2012

Dynamic Archiving: Demo Dec 12, 2012

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:07:37 +0000

Dynamic Archiving: Demo Dec 12, 2012 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/13/2012 - 12:07

We’ve got a working demo of our curatorial project built in Korsakow.

For now, we’re using the default interface and have a few glitches and details to work through but we feel that already Korsakow is proving an efficient curatorial tool – making the media richer in its connections.

Click to Run

Some of the issues we are working through include the design and layout as well as the limits of the technologies: the software, the platform, the media formats, and so on. There’s been a lot to consider.

Stuff we’ve learned so far (which may be a reiteration of the software FAQ):

Naming your files properly is important. Don’t put in any spaces or weird characters or else the path isn’t likely to work in certain browsers, like Chrome.

The web can handle much better video compression than it once could, and formulas could be revised to reflect this progress. Depending on the source of your video, video online can be of high quality using the H264 codec with mp4 as a container. In our experience mp4 looks better and generates smaller files, but mov load faster. This requires further explorations.

For audio, acc and mp4 don’t work so stick to mp3.

Another audio bug seems to be that it can play overtop other media assets – as in audio from one clip continues to play when another one has been selected. Not sure if it something on our end – in the programming – or with Korsakow.

The playhead the comes with the software seems to run off the page.

Transparent png don’t work – they come with a boxy background.

On our end, we need to add titles to some of the images to give them context and guide users. We also need to rethink the trajectory – while nonlinear, it is thought out to guide the user in a choronological order i.e., you can only go forward in time, not back, but you have many options for moving forward. I’ve noticed in testing it out, however, that some trajectories are less likely to the point of being likely passed by completely. This will need tweaking. Some “main” SNUs don’t have enough previews popping up to complete the three, which becomes a design consideration. I’d like for us to test out the Preview text that comes in Korsakow, and a few of the other features we haven’t yet explored… look forward to Demo 2 in the next few months.

Mél Hogan

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Alternative Television I: Independent and Valuable

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:53:05 +0000

Alternative Television I: Independent and Valuable Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/10/2012 - 09:53

Intro: Independent and Valuable

Openness of the political process and the ability for free people to govern themselves are necessary requisites in a democratic society (Zassoursky 2002:427). In order for people to govern themselves they must have access to information and the ability to “participate in public debate, elections, and political activity” (Kellner2003:1). One of the most important vehicles for this information and empowerment is the media and freedom of the press.

The United States Constitution separates power between judiciary, executive and legislative branches to help ensure the balance of powers between political institutions. In France, after the French revolution, the media were conceived as the “Fourth Estate” to provide “checks and balances against corruption and excessive state power” (Kellner 2003:1). Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are recognized by the United Nations as human rights – The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 states “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” accessed November 2012).

The amenity potential, or private benefits of control, arising from media outlet ownership is extremely high. Beyond the financial benefits realized by media owners, some benefits include fame and influence. These benefits are different in media ownership than ownership in most other industries – the influence of a newspaper owner in a community is much different than the influence the owner of the automotive repair shop has in that same community (Djankov et al. 2001:3). This influence is different because the owner of the newspaper controls the information that the community receives. This is the same for radio, television and other types of media.

Baudrillard (1981) suggests that an undemocratic speech-without-response situation becomes widespread in the event of media consolidation. Further, the ideas and voices that are transgressive or subversive will never get “on the air” without being negated, neutralized and eviscerated of their meaning (173). This is both a product of the homogenization of media content and of the rule of hegemony, which excludes subversive voices that are not in line with hegemonic ideology in the United States. Kellner (2003) corroborates Baudrillard’s theory suggesting that corporate media “promote their own interests and agendas” by utilizing their “powerful instruments of communication to advance their own corporate interests and those of politicians and policies that they favor” (2). This leads to the loss of the media’s democratic function; a loss of the ability to debate issues of social and political importance and to act as a check against corruption, questionable policies and excessive corporate and government power.

Kellner (2003) agrees that the corporate media no longer serve their democratic purpose, arguing that the corporate media have surrendered their responsibilities to serve the public. The corporate media have become arms of conservative and corporate interests (3). The forum for democratic debate is no longer in the corporate media. A democratic, free press should have an adversarial relationship to the state in the service of public interest (Zassoursky 2002:427). While some community media outlets, and even some commercial outlets, occasionally fulfill this duty, it is rare. This has resulted in an alternative media that has been increasing since the 1960s.

