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style="WORD-WRAP: break-word; webkit-nbsp-mode: space; webkit-line-break: after-white-space">There’s
a great clip on YouTube<BR>By Vera Tollmann
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">“Hello YouTube viewers“, an Amnesty International
representative says from behind a standard office desk in a video advert
published on YouTube. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">The advert produced by the London based agency
Saatchi and Saatchi uses what could now be called typical amateur video rhetoric
techniques, along with other strategic mechanisms to position the clip in
mainstream search results. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">The preview image is of a girl, tagged as “red…hot
and sexy“. In the middle of the video frame is an image of lipstick red lips,
the producers capitalising on the way YouTube generates its preview images. Is
this the way to make a video viral and visible online? </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">The artist Bernd Krauss, who until recently never
worked with the Internet, started producing one-minute video clips, turning
everyday situations into slightly absurd moments. In one of these clips, Krauss
takes on the style of random amateur videos. He also experiments with the
non-hierarchical structure of the online environment, for example using the
“Lost in Translation“ film title to gather more hits. Krauss’s example shows
that referring to titles and names from popular culture promises success in
terms of viewing numbers.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Does the lack of hierarchy and structure in the
YouTube videotheque necessarily have to lead to a compromise with mainstream
taste? Do you see yourself as director, comedian, guru or musician – the YouTube
promoted personnel? Why did this Google subsidiary decide to feature DIY
celebrities sounding like analogue media typologies? Is it because they want
YouTube to be qualified as entertainment, distraction and leisure? </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Online video archives like YouTube are public
machines administrating the private, forgotten or speculative. Many users get
confused by the amount of videos and often only check out videos recommended in
offline media. Some use YouTube as a search engine for more or less reliable
information. The little context that uploaders usually share with their viewers,
leaves vagueness and insecurity about how to read what we see. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">How informative are the text descriptions? Do new
contexts develop instead? Communities and channels shape contexts in which they
can interact. Chain videos replying to an initial music video by famous and
unknown artists, for example do. What have people been doing for 20 years with
camcorders? What have they been recording? </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">For example a legendary anti-interview with PiL
(Public Image Ltd) originally broadcasted in 1980. YouTube makes it possible to
revive or catch up on subculture 25 years in the making. However, do you receive
everyday media like TV and newspapers differently since watching videos on
YouTube? </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">You find videos that are proofs of public debates
similar to the CIA ‘water boarding’ method of making patronising statements on
TV shows. In most cases there are different versions available of the same
incident. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">A vast amount of clips produced by amateurs deal
with sentimental human conditions such as love, fear, schadenfreude
(epicaricacy) and embarrassment. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">This fall the “last lecture“ of scientist Randy
Pausch on Google video produced such an emotional wave that he got invited to
reprise his last public lecture on the Oprah Winfrey Show. This example shows
how people watch television, filter and make use of the media. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">These video databases also generate a large output
in fan culture. And videos could be proof for the public that there is
insufficient media coverage. In this sense, online video can provide a
participatory immediate perspective on public image compared to traditional
broadcasting media.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Where did you end up the last time you browsed the
database? What kind of places did you end up in, US bedrooms? </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">It’s easy to tell the difference between a
professional production and an amateur recording. Nonetheless, amateurs use all
kind of tricks to hide their DIY status and the other way around. The fictitious
blog of lonelygirl15 was uncovered as the creation of New Zealand actress
Jessica Rose and some wannabe film directors. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Most online videos don’t touch politics but deal
with make up, romantic landscapes, performative tricks, and deadpan opinions.
