Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube

22 Video Vortex Reader II Moving Images Beyond Youtubetheory & aesthetics23Aesthetics of CommerceThe commercial mode of production initially emerged with technical media and the possibilityof technical reproduction. This holds true for the printing press used for books, and foretchings. But the technical media in the age of capitalist production unleashed the ultimateproductivities of this model only when gramophone and film turned music and images intoindustrially produced goods. The basic aesthetic constraint of this mode consists in the necessityto adapt to an industrial production scheme and to establish success in the marketplace.This concentrates cultural production upon popular forms, or generates the quest fornew popular forms. The pressure to concentrate on successful formats soon led to a processof aesthetic and formal homogenization. Nevertheless, it took more than 20 years until themovie industry stabilized into the dominant form of the feature-length film. It is probably notmere accident that this took roughly one generation: it seems that only after one generationhas been completely socialized within a new medium can an appropriate and optimizedaesthetic response be found.The now dominant Hollywood style of narration, with its smooth continuity, can be seen asa result of a process of adaptation intimately linked to the distribution system and the economicfeedback given at the box-office. The system lacks the strong singular personality ofthe artist, even though the director imitates this figure to a certain degree. In contrast to theartistic mode, whose results can be described very well along an impulse of distinction, thecommercial mode is completely encompassed by a process of adaptation.Aesthetics of the LinkAfter the breakdown of both models – that of a dominant history and of modernism on oneside, and the economy of reproduced culture on the other – we might well be witnessinganother mode of production in the making. And, just as the commercial mode has not fullyreplaced the artistic mode, this new mode will not entirely replace the others. This new modefollows the logic of the link. It creates value through links and it operates as a facilitator oflinks. The only institution by which it is powered is the internet itself. So far it has had only anegative impact upon markets, and no perceptible impact upon the museum and art world.The inherent value would be characterized not by sales and revenue, but in the followingformula: V=v,n,p, where V(value) is a product of ‘its performance and application (v); thenumber of its multiplications and replica (n); the sharing rate of the value among the peopleinvolved in the process (p)’. 21 It is far from clear if this recent development eventually marksa transition to a different mode of production or will become a mere transient disruption tothe commercial mode, to be integrated within it at a later point. 22Three different options seem to be available under the present conditions of the link mode.The first is the attempt to maintain the commercial model as its main source of revenue, thescarcity of distribution, disappears. This could only be enforced by contra-factorial jurisdictionand would lead in the end to a more or less complete control of web traffic. Fortunately,the prospects for this attempt seem to be dire. The second way to handle the transition wouldbe to affiliate web culture parasitically with the present economy. This would allow for thedevelopment of new cultural forms, albeit under the condition and the pressure of massdistributionunder which the current wave of participatory activities would most likely suffertremendously. Instead of a user-generated culture we would see the rise of new dominantcommercial forms in the near future. This process of commercialization and adaptation canalready be observed at work. In a widely discussed post, Dan Greenberg 23 presented hisstrategies for the commercialization of online video. Next to an aesthetic that focused mainlyon re-adaptability and a quick emotional response, the video has to be embedded in a widernetwork of links. This ‘linkability’ was regarded as the main source of success. This outcomeseems to be the most likely, however, beyond those two already widespread modes, a thirdalternative comes into play. This builds on the continuous feed of data from participating andactive users, leading to a collaborative visual production.Thus, the possibilities of online video can be envisaged in three exemplary forms, whichall might exist in parallel. There will be the parasite mode, which might borrow from theaesthetic of games and talk shows at the same time. Collaborative practice will be channeledinto a fixed time structure in order to create marketable data. The event will be oneof the few remaining points at which scarcity can be preserved. Therefore the event will bebranded, and its time and image space sold to advertising companies. A second format willbuild on the increasing embeddedness of images in the real world. This process is facilitatedby a growing segmentation of the image into a composite of various layers of metadata andlinks. The contents of the images will be made accessible by symbolic encoding, such asautomatic tagging, face-recognition and other symbolic appropriations of the visual. Once webecome accustomed to these images, it will be very difficult to recall a state when the visualworld was not constantly warped by a layer of data. There remains the third possibility of acollaboratively created visual world. 24 This world would be built, like Wikipedia or the newerWikiLeaks, on the surplus-work of users. It will consist of a connected visual space, in whichnarrative and authorship may manifest themselves occasionally when needed. Depending onthe survival of the institutions of historical time, one might even return to a historicization ofthis process in the name of art.However, the coming images must not be left to the entrepreneurs and their quest for revenue.Today, almost any answer to the question of ‘what should we do’ is justified by economicpurposes. Thinking about the future has, at least for certain classes, taken the formof a business-plan. It decays into short-term visions which treat the future almost as a kindof fate which will inevitably lead us to the next business opportunity. In its urge to anticipate21. See Matteo Pasquinelli, Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers,2008, p. 96, in reference to Enzo Rullani’s Economia della Conoscenza, 2004.22. As data seems to indicate, see Lev Manovich, ‘The Myth of user-generated content’, LevManovich blog, 23 November, 2010, manovich.net/2010/11/23/the-myth-of-user-generatedcontent/.23. Dan Ackerman Greenberg, ‘The secret strategies behind many “viral” Videos’, TechCrunch, 22November, 2007, www. techcrunch.com/ 2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viralvideos/.24. See the section entitled ‘The Art of World-Making’ in Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture, NewYork: New York University Press, 2006, p.113.