Author: MK

I’m proud to announce the (semi-recent) launch of my latest curatorial effort.

In-Site Montréal is a collection of site-specific art presented on the portal pages of five wireless internet hotspots in the Ile Sans Fil network. Artists Nicolas Fleming, Maria Legault, and Virginie Laganière have created art works that can be viewed simply by logging in to the Ile Sans Fil network at the selected hotspots. Though the project is best viewed in-situ, you can also view the works produced by the artists for the hotspot locations at the In-Site Montréal micro-site.

I have produced a curatorial text for the project, which I would be grateful for your feedback on, my cherished readers.

Thanks to Year Zero One for producing the project, the Canada Council for the Arts for funding the project, Ile Sans Fil for hosting the project, and Rita Godlevskis for designing the map and visual identity of In-Site Montréal.

I stumbled upon an article (on CNN.com, Lord help us) that, if I may radically condense it, affirms the notion that there is simply too much information out there and that it is up to content “hyperaggregators” to separate the wheat from the chaff for us.

The net result being that we are continually fed and re-fed the same information – much the same way that major broadcast networks and Hollywood studios and big record labels decide what we will be watching and listening to.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Hyperaggregators are not the way forward. Learning how to Google to find the precise thing that you want is the way forward. I subscribe to the RSS feeds of many blogs that have hundreds or thousands of subscribers. I also subscribe to blogs that have less than ten subscribers. To tell you the honest truth, I often value what I learn and discover at the blogs with less than ten subscribers more than the others. The others sometimes begin well, but falter when they realize they have a readership and worry too much about expanding that readership, rather than continuing to provide interesting and important perspectives. That is just one possible result – mostly they remain interesting, but I enjoy the specific focii and the fine granularity of information at the smaller sites. Their level of targeted dialogue can’t be beat.

My friend Alison is spending some time doing research in Fredericton, which is not the centre of the universe but is a very functional city that holds the honour of being host to North America’s first free, public Wi-Fi network. In one of her recent blog posts she notes:

Not everyone is looking for the Next Big Thing, nor to sharpen the cutting edge. Many people want to live in places where they feel safe, happy, and comfortable, with good jobs and the same advantages as everyone else. They also want their efforts to be recognized when they do something remarkable – like becoming their own telecommunications operator (AND giving away free Wi-fi) when the big companies tell them they are too far away from the main markets to get fair rates.

Amen, Alison. Fredericton quietly did its thing (who knew they were the first place in North America to have a free public Wi-Fi network? I didn’t) and considers quality of life for its residents over all. Not everyone is looking for the Next Big Thing, indeed.

So go away, hyperaggregators. I don’t want your watered down vision of what you think I should be reading and absorbing into my life. I am going to continue to relish reading the content that would not make the hyperaggregators cut, just as I continue to enjoy and participate in a local civic life that might only make sense here. “Bleeding edge” and “trailing edge” are relative terms.

Joi Ito points us to the latest gaffes on the part of YouTube (by way of Viacom), wherein videos of folk enjoying a barbecue are ordered to be taken off the service, presumably because of some copyright violation. (Class action lawsuit, anyone?)

Let’s presume for a moment that gaffes like this might only get worse. Obviously, it isn’t exactly a fine tooth comb that YouTube is using to search for possible copyright violations, as they seek to placate media giants like Viacom. It’s more like a brute force hunt based on keywords and hearsay.

So, enter something like ScotVid, a video sharing service that looks, smells, and tastes like YouTube, yet with a distinctly regional flavour – in this case, a Scottish flavour. And as the Smart Mobs blog points out, Chinese video sharing services are on the rise, with one of the leaders being a service in China bearing the name Tudou, that means “potato” (with no explanation as to this quirky choice of name, apparently).

Go on and have a browse at both of these sites, I think it is a wonderful idea and I’m about to tell you why, right after you finish scratching your head and saying “…but it looks just like YouTube…Why don’t they just use YouTube?…”

These sites look just like YouTube and fulfil much the same function. But as much as I like YouTube, it doesn’t quite do the trick for

• people who don’t speak English
• people who are interested in sharing with other people they may actually meet, since they live the same geographic area
• people who are disgruntled with the possible effects of the service being owned by a corporate interest

Grassroot “knockoffs” are well-poised to take some of the traffic away from YouTube. It is telling that the most notable default choice beyond YouTube (if one believe all the blogs one reads) is the regional facsimile. Possibly because of the reasons I note above, but also because that is the easiest thing to think of when looking to distinguish your service from the behemoth.

No matter how you slice it, the regional content providers will remain strong and relevant: for many reasons, but particularly because Viacom won’t come bugging you to remove your barbecue video from Tudou or ScotVid. Thank goodness.

The good folks at VJtheory.net are asking for personal contributions to a collective description of what VJing and/or realtime interaction is.

We would like to have a broader description of VJing and realtime interaction to add to the existing one. Rather than reifying a single definition we would prefer individual perspectives. So we are asking you to send us an e-mail back with your personal description of VJing or/and realtime interaction. This description can be a short paragraph or even a single sentence, an image (600X400, jpeg max) or a small video (send us the link to the video hosted on the Internet together with an image to link to from our website). We will put all contributions on VJTheory.net. Each contribution should be accompanied with your name, e-mail address and website.

My contribution is this:
The VJ enters the performance space bearing a database of moving images. The performance consists of the VJ responding to the sound and the ambiance of the space, summoning sequences from the database and blending them at will in ever-changing configurations.

Send your contributions to vjtheory at yahoo.co.uk, and if you would like, leave your responses to this question in the comments here, too. Keep track of the responses as they come in at the VJTheory website.