CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: Video Vortex Amsterdam - March 11-12, 2011

Video Vortex is coming back to Amsterdam! Having contributed to the 
dialogue about the ever increasing potential or online video through 
five international events since 2007, the publication of the Video 
Vortex Reader and the current production of a second one, the Institute 
of Network Cultures will host Video Vortex #6 on March 11-12, 2011.

Video Vortex #6 will include a conference, artist presentations 
(talks/performances/exhibition) and hands-on workshops.

WE INVITE

Internet, visual culture and media scholars, researchers, artists, 
curators, producers, lawyers, engineers, open-source and open-content 
advocates, activists, and others to submit abstracts, preferably within 
the themes listed below.

SUBMIT PROPOSAL + BIO

Please send an abstract of a maximum 500 words outlining your proposed 
talk, and a short biography of a maximum 200 words.

SEND TO: rachel(at)networkcultures(dot)org

DEADLINE: Monday, October 11, 2010.

MORE INFORMATION

Video Vortex: http://www.networkcultures.org/videovortex/

Institute of Network Cultures: http://www.networkcultures.org

Sign up for Video Vortex Discussion list here: 
http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/videovortex/discussion-list

Or email: rachel(at)networkcultures(dot)org

__________________________

VIDEO VORTEX #6 THEMES

- Open Everything and the Challenge of Cash

What is the ultimate open video? What are the new ways to produce and 
distribute online video as open? And what are the limits of openness 
online? Why would you share your content or code, what’s in it for you? 
What are the key economic questions for video start-ups? How can they 
combine a culture of openness and sharing, while attending to the need 
to generate income in order to keep producing and pay the rent? What are 
some of the examples of best practice: what are they, who are they, 
where are they? Does government policy have a role, or should it be left 
up to the uneven geography of informational peers to generate new 
protocols for content distribution?

- From Dead Collection to Dynamic Database

Now that museums, distributors and TV channels have put their 
collections online, what is the next phase for these digitalized public 
archives? How can ‘the audience’ be involved, in order to avoid a dead 
online collection with zero comments? Moreover, what forms of social 
dynamism can be critically forged in the default rush towards greater 
participation? Who controls the database, and is there a role for 
designers in developing database aesthetics? How to jump through the 
hoops of copyright legislation, format compatibility and the spatial 
culture of consumption and production? Once collaboration comes into 
play, what impact do conflicting skill sets, different modes of 
knowledge production and varying social desires have?

- Attack Amateur Aesthetics!

This theme seeks to tackle the tenuous relationship between amateur and 
professional video production, particularly with respect to the question 
of ‘quality’. Have amateur and professional video grown closer or are 
they still in competition? Given Andrew Keen’s and Jaron Lanier’s 
critiques of amateur content, is it possible for the quality of video to 
be improved? How can cultural value or worth be understood in this 
expansive realm of video? What aesthetics, techniques, genres, 
structures, and so on, exist in the professional realm of online video, 
compared to the amateur? Now that professional advertising campaigns 
seek that ‘raw’ amateur look, and the amateur experimentation tries to 
produce high quality produced work, what should professional education 
in this field be aimed at?

- Art and Activism

What are the political and artistic strategies of online video? Are 
there powerful platforms available for videos in the realm of art and 
activism? How do artists and activists deal with and reflect on the 
nature of online video, with its guerrilla, amateur, viral, remix and 
lo-fi characteristics? How is online video being used as a (grassroots) 
political tool, and conversely the ways in which authoritative powers 
understand and use video against activist actions? What are the new ways 
of launching political content effectively when everything aims to be 
viral? And where is the radical and artistic answer to TED Talks?

- Big Players and the Politics of Appropriation

Who are the big players in the world of online video? How are 
corporations and governments using online video? What kind of guerrilla 
marketing strategies are companies adopting, appropriating amateur 
aesthetics and making use of the possibilities of online video for its 
easily viral nature? How are cinema and television companies dealing 
with the large-scale use of online and mobile video? And how to respond 
to the rise of 'national webs' and the new enclosures of the 
cable/telecom packages and TV set-top boxes?

- Platforms, Standards and the Trouble with Translation

This theme seeks to draw forth experts who will offer strong 
interventions regarding various platforms and channels proliferating on 
the internet that contribute to the ecology and culture of online video. 
These include, but are not limited to: Skype, streaming video 
technologies, Foursquare, Seesmic, Qik video, Netflix, immediate news 
channels online etc. The theme focuses on the problem of the 
translations across platforms that arise to due to conflicts in 
standards. The geo-cultural, and often the national, limits to open 
sharing of online content are also significant. How do users and 
producers get around the limits of these borders? How do they work under 
the radar or tunnel through the firewall in the face of censorship and 
content control? Or do people simply submit to the powers that be?

______________________________

Video Vortex 6 is organized as part of Culture Vortex, a research and 
innovation program on public participation in online cultural 
collections, organized by the INC and partners MediaLAB Amsterdam, 
Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid, Netherlands Media Art 
Institute, Virtual Platform, and VPRO, and five participating cultural 
organizations. Culture Vortex is funded by RAAK-Public program and the 
Innovation Alliance Foundation.

More info: http://www.networkcultures.org/culturevortex/
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