Re: [-empyre-] some questions about vogs

[Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@uib.no>]

At 13:33 -0300 18/6/02, Nemo Nox wrote:
> What is your definition of "performative"?

oh dear, this one's got me into trouble before :-)

it is derived from speech act theory (j.l. austin) with the 
compulsory (i'm a fashionable sorta akademyc) detour via deleuze and 
guattari (i've written an essay that uses this, it's stuff about 
order words).

but that's not an answer is it? ok, i think of hypertext links as 
like performative speech acts (they're promises). i think of 
hypertext links as being the *same as* film edits. film edits are 
also promises. as performative speech acts they have force (they're 
like order words) and so inside their promise that they make sense 
there is also this excess of force that means they will make sense. 
this force leaks out each side of the edit/link which is why the 
meaning of the before and after can change, without changing what the 
before and after is. ie the kuleshov effect. same content different 
meanings yet the thing (the image in that case) that effects the 
meaning (the edit) in no way changes the image itself. same thing 
happens in link node hypertext particularly where complex structures 
are invovled.

so, this is what i mean by performative. links/edits are promises. in 
hypertext links are user and/or machine enacted, but still 
performative. in a vog some awareness of this is good so that they 
just don't do party tricks, but require the user to do something.

though i also like the second meaning of performative where when 
writing a vog you sort of open yourself to this. it's not about 
joining a to b but letting the medium perform you as you build 
in/with it.

> > a vog uses available technology (like a blog)
> > a vog is desktop based and network distributed
> > (like a blog)
> > a vog is more about writing the day to day than
> > pomp and ceremony (like a blog)
> > a vog is about letting people write content
> > (like a blog)
>
> What made blogs so popular was the ease to
> publish. Practically anyone who could write
> and use a browser was a potential blogger,
> without the need to learn new technologies.
> Don't you think that vogs demand much more
> from potential voggers, with a much steeper
> learning curve, setting them apart from the
> blogger movement?

no i don't. i've just finished writing the first part of a tutorial 
about how to use quicktime pro to build a movie collage (looking for 
somewhere to publish it right now). using only quicktime pro (US$30) 
i have non new media students making collaged vogs in one class. it 
is easier than html. (seriously). and you can do it all in quicktime 
pro (not the sprite tracks, but certainly layers, text tracks, and 
some limited forms of interactivity).

it would also be not very hard to make a tool that would provide most 
of the functionality with a simple interface. (in fact i'm trying to 
get funding for such a tool for cinema studies teaching, but it would 
also be perfect for simple vogging, hadn't realised that - *thank 
you*!)

> > a vog must be interactive inside the video
> > (like web based writing and like blogs as
> > an exemplar)
>
> How exactly the writing in a blog is interactive?
> In comparison with your vogs, most blogs are not
> interactive at all.

what i mean by the blog example is that most blogs contain links 
internally (in the writing) to what and where ever. in browser space 
we don't sort of expect a blog to have a next button at the top and 
bottom and to load the blog content in a frame (like the way a lot of 
'interactive video' happens online. so when i make a vog i write in 
quicktime, i author in quicktime. i don't just cut something in an 
editor then pump it out to quicktime.

this is soemthing i've learnt from my hypertext practice. i teach and 
use storyspace for instance, because for my students there is nothing 
to bother with except writing, linking, multilinear structure, and 
learning how to write hypertextually. for me this is different to 
writing in word/dreamweaver where you spend most of your time being a 
designer. (we write in storyspace, export to html, then design.)

i want vogging to be the same. i work from the ground up in 
quicktime, so i add text tracks, multiple video and sound tracks, 
sprites, external content that loads only when a user does something, 
and script inside quicktime.

but more simply, i expect a web page to have links in the page, and 
not just to rely on me using the browser's back button for 
navigation. links are inside the page. same with vogs, it is not a 
web page where you just load a video diary to play, to be interactive 
there must be stuff in the video itself just like there are links in 
the web page.

> > a) they're all written in quicktime
> > c) no, i don't use flash
> > d) yes, anything you can do in flash you can
> > do in quicktime (there are reasons for one or
> > the other)
>
> Why did you choose QuickTime over Flash?

not sure about mx but earlier versions of flash only let you embed 
video in flash and then do tricks around the video (outside of the 
video). from my point of view that makes flash a pretty tv set in 
relation to video. click, video plays, do something else, video does 
something else. but i'm not clicking in or on the video.

for instance i have a vog with 3 simultaneous sound tracks and where 
you mouse inside the movie determines which soundtrack you hear and 
at what volume. as far as i can find out you can't do that in flash, 
the mouse events have to be on the flash stage, but i can't make time 
based mouse events on regions of video.

i'd use flash if i didn't want to work with video.

> > a vog is dziga vertov with a mac and a modem
>
> Could a vog be Hitchcock with a PC and a modem?

nah :-) vertov has a wonderful manifesto like statement about wanting 
cameras shooting content and it being cut and displayed as 
immediately as possible and distributed more or less internationally. 
i think he wrote that in 1925 or so. he's describing cnn, but i also 
think he's describing what is now available and possible. the other 
reason it's vertov rather than hitchcock is that vertov's (for me, 
via deleuze's reading) work is about embracing new technology and 
finding ways to let it find a way of doing. oh, and the mac. because 
any new mac has firewire, domestic DV camera with firewire, quicktime 
pro, modem to distribute it. that's enough of a toolset to certainly 
make anything i have made *without* the mouse events, but certainly 
with things that woudl happen when users click at different times on 
the movie.

now my questions back:
why do you wonder if it could be hitchcock with a pc and a modem?
do you know if i'm wrong about flash?
if there was a 'simple to use' vog tool, would you want one? :-)

cheers
adrian miles
--
   
+  lecturer in new media and cinema studies 
[http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/vlog]
+  interactive desktop video developer  [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/]
+  hypertext rmit [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au]
+ InterMedia:UiB. university of bergen [http://www.intermedia.uib.no]