<videovortex> V2V and dictionary of war

[Florian Schneider]

dear all!

it was great meeting you at the video vortex conference. thanks a lot
to all who organized this event and helped to make it  happen. i
really do hope that this initiative spreads out and instigates further
networking beyond the actual event. i promised to send you the
manuscript of my presentation on friday and i will definetely do so
as soon as i find some time to go through it and make it somehow
human readable ;)

please allow me to point you to an event we are right now organizing
for the next weekend in the city of novi sad/serbia. it is the fifth
edition of a series of performances entitled DICTIONARY OF WAR. the
idea is to invite artists, architects, filmmakers, scientists,
theorists, and even practitioners to each create a concept on the
topic of war.

the concepts are presentated in 30-minutes performances in alphabetic
order. we are recording all presentations with several cameras, do
live mixing and live encoding, and distribute the video through the
open source peer-to-peer network V2V.
http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/concepts

V2V is a project we have started in 2003 when we were organizing the
indymedia center during the anti-g-8 protests in geneva. back then the
challenge was how to distribute large multimedia files through a
decentralized structure rather than depending on one or maybe two
single servers let alone commercial hosting services.
http://v2v.cc

meanwhile the project has grown to an enormously stable and
sustainable network of video producers hosting thousands of hours of
video in a totally independent, autonomous, non-commercial fashion
*entirely* based on open source technology. besides the DICTIONARY OF
WAR it is used and maintained by groups and projects ranging from
unitednationsplaza.org to incommunicado.info, from migrant to labor
activists, covering conferences (like the recent summit.kein.org,
einstellung.so36.net or oil21.org) and events (like KEIN.TV) as well
as distributing short and documentary film (i.e. from the globale
filmfestival).

the underlying structure is a peer-to-peer network based on the bit
torrent protocol. all video files are encoded with OGG THEORA
http://www.theora.org -- so far the only open source video codec. the
quality of the video is relatively good (something like VHS, if
somebody remembers...), it is possible to project it while the
filesize remains reasonably fast to download even without a DSL line.

since some time you can subscribe to the V2V feed through miro
(formerly known as democracy player) or install several modules for
the open source content management system drupal
http://v2v.cc/development which allow you to include and publish
selected V2V items on your weblog by simply clicking a checkbox.

you may also be interested in running your own V2V server, install the
V2V keep alive module (to make yourself sure that certain videos
remain available), and last but not least install the V2V upload
client (written in python and by using bit torrent also for the
upload it is avoiding the usual limit of http uploads) which allows
you to contribute to V2V yourself.

the latest V2V module for drupal comes with the cortado java applet,
developed by fluendo.com (one of the leading open source multimedia
streaming companies and supporting the development of the gstreamer
multimedia framework). cortado allows the playerless viewing of ogg
theora/ogg vorbis encoded content across all platforms. it ensures the
widest distribution possible of your content, while other solutions
based on proprietary formats force a lot of potential viewers and
listeners to download a new media player or a new version of their
existing media player.

if you are interested in using V2V, joining the network or
contributing, please do not hesitate to drop me a line. we are
currently thinking of a meeting to outline the further development
of the project and this could be a good opportunity to follow
up some of the issues raised during the last few days.

all the very best,

florian


---

DICTIONARY OF WAR
Novi Sad edition
January 25 and 26, 2008
http://dictionaryofwar.org


After a one year break the DICTIONARY OF WAR continues with a fifth
edition on January 25th and 26th, 2008 in Novi Sad, Serbia. Again 25
new concepts on the topic of war will be presented in alphabetical
order by artists, theorists, filmmakers, scientists, researchers.
Loosely based on the slogan: "At least, when we create concepts, we
are doing something" DICTIONARY OF WAR is a collaborative platform for
creating concepts.

The Novi Sad edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR will feature contributions
by: Verica Barac, chairwoman of the Anti-Corruption Committee in
Serbia; artist Hans Bernhard from Austria; Novi Sad based artist
Slavko Bogdanovic; Thomas Campbell, union activist and writer from US
and St. Petersburg; Jovan Divjak, former general in Yugoslav army who
defended Sarajevo; Bojan Djordjev, theater director from Belgrade;
political scientist Volker Eick from Berlin; Galit Eilat, curator and
theorist from Israel; artist from Kosovo, Albert Heta; IRWIN group
from Ljubljana; Vesna Kesic, feminist and journalist from Zagreb;
Erden Kosova, critic and theorist from Istanbul; artist from Zagreb
Andreja Kuluncic; Geert Lovink, media theorist from Amsterdam; London
based artist an filmmaker Jean Mathee; sound artist from Berlin
Sebastian Meissner; Metahaven, design group from Amsterdam and
Bruxelles; visual art theorist from Skopje Suzana Milevska; Nebojsa
Milikic, artist and activist from Belgrade; theater theorist and
performing artist Gini Mueller from Vienna; Martha Rosler, artist from
New York; Florian Schneider, writer, filmmaker and net activist from
Munich; Paris based theater playwriter Biljana Srbljanovic; Teofil
Pancic, journalist and writer from Belgrade; Zelimir Zilnik, filmmaker
from Novi Sad.

This winter, DICTIONARY OF WAR event will take place in Serbia where
notion of war has a special meaning as a symbol of unresolved past,
which in many ways determines the future of the territory of former
Yugoslavia and its neighborhood – it is constituting form of a new
order. To question different approaches to the subject of a war in
this special edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR in Novi Sad has significant
roll in analyzing present “power relations” in this specific region
and wider. “Is genocidal war necessary for the organization of human
society?” still reverberates through this region.

100 concepts on the issue of a war, have had already been invented,
arranged and presented at the first four public, two-day events in
Frankfurt, Munich, Graz and Berlin. The entire video recordings (live
mixed from four cameras and additional sources) of the first four
editions of the DICTIONARY OF WAR are available for free download from
the website: http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/v2v Besides that, in
the lobby of the location of Novi Sad event, there will be TV sets
installed offering to the audience the opportunity to browse through
this unique topic-based multimedia archive that encompasses more than
50 hours of video material. Even by now the video files of the
DICTIONARY OF WAR are shared by thousands of users worldwide who
download the material for educational or research purposes and remix
it in various new contexts. The next 25 concepts that are going to be
presented at the Novi Sad edition will be ready for download near on
real time - published under a creative commons share-alike license.

The Novi Sad edition of the DICTIONARY OF WAR starts on Friday,
January 25, at 5 pm in Studio M, Radio Novi Sad, Ignjata Pavlasa 3. It
will be continued on January 26, at 2 pm. The concepts will be
introduced in alphabetical order by their concept persons in half-hour
long presentations or performances. Entrance to the event is free of
charge.

More informations at: http://dictionaryofwar.org or
info[at]dictionaryofwar.org and office[at]kuda.org

DICTIONARY OF WAR is project by Multitude e.V. Berlin and Unfriendly
Takeover Frankfurt am Main, and it is locally organized by New Media
Center_kuda.org Novi Sad http://www.kuda.org in collaboration with
“Zavod za kulturu Vojvodine” and Radio Novi Sad. The project in Serbia
is supported by Ministry of Culture and Education of Province
Vojvodina, Fond for Open Society, Goethe Institute Belgrad, Austrian
Cultural Forum Belgrade and The Royal Netherlands Embassy in Belgrade.