AS JAY pointed out:I always wanted to see podcasters record stories
with people. Shorter snippets. Maybe audio diaries. Maybe just a bunch
of natural sounds? Give me a good 10 minutes of something I cant hear
on the radio.
In my very newbie status I have been overwhelmed -- I think that's the
right verb -- by the language of the short video on the web.
The Lumiere archive for instance
http://videoblogging.info/lumiere/
is vibrantly beautiful, as well as engaging and addictive..all within
the space of 60 seconds of recorded time.
It has caused me to rethink so many of my assumptions, and , I guess
schemata.
I've been much interested in Marshall McLuhan's ideas on media
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshal_mcluhan
but when I watch videoblogging (as it is practiced in a conscious sort
of way) a lot of these concepts about cold/hot media valuations go out
the (Microsoft) window.
While there is such a thing as New Media -- there is, I think,
NewEST media within that too because it seems to me that so much of
what people do on the web is formatted by Old Media templates.
Being novel isn't really that useful -- but if you can deploy a new
language to say, in some significant degree, something new...well,
then the world's your oyster.
Going back to where we stared on this thread I have to agree -- that
(audio) podcasting is about replicating radio in another sharing
format. I think that's fantastic and I thing that's something to
support and relate to. But it is/was, nonetheless, about re-inventing
the wheel.
I've got no special audio skills (and no video ones whatsoever)but I
do appreciate differently a lot of audio I hear occasionally on the
web for the special moments it offers you. I think This American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/
can capture many of such moments -- in the same way that an
interview with the recently diseased Studs Terkel so often did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studs_terkel
So podcasting enriches our radio experience especially for those who
may not have been exposed to it before or who have fallen out of the
habit of listening to it. There's so much more to it than talk back
and Top 40.
But videoblogging -- in the sense of what may be discussed here --
isn't about replicating Prime Time at all.
When FM first came to Australia in 1975 you could listen to
soundscapes on the national broadcaster -- like as Jay suggested.
They were terribly arty and self conscious experiences in sound and
they went for far too long -- but the FM band was supposed to do them
justice in way of quality of sound.
Of course that's now all been lost and is now thought simply to be the
an avaunt garde indulgence -- even if it so much was!
But I was reading Jays' book on videoblogging the other night and I
watched Cut per the recommendation therein...
http://e11.video.blip.tv/183406371/FastMovingAnimals-cut790.mov
and I thought it was amazing. I called in my family folk in to watch it.
So while I may now be getting on in years and can remember a life
without television in every home -- I can still be impressed with the
novel potential of videoblogging because, in a very tantalizing sort
of way, a format limitation in regard to file size imposes a sort of
creative possibility and a level of communication we haven't been
offered before.
dave riley
