DIWOlogue

Working together to create a live performance within Visitorsstudio took the following stages.

WHAT ARE WE DOING?
1) Develop the context for performance and participation and a rationale for the use of this particular platform
2) Identify a theme.
GETTING STARTED TOGETHER- DEVELOPING THE THEME
3) Gather media around this theme (from online media archives and special-interest websites)
4) Find tools/software to manipulate the media. Learn how to use these tools.
5) Create and convert files into the right size and formats
6) Upload these files to Visitorsstudio with good titles and descriptions (for easy recall) Read the rest of this entry »

Fundamentalism vs Evolution- another dilemma of coexistence

You are invited to a live networked performance
Thursday 20th March 2008
As part of the Liminal Screen Programme at BMNI, Banff

Where?
8pm local time in the Colab-lab, JPL Building, BMNI, Banff
2am (GMT) live online in Visitorsstudio, http://visitorsstudio.org

What?
A 30 minute performance will be given by Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow in the Colab-lab, BMNI at 8pm (local time) and live on the Internet in Visitorsstudio, Furtherfield.org’s real-time online, audio-visual collaborative mixing platform at 2am GMT.

After 30 minutes the mix will open up for everyone who is logged in to Visitorsstudio to join in.

The title for tomorrow’s performance is inspired by a silent news reel from 1925 called ‘Fundamentalism vs Evolution’ by the Topical Film Company, UK 1925, released last year by the BFI Creative Archive Licence Group. This film represents “the blaze of conflict between Science and the Scriptures…” surrounding the Scopes ‘Monkey’ trial in the USA; staging a head on collision between two trains representing each position.

Marc and Ruth have collected, edited and looped over 300 media files, trawled from a range of other online archives and blogs: general and special interest, didactic and evangelical. Tomorrow these files will be collided in VisitorsStudio.

Join us to watch, heckle or join the mix and preach yourself!

Link for Visitorsstudio:
http://www.visitorsstudio.org
(just register with name and email to contribute to the mix)

This performance is part of an ongoing art and research project:
DIWOlogue http://diwologue.net/blog/

Technorati Tags: art, collaboration, diwologue, evolution, fundamentalism, VisitorsStudio

The title for tomorrow’s performance is inspired by a silent news reel from 1925 of that name.

Fundamentalism vs Evolution,
By the Topical Film Company, UK 1925
released by the BFI Creative Archive Licence Group
www.creative.bfi.org.uk/

We have collected, edited and looped over 300 audio-visual files found in a range of other online archives and blogs: general, special interest, didactic and evangelical.

These are the main sources for our sound files

The Selfish Gene: Thirty Years On, March 2006
Daniel Dennet and Richard Dawkins lecture
www.edge.org/3rd_culture/selfish06/selfish06_index.html

What is Evolution?
www.archive.org/
Originally from http://www.freethoughtmedia.com/
Evolutionary theory in layman’s terms - by Dr Zachary More

Quran mp3 Quran.net
www.mp3quran.net/eng/

Religion and Politics- a phone in discussion about religion and politics
www.archive.org/details/ZacharyMooreReligionandPolitics1

Christian Hymns
Music placed in the public domain by Rev Bill McGinnis for “children of god”
www.patriot.net/~bmcgin/christmusic.html

Evangelical Preaching
old and new recordings of evangelical preachers from www.biblepreaching.com/

Technorati Tags: art, collaboration, diwologue, evolution, fundamentalism, media, archive, screen, VisitorsStudio

Some mixes have been created by Sfumato within VisitorsStudio using some of the files we’ve uploaded for Diwologue over the last couple of days.

Technorati Tags: art, collaboration, evolution, fundamentalism, VisitorsStudio

Warning:This post will change…

Starting to upload files for the Fundamentalism vs Evolution Diwologue event that explores collaborative real-time mixing in VisitorsStudio next week.

This is a good time to be thinking more
…about ways to facilitate networked co-production as the end/beginning point of our

Exploring the relationship of all participants to the controversy. And find ourselves relating our approach to our experience of everyday group dynamics
We could offer participants a range of roles and approaches
- Preacher
- Scientific Authority
- Congregation
- Audience
- Learner
- Heckler
- Facilitator
- Preacher’s wife; )
- any other

This may also be a good chance to consider the physical space.

