video Vortex #6 conference in Amsterdam, graphic designer and project director Roel Wouters introduced the audience to interactive projects which include dynamic media such as web video and animation to install crowdsourced performances. With his collegues Luna Maurer, Jonathan Puckey and Edo Paulus he has published the Conditional Design Manifesto, which is based on the work of his collective called Conditional Design and emphasizes the idea of following processes in the digital realm rather than its products.


Michael Strangelove @ Video Vortex 6: “Any Moment Will be a Youtube Moment”

Caroline Goralczyk | 13 March 2011, 12:20 pm | tags: , , , , ,

In his talk on the cultural value of amateur video at the Video Vortex #6 conference in Amsterdam, the author, scholar and artist Michael Strangelove explained how amateur productions will gain greater value due to their potential of challenging the meaning of things, their subvertion of capitalist modes of production and their use by individuals as tools for self-representation of the world. Why does ‘Laughing Baby’, ‘David coming back from the dentist’ or the ‘Star Wars Kid’ make a difference in our lives? And what is it that makes online video different from TV? Dr.Strangelove’s answer to this is straight to the point: “It’s the amateur”.


Vito Campanelli and the Memetic Contagion of Aestheticized Objects

Nicola Bozzi | 11 March 2011, 11:07 pm | tags: , , , , , , ,

Vito Campanelli’s presentation of his own Web Aesthetics. How Digital Media
Affect Culture and Society (published by NAi) was one of the few theoretical ones in a very visual and demo-ridden Video Vortex edition.
In his work, the Italian scholar reduces important phenomena like social and peer-to-peer networks to their historical premises, laying the foundations for an organic aesthetic theory of digital media. His intervention outlined his conceptual framework, providing the common denominator to the examples analyzed in the book.