In the alternative television movement we see that the artists and activists of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s were able to not only capitalize on emerging technologies, such as Sony’s Portapak, but were also able to cultivate a sense of community around the alternative production of content. Though the aims of these activists and artists were not all the same, with some privileging process over product or vice-versa, what we see in them is a new potential for human expression and public capacity for media production in the latter half of the twentieth century. What is interesting to point out is the fact that many of the outlets for these alternative visions were, in fact, created initially by the capitalist corporations against which these activists were resisting.

What follows is a brief thirty year history of the alternative television movement. In it you will find important information about many of the crucial events and actors, but my intent is to point these out in an effort to revitalize hope that the general citizenry has had in the past, and does have, the capacity to produce media that is independent and valuable. In the information age, perhaps the internet and YouTube are the new public access cable networks. Whatever the case, this history outlines important resistances to the culture industry.

References

by Tyler Rollins

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Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin: “Performing the Archive”

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin: “Performing the Archive” Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/07/2012 - 00:00

Dr. Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin (known as “Dr. Amma”) practices and studies the intersections of academic history and performance (i.e. theatre, film, and television). Her research interests center on the African Diaspora, particularly the impact of the transatlantic slave trade in her homeland of Ghana, and how performance mediates the interactions between continental Africans, first-generation Africans in the U.S., and African-Americans. NOTABLE WORKS: Her current projects are a manuscript and historical musical about African and African- American performers in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. The book, The Battle Before ‘The Souls of Black Folk’, is a comparative examination of African-American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois’s early writings and the U.S.’s first world’s fair of the 20th century, which was held in Buffalo, New York. The historical musical, “At Buffalo,” is a methodological-innovation in “performing the archive,” a concept developed by Dr. Amma through her workshops with theatre and dance students.

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Paul Gordon: “Listening/Hearing in Heidegger, Derrida and Nancy”

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Paul Gordon: “Listening/Hearing in Heidegger, Derrida and Nancy” Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/03/2012 - 00:00

“My talk will be on a fundamental shift from ontology to “otology” a propos the notion of genuine hearing/listening, in Heidegger and his “friends,” Kaja Silverman, Derrida and Nancy.” – Paul Gordon

Paul Gordan has taught at the University of Colorado since shortly after receiving his Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Literature at Yale, where he studied with Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, Shoshana Felman and others. Since then he has been developing his interest in theories of literature through studies in psychoanalysis, film, music, and painting as well as in the continued study of literary theory and the general hermeneutic question of how one “reads” art and literature.

His primary interests are in the relationship between art, literature and philosophy. In his writing and teaching he follows the Heideggerian notion of truth as the “happening” of truth in which the work of art becomes the locus of its own unique paradigm of questions and answers. His research involves the study of figuration (the “critical double”), tragedy (“rapturous superabundance”), psychoanalysis and, currently, the relationship between art and metaphysic (the “absolute”).

NOTABLE WORKS

BOOKS: Dial M for Mother: A Freudian Hitchcock, Tragedy After Nietzsche: Rapturous Abundance, The Critical Double Figurative Meaning in Aesthetic Discourse, foreward by J. Hillis Miller,

ARTICLES: “Words Words Words: The Un-Usual Suspects.” Proceedings of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature (in Press), Illustration of J. Hillis Miller.” Word and Image 24/1 (2006)., “Oedipal Echo-Effects.” Kill Bill I/II. Under Review., “Revis(ion)ing Freud’s Medusa: On Castration and the C-Word.” Under Review.

ACCOLADES: Boulder Faculty Assembly Teaching Award, Spring 2008.

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Dynamic Archiving

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:52:38 +0000

Dynamic Archiving Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 12/01/2012 - 11:52

We’re using Korsakow software to prototype a dynamic archiving model for a Brakhage Center sponsored Film and Poetry Conference from 2011. The process is documented and blogged by Dr. Mel Hogan, who is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Curation at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

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Reece Auguiste: “Memory and Archive”

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Reece Auguiste: “Memory and Archive” Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/05/2012 - 00:00

During his lecture, Auguiste outlined numerous ways of thinking about the archive: an as object of critical inquiry; as the embodiment of historical events; as the formation of discourses; as epistemological foundation of the archive as repository for memory; and, as a negotiation between institutional power and agency. His particular vision of the archive is focused on an experience of (time through) the archive. Working from Bergson, Auguiste breaks the Western stronghold on the duality between perception and memory, feeling rather that each is embedded in the other, and making matter out of perception itself.