Practical considerations…
Have the audience login with just one name- diwologue (anonymous mixers)- or choose from a selection of names to join the mix and upload files- possibly javascript to instruct them

Technorati Tags: art, collaboration, evolution, VisitorsStudio

Found some free software to test to see whether the mpg to FLV conversion in ffmpegx has worked. Download Eltima’s SWF and FLV Player here. Or VLC Media Player produced by VideoLAN software project, which produces free software for video, released under the GNU General Public License.

Relented and read instructions here at Avidemux

1) Edit film clip
In Avidemux2
Crop video clip- 136 frames
Audio ->Main track-> none
Video-> MPEG-2 requant
- filters - Resample fps- 15
Audio-> Copy
Format(container)-> MPEG video
Save project
Save video as mpg

2) Convert film clip from mpg to flv
In FFmpegx
Drop mpg file in Source window
Change Target format to FLV
Video Tab->
- video bitrate- 230
- video size- 304 x 228 (width multiple of 16- seems to work)
- framerate 15
- autosize 4:3
Audio->
-un-tick Audio codec
Options->

3) Test in VLC

4) Upload to VisitorsStudio

Technorati Tags: ffmpegx, FLOSS, flv, free, player, screen, swf, tools, video, VideoLAN, VLC

We are starting to build a solid archive of audio visual files towards our first piece of work (to use VisitorsStudio currently themed Evolution vs Fundamentalism) - mainly drawing on existing media archives on the internet. This morning we talked about how we would approach mixing these and what kind of artwork we would make.

A couple of things are influencing our thinking:-
1) Past works we have made that have had instructional, activist, poetic, polemical and documentary functions.
2) Kate’s description of the screen as a racket - an elastic surface for bouncing ideas and activating response in viewers. And her description of images performing as instructional or interface to archive (which we suppose is to do with taxonomy and retrieval) materials. Read the rest of this entry »

The only moving image formats that VisitorsStudio can work with are flash formats; flv (used by Youtube) and .swf.

First we created an animation using Gimp (the FLOSS equivalent of Photoshop). We did this by creating the layers of our animation in one window and then saving as a gif. We were asked whether we wanted to flatten the image or save as an animation.

Then we used ffmpegx (free software) to convert the gif to .flv without too much trouble.

Technorati Tags: ffmpegx, Gimp, tools, VisitorsStudio

The following snippet of text from Situationist International is taken from the entry about Guy Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle’ in the Arttorrents Blog. This blog provides intros and background to art videos and links to Karagara torrents site.

“Internationale Situationniste is the journal of a group of theorists who over the last few years have undertaken a radical critique of modern society — a critique of what it really is and of all its aspects.

… The developing concentration of capitalism and the diversification of its global operation have given rise, on one hand, to the forced consumption of commodities produced in abundance, and on the other, to the control of the economy (and all of life) by bureaucrats who own the state; as well as to direct and indirect colonialism.

The situationists consider that this opposition implicitly requires the real abolition of all class societies, of commodity production and of wage labor; the supersession of art and all cultural accomplishments by their reentry into play through free creation in everyday life — and thus their true fulfillment; and the direct fusion of revolutionary theory and practice in an experimental activity that precludes any petrification into “ideologies,” which reflect the authority of specialists and which always serve the specialization of authority.”

Technorati Tags: distribution, media, situationism, torrents, video

our DIWOlogue adventures involve the creation of screen-based mixes/performances that inhabit online art spaces for collaboration. We are starting today working towards a series of mixes in our own space first, VisitorsStudio that we already know well because it is a furtherfield project. Part of the formal challenge is to match theme/content to the artware or platform.

Taking as our starting point a clip from ‘Fundamentalism vs Evolution’ produced in 1925 by Topical Film Company, found on the BFI free film archive. It features a “Head-on train smash staged at ‘Monkeyville’ to typify clash in U.S.A. between adherents of Bible and followers of Darwin.” This film represents “the blaze of conflict between Science and the Scriptures…” surrounding the Scopes ‘Monkey’ trial in the USA.