[welcome to scoopville: social media basics]

Social media: describe, rate, comment and connect: key ideas of social media. New opportunities to create and care

Watch the video:

[high-er tech & the simpsons]

HD hits our screens and also the Simpsons':


Though I do enjoy the Simpsons...I haven't yet caught any episodes with the new intro. so thanks to Andrew Sullivan over at the Daily Dish for pointing it out.

[viral video for ai - win some money]

The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour

AISB Video Competition

This is a call to both AISB members and non-members to take part in a competition for an online video clip that will contribute to the public understanding of any aspect of the area known as Artificial Intelligence. The video material should be in English, of three minutes maximum duration, and available online (e.g., on YouTube).

Submissions should take the form of an email with the URL to the videomaterial, contact details of the participant(s), and a free-form statement from all authors stating that the submission is their own work, and that they grant the SSAISB non-exclusive rights to use it as it finds appropriate. Deadline for all submissions is 23:59 GMT on 15 March 2009. All submissions should be sent to video_competition@aisb.co.uk. The submissions will be evaluated by a panel of three AISB members, of which two student members (all selected and appointed by the AISB committee).

There will be 3 prizes of £300, £150 and £75. The panel reserves the right to withhold a prize if no submission is deemed appropriate. All panel decisions are final and cannot be contested.

see more about the call here: http://www.aisb.org.uk/publicunderstanding/video_competition.shtml

nb: image from wired

[copyright and creativity]

The study, "Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video" by the Center for Social Media lists nine current ways of *using* information..."re-appropriation practises." It reminded me that copyright and fair use guidelines need to be taught alongside any of the digital literature, transliteracy or new media writing/reading that I expose my students to. As Danah Boyd says: "It's a really really really screwy system that pits little people against big corporations, stifling innovation and creativity. Yet, in order to change it, people have to understand what is taking place, what is at stake, and how to rethink the situation. This is the goal of this study."

TYPES OF USES OF COPYRIGHTED WORKS IN ONLINE VIDEOS
• Parody and satire
• Negative or critical commentary
• Positive commentary
• Quoting to trigger discussion
• Illustration or example
• Incidental use
• Personal reportage or diaries
• Archiving of vulnerable or revealing materials
• Pastiche or collage

(page 6)

Interestingly, this isn't about *copying* existing information, but commenting on it:

"This participatory spirit explains the transformativeness that marks so much quoted copyrighted material. Most online video makers incorporating copyrighted works (as opposed to those simply copying them) do not seek to replicate the services provided to them by mainstream media providers. They are sampling in order to comment, critique, illustrate, express. They are salvaging, rescuing, celebrating, heralding, bonding. They are expressing vital connections both to popular cultural expressions and also to others who share their passions and the meanings that they have created around those expressions."

(page 7)

[still ill....]

but slightly (ever so slightly) back in the land of living and came across (i know...behind the times) this neat pedagocial vid from Jim Brown over at Blogging Pedagogy:




I can't wait to try something like this (when I'm better!) with my students.

[new book: video: the reflexive medium]

NEW from The Leonardo Book Series and MIT Press


VIDEO: THE REFLEXIVE MEDIUM by Yvonne Spielmann

Video is an electronic medium, dependent on the transfer of electronic signals. Video signals are in constant movement, circulating between camera and monitor. This process of simultaneous production and reproduction makes video the most reflexive of media, distinct from both photography and film (in which the image or a sequence of images is central). Because it is processual and not bound to recording and the appearance of a "frame," video shares properties with the computer. In this book, Yvonne Spielmann argues that video is not merely an intermediate stage between analog and digital but a medium in its own right. Video has metamorphosed from technology to medium, with a set of aesthetic languages that are specific to it, and current critical debates on new media still need to recognize this.

Spielmann considers video as "transformation imagery," acknowledging the centrality in video of the transitions between images--and the fact that these transitions are explicitly reflected in new processes. After situating video in a genealogical model that demonstrates both its continuities and discontinuities with other media, Spielmann considers three strands of video praxis--documentary, experimental art, and experimental image-making (which is concerned primarily with signal processing). She then discusses selected works by such artists as Vito Acconci, Ulrike Rosenbach, Joan Jonas, Nam June Paik, Peter Campus, Dara Birnbaum, Nan Hoover, Lynn Hershman, Gary Hill, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Bill Seaman, and others. These works serve to demonstrate the spectrum of possibilities in video as medium and point to connections with other forms of media. Finally, Spielmann discusses the potential of interactivity, complexity, and hybridization in the future of video as a medium.

Professor Yvonne Spielmann is Chair of New Media in the School of Media, Languages and Music, University of Paisley, Glasgow. She lives in Glasgow and Berlin.

Video: The Reflexive Medium
MIT Press/Leonardo Book Series
ISBN:0-262-19566-6
452 pp., 136 illus.

To order this book and to learn more about other titles in the Leonardo Book Series visit the Leonardo Book Series website at: http://www.leonardo.info/isast/leobooks.html