On the 11/12 of March, I attended the Video Vortex #6 event at the Trouw in Amsterdam. The conference was the latest in a series that started in Brussels in October 2007. In the intervening period interest in the world of online video, particularly critical discourse, has certainly grown, and much more is needed.
There was a large number of topics at the event, highlights included:
- Holmes Wilson’s presentation on Universal Subtitles – a great tool and something we hope to have running on EngageMedia in the next 3/4 months. {video}
- Ben Moskowitz on the new possibilities of html5. {video}
- Evan Roth of the Graffiti Research Lab and his unique take on .gif mashups. {video}
- Mel Hogan‘s take on the failure of several online video art archives in Canada – interesting to hear about projects that didn’t work, and why. {video}
- Natalie Bookchin and her amazing online video documentary deconstructions/creations. {video}
- Sam Gregory of WITNESS and his take on remix video, aggregated video and Human Rights activism {video}
I also spoke along with Sam on the Online Video as a Political Tool panel discussing the corporatisation of online video and online media in general, and the current state of activist initiatives to create free and open online video. {video}
All the videos from the conference can be found here.
The Video Vortex reader was also launched. A lot of great content in there. I’m currently getting through David Teh’s take on video in Southeast Asia.
I was expecting a little less art and a little more activism from the event, basically more focus on the social change angle. We only really hit this in the last session but I think there is so much more to discuss. I look forward finding a forum for this in the future, we just seemed to be getting into the meat of the debate regarding the political economy of web 2.0 and what the role of the media activists is in such a dramatically changing landscape.
A future Video Vortex event is planned in Yogyakarta Indonesia, mid this year. EngageMedia is hoping to participate in that. There are also plans for a future event at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in April or May 2012.