</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">What is pushed back by YouTube's philosophy about
improving your personality is the market competition ideology. Inside an
integrated online community the individuals don't compete in terms of owning
goods, instead they aim for planned usage to create their personality. It is the
same process in advertising it’s not aimed at direct commercial interests but at
establishing a theory of consumer habits, a mandate for the global structure of
society.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Video databases such as Google Video, MyVideo,
Political Video, Revver, MySpace and Metacafe to name a few, redefine our
relationship to the media reality. Of course the public image is limited, but
less limited than before. You have access to visual information recorded by
people from different places, remote and central, incidentally and on purpose,
and that adds new parts to the media puzzle we are working on every day. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">It is possible to download videos from YouTube,
but what is obviously missing is an archive function that allows users to also
store the comments, search terms and short descriptions of the video. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">However, it seems too early to fully understand
the meaning and perception of online video databases and its definitely too
early for reactionary feuilleton verdicts on the dumbness and narcissism of the
available footage. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Platforms like YouTube are so far underestimated
and under theorised. In 1986 the sociologist David Morley published the
empirical study ‘Family Television’, a research into the question of social uses
of television at a time when the video recorder as a new technology was just
entering the homes. Now online video databases and torrent trackers are
replacing the VHS video recorder and DVD player. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Actually it would be interesting to look at online
video from a cultural studies perspective, to analyse user habits, the meaning
of the most watched videos and channel culture. Morley's results could function
as a model for considerations on differences and similarities between broadcast
television and YouTube. It could help towards formulating an outline of the
social use of online video. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Looking at footage that shows old and new
communication forms, to draw on a search term, the revival of street theatre and
rhetoric rituals repeat existing formats within the constraints of digital
media. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Take for example video chain letters, people
responding to existing videos adding the email signification, re: to the video
title. YouTube functions as a 24/7 stage. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Video websites also deliver interesting footage
for the analysis of our media culture, as simultaneous translation situations
shows. Usually the translator is expected not to appear as an individual and is
supposed to support the speaker in the background. What happens when the agreed
relationship is ignored? As happened to Roger Waters with a consecutive
interpreter during a press conference in South America – no further context
information is given. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">In another clip we watch George W. Bush on stage
with a doppelgänger at the occasion of the White House Press conference dinner.
The double dubs the real Bush with a comedy subtext, suggesting patronising
thoughts, playing a game to win favour with the audience. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">The effects of different speaker positions as a
set up for a television could be well observed in a dialogue between Naomi Klein
and Alan Greenspan – in the studio, on the telephone represented with a picture
and the role of the moderating host. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">The sexist insistency of talk master David
Letterman becomes very explicit in a conversation with society girl Paris
Hilton. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">The president of the Columbia University when
introducing his guest, the Iranian president Ahmadinejad, acts out a significant
example of a host crossing the boundaries of his responsibility to open up a
social space.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Image quality is the key, video database owners
are very well aware of this fact as it decides speculative aspects, an
enchantment through techniques that keeps the concurring companies busy. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">As Baudrillard puts it with Heidegger, if the
society moves to the furthest point of technification, there is a secret again,
the technical can turn into magic and the users experience vertigo, a certain
state of dizziness they are familiar with from zapping TV. Because you don't
have a specific idea of what you are possibly watching, you create the program
yourself, whether the footage is edited and the full version of something else.
You could even watch different versions, shorter and longer, with different
framing and editing of one situation. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">If you enter UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Baghdad as
search terms, you will find clips of different length showing the reaction by
Ban Ki-moon to a blast during a live televised news conference in Baghdad. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Online video is an arena where contemporary social
conflicts are acted out, a constant one is the conflict around copyright. Videos
you viewed some weeks ago might have been taken offline in the meantime,
sometimes copyright might be the reason. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Imagine somebody downloading controversial video
clips in time – there might be an online or offline backup version occurring
somewhere. YouTube in a way has created a semi-legal space that hasn’t changed
much after it was bought by Google. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Broadcasting stations like BBC and Al Jazeera put
programmes online. </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">There’s a great clip on YouTube by ‘Der Plan’ a
friend told me today: ‘Software kann man nicht stehlen, Ideen sind frei.
Copyright Sklaverei.“ (One is not able to steal software, ideas are free.
Copyright slavery.)</P>
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