Re: [-empyre-] Vog applications

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

At 8:59 -0500 22/6/02, Patrick Lichty wrote:
> 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.

yes i agree but only if you assume that vogs are about video. which
they aren't. they're actually much closer to the 8 bit aesthetic
because in vogging (as in blogs and wikis), and i'd suggest any other
relevant electronic work, bandwidth is not treated as a negative
condition.

what i mean by that is sorta several things.

1. film makers can't vog because film makers have way too much
invested in 24 frames per second for all of the screen. that ain't
the deal here (as i mentioned in another email). computer screens are
personal domestic spaces and you don't own em. you want 24 fps full
frame, it's called tv. sure you can do it via atm broadband networks
and that might solve a distribution problem but it isn't a vog and it
isn't interactive video. it's video on demand, it's cable.

2. bandwidth is to be embraced as a positive and creative material
constraint. most people seem to think that film/cinema movement is
about the perceptual representation of movement. it isn't. deleuze
proves that and chris marker's la jetée shows why (film photographs
with most of the 'movement' of the film realised through montage).
you can make cinema that is not 24fps illusions of movement. a vog
should never be something that secretly wishes it were full frame 24
fps but you just don't have the chutzpah to get it made as what you
really want - a film.

3. so it is not about fetishing the cinema and trying to invent a way
of really being a 'filmmaker' on a digital shoe string.

4. for example.
http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/1.2001/bergencams.html has a vog in
it. it is 32kbs in size. it consists of a single still image and
pulls in 5 external images from another server. it isn't even really
cinema, or is it?

5. for example. http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/knot.html is a 640 x
480 movie that is 28kb (it's actually my anti-flash piece, it's just
some rollovers with midi effects attached, turn up sound to hear
them). it's 28kb.

6. for example http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/5.2002/nordicsky.html
has three variations of the one movie. each is 2.5MB and runs for
over 20 minutes (it's 340x312 pixels big).

as the last one ought to show, it's about softcopy video and the 20
minute movie (just run it in the background and come back and look
every now and then, and mouse over the video tracks in the middle to
toggle the text layer, or click there to toggle it off and on, always
only ever simple) at only 2.5mb is *not* about bandwidth hunger or a
film that can't think or acknowledge the network.

from a vogging point of view i think the biggest issue are what i'd
characterise as the assumptions about what interactive video is and
what it requires. it is not wannabecinema it is an appropriate video
for existing networks.

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]