In asking why we archive, I believe Auguiste is also asking a question about the politics of preservation, ownership (over the past) and (future) access. Why do we hang on to the past? Is it a matter of nostalgia? Is it informed by a fetishism of the archival object itself? Is it out of a fear of forgetting? Or is the archive a monument to memory in and of itself? Are there ethics to the archive? How can its materials be used, reused, re-contextualize, or remixed? Are there limits to its ethical communication? Or, is (and should) the archive be completely open for any possible reconfiguration of the past it stakes a claim to? We are complicit in making the archive unstable — it is not inherently so — human agency and interaction destabilize it. Performing the archive therefore brings in all of these issue as it pulls the person (and personal) back into the equation.

Post pulled from: http://archinodes.com/node/142

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Dynamic Archiving: Splicing Audio

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:40:22 +0000

Dynamic Archiving: Splicing Audio Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/01/2012 - 11:40

Having now completed the inventory of the 2011 Poetry and Film Symposium put on by Tom Gunning and the Brakhage Center for the Media Arts, Eric Coombs and I now combing through the various media files associated with the project: images, pdf documents, audio, etc.

Most of the symposium was audio recorded, including films, readings, talks, videos, performances, introductions and claps. We’re in the process of matching audio to events listed in the inventory, and making the adjustments when we discover recordings for unlisted moments or events. The opposite is also true – we can’t find the opening remarks so we’ll have to cross reference with another audio recording of the event.

We’re hoping to get our hands on the papers presented as to pull quotes and use text to also represent voice in our curatorial display. We’re saving some of the audio glitches and scratches for possible sound loops in Korsakow – exact use to be determined. We’re also thinking of keywords now that are going to help assemble the showcase…

Technically, we splice the audio leaving a bit of room tone before and after (some of the recordings have rough starts/ends) to give breathing room to the tracks. We adjust the gain bu lowering the dbs of very loud tracks. We then export the splices into event based folder, in .aif 16 44.1 Khz (a quality to match what was recorded) labeled by the speaker or film and so on. We can mass convert to mp3 later, but for now retain the best quality as back up. There are obviously many debates in the archiving world about format and quality and how it relates to authenticity, but we’re of the view that that implies a neutrality to the technologies used to record–and create–the original. So we are cognizant of the issues but forge ahead.

We have yet to come up with a great folder/label system but we’re working on it, thinking it through. This is proving far trickier than any technical aspect so far…

-by Mél Hogan

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Dynamic Archiving: SNUifying

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 13:41:08 +0000

Dynamic Archiving: SNUifying Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/01/2012 - 07:41

After much time spent organizing our media assets and splicing audio, we’re ready to perform a few tests in Korsakow. Because of a small glitch, we’re opting to use the Beta version (and to become Beta testers).

Our process today consisted of first creating assets from the audio and stills we have. Using video seems the best way to match content to context, though we will likely test out other possibilities and combinations. Working with Korsakow is highly iterative. We’re constantly toggling between the interface and the preview mode, making adjustments, problem-solving, redirecting, and so on. Being two sets of eyes on this is proving very useful – Eric and mine’s attention seems to be grabbed by different parts of the project, which come together in a very complementary way.

Some preliminary questions specific to our project, and things we’ve noted about the software:

the video could be of much better quality than the suggested settings point to currently. The Web seems to handle video much better now, and so we’re going to try to push the quality up a little.
could Korsakow eventually handle HD?
a mobile-friendly version is in the works – important!
will Korsakow eventually be able to handle links? does it already? to be explored…
we’re imagining a slideshow options but are unsure of our needs at this moments
is there a way to make a SNU appear at the end of another – continuity – linearity – or is this anti-Korsakow?
what could be done with PDFs/text – pull quotes?
what to do with films for which we only have the audio (no visuals)
how to archive silent films for which we don’t have the rights to visuals

Tips/things to remember:

setting the playhead to “interactive” – it’s not, by default
duplicate a SNU if you want it to be a start SNU but also a SNU with a preview that you can see again
there’s an invisible (?) glitch when setting the timecode for a SNU using the automatic way – makes the SNU switch order!

