digital media form

This was one of the best conferences I ever attended. The take home message for future conference organizers is hard to replicate: 1) carefully chosen speakers 2)  given ample time (2 speakers in 1 and 1/2 hour sessions) and 3) beautifully choreographed two-day flow, where distinct areas of approach, method, discipline and theory, hit against each other to build to a crescendo. Not one dud. Here’s the rap sheet of one-liners: ... read more »

I have been criticizing YouTube for a few years now. Easy enough to do given its perplexing gaps in capability—all the things it won’t let you do: find things, surround them with meaningful stuff and people—not to mention all the crap video. Could I re-purpose the site to succeed at functions I require for video art? This is my goal with my project, Mommy’s Marriage, currently in active pre-production. ... read more »

The archivist brings work to visibility by seeing it, knowing it in her way, and connecting it to other video and viewers that will frame and hold it: giving context, making friends, building arguments, forming associations. Unruly archives need curators. Their holdings nothing but inconsequential detritus until loved and re-purposed.

... read more »

Perhaps the easiest way to find (established) video art on YouTube is to search the site using the name of an already famous video artist. What you will find, then, is one of three possibilities:

1) Their work is not on YouTube.

2) An interview with the artist is on YouTube.

3) Their work has been (badly) scanned and anonymously and probably illegally posted, in fragments and probably not with the artist’s permission. ... read more »

Tomorrow I will be visiting Tara McPherson’s graduate course on something like “theories and practices of new media,” and she has asked me to present, quickly, some of the difficult considerations that define my current efforts (with the assistance of the Vector’s team) to “publish” my various YouTube findings, practices, musings, papers, videos, blogs, tours, and internet publications into a digital “book.” ... read more »