Challenges of liberating media
Field of creativity and artistic practice was on the forefront of numerous social developments through our history. Some of the most important break-troughs were made in the cross-section of technological and artistic developments. Sometimes this was a simple utilistic model of technology serving creative process in the production environment (development of photographic processes), sometimes it was the opposite as artistic content was used to provoke technological development (fantasy movies of space exploration).
However as art became more mediated, less connected to artisans and more to the technology, some of the norms of the production usual only within fabricated and standardized goods, became important for production, distribution and presentation of creativity. In last century we have witnessed that dominant forms of popular culture (music, TV and film) tend to be limit buy monopolists who control the whole process threating it as a issue of delivering goods and marketing it to the masses.
Todays film industry is hard to imagine without Hollywood production machinery of movie stars, special effects and rich brand marketing; presentation systems of standardized commercial cinemas and well known format of circa 80min narrative feature film. In the same time development of digital media (first audio than video) opened the field of media production to the many smaller studios and independent productions that still strive for artistic rather than market success. Global networks of communication technologies enable many to make their work accessible to the global audience avoiding the established commercial networks controlled by limited number of production companies.
However in when one goes for independent production approach process still remains heavily influenced by commercial production. Digital tools are usually built to conform with presumed defaults of mainstream production, distribution of the internet is really expansive (when done individually), presentation of the work is limited by low web resolutions (usually good only for previews) in preparatory media formats (which relay to other companies). Heaving in mind these and many other circumstances imposed onto independent media author it is easy to judge how much harder it is to not only gain but only to retain and sustain freedom of choices in creative process.
Many international efforts have been undertaken from different fields (technological, cultural, political) to help independent production, distribution, presentation and preservation of media works. a.network, will try to act in this field in 2004/05 as regional platform for research, development, deployment and support of such efforts, which we hope to co-develop with network of partners working in academic and non-profit field.
In order to establish sustainable (independent and modular) way of developing this platform a.network will work on 3 project levels.
ResearchEducation_FreeMediaTOOLS_ [FreeMediaAuthoringTools ] is project of consolidating and develop free tools for digital media, both authoring and performing aspects of it (steps will include developing resource of links, knowledgbase and communication channels for community support). This tool set and information will be presented to potential adopters in practical one week hands on workshops which will focus of certain aspects of media production, as well as on social, cultural and economical implications (steps will include lectures, demos and workshops, which will use public domain content as source material).
DevelopmentDeployment_FreeMediaHUB_ [MediaHUB ] is project that will deal with issue of digital distribution of media content and its presentation. Stationary units for encoding (conversion of analogue to digital media), distribution (across network of partners) and presentation (with LCD display) will be developed, tested and installed at selected locations (media and cultural centers in the region that have permanent access to internet). With this project we hope to simplify process of networking for media authors who don't participate actively in networks, using most contemporary technical solutions to make content widely available.
CulturalInputsOutputs_[SilentObservers ] Flaneurial Practice in Streaming Media Art / / / /
_High:Noon_[HighNoon ] is international project which will be supported by a.network, in its goals to establish global system for independent video presentation in different forms and through different thematically focuses and informational interfaces. high:noon will initiate processes of trans local exchange and strive to establish media for future local (cable networks) or global use (satellite channels).
Project to be realised durin 2004/2005 in-between Bauhaus University, Weimar (http://www.subsignal.org/ & http://ping.fm/) and a.network (core + associated members: TravellabSplit - Split, Kiberpipa - Ljubljana, MediaCentar - Sarajevo, cREX - Beograd and others)
praxis:
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