Helpful resources:

Dayna’s awesome performance of Korsakow: SNU theatre.
The Korsakow Manual

That’s it for now. Prototype (of 3 SNU) should be good to go next week.

by Mél Hogan

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Dynamic Archiving: Korsakow as a tool for digital curation?

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 17:01:52 +0000

Dynamic Archiving: Korsakow as a tool for digital curation? Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 10/13/2012 - 11:01

I’ve just embarked on a project at the Brakhage (Media Arts) Center (University of Colorado – Boulder), and my job here is to come up with modes and models for digital curation. The idea is to help showcase various collections in the archive and organise them – so I proposed a tool that could conceivably organise a collectionby showcasing it: Korsakow.

Korsakow is a non-linear database driven repository and a tool created for storytelling (and, as far as I can tell, subverting traditional documentary forms). From experience, it is also, by default, a method and means of working: aggregating, sorting, and displaying collections in a multimodal way. The creative process is highly iterative and requires a continuous conversation between the software and the media at hand. In other words, while you can (and often should) plan out the relationships (keywords) between media assets, this planning is perpetually revised through interaction with the database and interface. It’s neither about randomness nor chance, but rather about a set of limitations in our conception of links, or, in what we determine should be connected to what. Largely keyword driven, the software demands curation – choices to provide context to media. What’s special about the way we are thinking of using it is that its application will be to a collection of disparate media sources, and eventually collections of collections in the archival sense, which as far as I know, hasn’t been applied yet. As my incredibly insightful collaborator, Eric Coombs, sees it – usually technologies are invented for practical uses and subverted by artists; this time we’re repurposing an artist’s tool for a decidedly pragmatic end goal. We’ll see how that goes. I’ve committed to documenting our process here – and later on the BC blog perhaps – to detail the conceptual transformations, failures, obstacles, and epiphanies of our curatorial journey.

Korsakow is a ‘dynamic storytelling’ tool; it is Flash-driven and as such is limited to desktop, online, and kiosk display. Plans are underway to release an HTML5 version, which will be mobile-friendly and possibly offer new features. Korsakow was invented by Florian Thalhofer, a Berlin-based media artist. Its development has since been taken on by a team at Concordia University, in Montreal. This team is lead by Matt Soar in the Communication Studies Dept., working with various programmers (Sean Fraser and Dave among others) to continue the development of this amazing, unique, and free (for educational purposes) open source tool. One of my goal is certainly to see how our project at the BC can generate financial or technical (or both) support.

What we’ve outlined as the first step is to create an inventory of the one-off Poetry and Film Symposium from 2005 as an archival project prototype. If all goes well with that one, we’ll have generated a model for the regular symposium content. The content consists primarily of audio recordings and stills, and a few videos. Some of the media is of mediocre recording quality, which may pose an interesting archival challenge in software that begs for rich and vibrant content.

The discussion today revolved mostly around how to conceptualise the archive for this project. Can Korsakow effectively replace or provide an alternative to the ‘online archive,’ which typically resorts to long lists, sorted according to author, media and date? Can Korsakow provide an archival ‘experience’ to researchers? How will we curate the content? Will we select everything (all recorded media) or highlight key moments only? What are the implications of either option, for the research archive? Should duplicate all ‘raw’ materials in a comprehensive archive – maybe archive.org or or through torrent files or as a back up copy on our own server? Who is our intended audience? How will the archive be used and possibly misused? What advantages can a Korsakow archive provide a researcher? What are its drawbacks on the front and back end? Can the collections’ contexts be effectively generated through keywords? What will determine the connections between speakers and ideas? How can we make the material we have come to life through audio and images?

These are the questions we begin this journey with… the next few months will therefor demand attentive listening to/looking at all the media on hand pertaining to this symposium, and noting keywords to begin mapping the project. To be continued.

by Mél

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Kirk Ambrose: “Authenticity”

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Kirk Ambrose: “Authenticity” Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/01/2012 - 00:00

Kirk Ambrose is associate professor and chair of the department of Art and Art History. In addition to many articles and book chapters, he is author of The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay: The Art of Monastic Viewing (2006) and co-editor of Current Directions of Romanesque Sculpture Studies (2010). He has a book forthcoming next year entitled Monsters in Twelfth-Century European Sculpture and is currently at work on a volume on Portuguese Romanesque sculpture.

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