Re: [-empyre-] Vog applications

["Patrick Lichty" <voyd@voyd.com>]

> Vertov?! Why so much Vertov?! Patrick references Vertov,

First of all, thanks to Lachlan for your enjoyment of the newest work. At
ISEA I will be giving a presentation on Historiography and new media that
plays again with the pixellization, termporal quantizing, modularity, and in
short the 5 principles of new media that Manovich cites.

There's also one aspect to the presentation that the ISEA people have no
idea that I will do that will likely be controversial, as I have begun to
play with the concept of academic presentation as performance space.  Let's
put it this way, unless I don't have adequate time to prepare (2-3 months)
you will not see me as a talking head behind a podium again.  I'll be doing
something a little 'different'...

As for Vertov, I have never publicly referenced Vertov.  Don't know whare
you got that.  Mainly because Dziga's not really on my radar for what I want
to talk about.  But now that you mention it, this may be due to an
unconscious elision to try to keep the discussion broad, as I do not talk
about Benjamin.

This is for two reasons - first, at one time or another, various thinkers
get overused, like Baudrillard and Foucault in the early 90's, Deleuze in
the mid to late 90s and recently Benjamin.  This is merely a sin of
familiarity, and only a product of a common cultural meme going around.

Secondy, I feel that Benjamin's propositions are quite valid, but are not
particularly applicable to new media.  There are aspects of reproduceability
and the loss of aura - granted, but that's just about where it stops.  In
Benjamin's time, media were still controlled largely by editing controls and
common organs such as cinema, newspapers, radio, etc, and now we have things
like the blog, which takes any of B's asserttions about 5-10 steps up the
ladder from where he was.  In addition, WIth Davis' essay on digital
reproduction and Manovich's book, the conversation has been furthered.  I
think many of the folks using B are the ones from the humanities who are
relatively unfamiliar with the practice and history as well as techne of new
media, and I see B as a gateway critic to get up to speed.

Sorry I didn't center around the blog, but you see I was thinking about
it...

As for vogs, I'm not a big fan of them as video is still problematic on the
Web.  It's still relatively close to the 8 Bits or Less paradigm, and
storage of that medium is bulky and slow.  I feel that Blog and Wiki are
much more attuned to Internet media, reflect the nature of that media far
more aptly, and relate an expressiveness that works well with online spaces.