Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube

326 Video Vortex Reader II Moving Images Beyond Youtubeonline video art327Scene 39, Shot 909.Upload to Scene 2, Shot 19. Nelson Ricardo. Brazil.A few years later there are uploads I would choose to eliminate. Here are my criteria: Theuploads are either blurred or too dark to see (quality in the filmic tradition) or have a hazyor no discernible reference to the Vertov shot (quality in the conceptual tradition). In 2010, Icreated a new category allowing all uploads to remain part of the database. Those shots thatdon’t meet my criteria remain visible in the scene index and tags, but are eliminated fromthe stream.A new film streams daily on the website with Vertov’s original on the left, the remake on theright. When there are no uploads for a shot, the right side of the screen remains blank. Thisspace reconfigures the viewing pattern, shifting attention from a two window montage to thesingle window on the left, the right remaining an active absence in recognition of the missingupload. There are other significant absences or spaces in the project: one is the spacearound and between the original and the remake, which mutates according to the format ofthe upload; the other is the absence of representation from places in the world where thereare no uploads. Almost three years later it is these absences that I find most telling. Theseare the spaces of engagement that determine the aesthetics of the piece, spaces I considercentral to the remake.While the uploads on the right are a developing database reflecting participation in theproject, the spaces between and around both windows vary constituting physical evidenceof the devices from which the uploads are made. Aspect ratios of 16:9 versus 4:3 alter theshape of the space, some participants crop their images. The dual-screen structure createsan uneasy alliance between past and future, the right window is a collision course of onenight stands.One of my favourite comments about this piece was from a critic, who said ‘wiki doesn’twork’. I’ve thought about it long and often. There seems to be a lot at stake here: the questionof authorship, another model, a shift in perspective? The juxtaposition of film with databasebegs these questions. At the same time database cinema, social cinema, and participatorycinema pose other questions: What if Beirut bumping up against Bangkok doesn’t make forcontinuity? What if the upload of seven consecutive shots by seven people from different citiesand countries doesn’t make for a uniform aesthetic? What if the software accepts uploadsin all aspect ratios making no attempt to standardize them? What if a film is being authoredcollectively? What are the rules?Upload to Scene 29, Shot 706. Soyun Bang. Korea.In ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’, Sol Lewitt writes: ‘If the artist changes his mind midwaythrough the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results’. 9Questions concerning quality, aesthetics, the problem of democracy (curating a project thatinvites participation) – but especially Lewitt’s words regarding the problem of repeating pastresults – were on my mind when I attended Transmediale in 2010. At a critical debate entitled‘Innovative Artistic and Economic Practices’, seven of the eight panelists presented a varietyof collaborative participatory projects. The event felt like an early 1970s love fest – withoutthe benefits of an LSD capsule. As my mind wandered, I recalled Claire Bishop’s article ‘Antagonismand Relational Aesthetics’. 10 Acknowledging a ‘long tradition of viewer participationand active spectatorship’, Bishop questions the nature of the endeavors of 1990s galleryartists whose works involve creating social or participatory situations, and the praise given tothem by Nicolas Bourriaud In his book Relational Aesthetics. 11 Describing these as ‘feel-goodpositions’, Bishop concludes that.The tasks facing us today are to analyse how contemporary art addresses the viewer and toassess the quality of the audience relations it produces: the subject position that any workpresupposes and the democratic notions it upholds, and how these are manifested in ourexperience of the work. 129. Sol Lewitt, ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art’, in Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (eds) Theories andDocuments of Contemporary Art, Berkeley and Los Angeles California: University of CaliforniaPress, 1996, p. 826.10. Claire Bishop. ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, October 110 (Fall 2004): 51-80.11. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods, France:Les presses du réel, 2002.12. Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, p. 78.