Open Call for Collaboration between VJ&Videobloggers
Jean "skynoise" Poole in an open call to videobloggers and vjs on his blog (and various videoblogging and vj sources) makes the case for a "bedroom pixel army" to take on big media. In the nice tradition of interblog exchange I want to give an answer from my side - a side "experienced" in both sides of the "bedroom pixel front" but also on the side of the massmedia front through my family history.
I do agree completely with him that vjs and videobloggers should build a front against current MassMedia. I do disagree that both are fighting in the same turf and I think both have a LONG way to go until they reach any point where they pose a powerful enough force to take on the big guys. Here is why in form of the answer I gave him on the vjcentral threat:
... its all nice in concept but making a RELEVANT vj entry for the blog can consume a day or at least half a day. I am not a big fan of just posting a "vj mix" of the night before. I think videoblogging needs content as I ultimately think vjing needs content but videoblogging the more because you have the 100% focus of the person in front of the computer (or 95%) and if you just show eyecandy he/she/it will get very bored very easely and will never come back - except for some diehard vjs that just take a kick out of swirling lines and dancing gogo girls... videoblogging has - just like vjing - the potential to challenge 20th century media with new fresh approaches - videoblogging goes more into the tv domain while vjing goes more in the cinema domain - both of these are more then ripe for a change (the tv more then the cinema I guess). but this canīt be challenged with meaningless random lines, cutout dancers or 50 layers mashup of 70s tv series. Original content that gives the viewer a Mehrwert (whatever the english translation for that is - the german word fits perfectly)... I want to learn new things when I watch something - not only politics, technology or similar - it can be extended to spirituality or something that I donīt know about yet or whatever but it has to be in some respect meaningful - for the pure "turn off my brain" entertainment - hollywood and tv is unsurpassable as of now.
I do not have any proof of concept to offer (yet) and have lost interest in the pure mashup - the vjblog will be a little dormant for the next weeks. and yes there was interest in form of "oh thats nice to look at" kind of comments. it has no power and to talk in peters words (yes THAT peter) "we need to combine the powercommunicators with the message communicators to really make a change".
manovich can write trillions of pages about how cool new "spatial compositing" is and how the new "layer generation" is affecting tv and hollywood - but what he fails to see is that this "mashup generation" fails to generate a message - something that old fashion cinema AND tv always have had and why they rose in the first place (notice that the real mass consumtion of cinema started with the "news show reels" in the cinemas and not with the highly vj like art tests of our anchestors (Wallace-Rimington, Richter, Fischinger) - they fed the hollywood machine with new technics (especially fischinger is a good case for study with his involvement in Disneys "Fantasia") but they could not challange because of the lack of messages in their beautiful eyecandy creations.