"ENergylog goes Videoblog = ENergyVlog"

Watch movie (Quicktime, 5.7 min, 23.7 MB)

Original post, from ENergylog:

in our attempt to always bring you the freshest content (and to always stay ahead of the german weblog crowd - technically spoken) we decided on setting up this videoblog thing. as well as our ENergyCast this might be a one time experience

"STAR WARS"

Watch movie (Quicktime, 1.7 min, 6 MB)

Original post, from MICHAEL VERDI:

Click here to view the video.I didn't wait in a big line and I didn't bring a lightsaber with me, but I did go see the new Star Wars movie today. Plus, as a bonus, my wife Rebecca makes an appearance for the first time in over 40 videoblogs!

(Via Mefeedia)

Rainy walk to work

click to view clip

Quicktime, ~8Mb, 2min.

Mish Mash

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Quicktime, ~17Mb, 3min. 45 sec.

Ok falls to Penticton Hike Part II - The Snake

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Quicktime, ~8Mb, 1min. 58 sec.

Part II of our hike. We were treated to a bull snake sighting.

The Bull Snake, Pituophis melanoleucus, is a hissing constrictor from North America. This snake is also called the gopher snake (in western North America) and the pine snake (in eastern North America). It is a constrictor, a snake that kills by squeezing prey until the victim can no longer breathe. The Bull Snake makes a hissing noise - because of this noise, people sometimes mistake it for a rattlesnake.

Anatomy: Bull Snakes are up to about 5 feet (1.5 m) long. They range from yellow-brown to brown to cream-colored, with black and brown markings; the belly is light brown. This snake has a small head and a large nose shield, which it uses to dig. Like all snakes, Bull Snakes are cold-blooded; they are the same temperature as the environment. The Bull Snake smells using its tongue. This snake has teeth and can bite (but it is not venomous).

Hunting and Diet: Bull Snakes are carnivores (meat-eaters). Like all snakes, they swallow the prey whole, head first. The snake's top and bottom jaws are attached to each other with stretchy ligaments, which let the snake swallow animals that are wider than itself. Snakes don't chew their food, they digest it with very strong acids in the snake's stomach. Bull Snakes eat burrowing mammals (like mice, rabbits, gophers, and ground squirrels), ground-nesting birds, and bird eggs. After eating a large animal, the Bull Snake needs no food for a long time, and it rests for weeks.

Okanagan Falls to Penticton Hike Part I

click to view clip

Quicktime, ~7.7Mb, 1min. 45 sec.

New navbar look for Mefeedia.

Peter at Mefeedia and I have been working on a new nav-bar for Mefeedia.

Check out the "press release" on the Mefeedia blog.

Check it out, we'd like to hear what you think.

...now back to editing for a videoblog post (yes, I am still working on one)

Best of the Web: @Home - Video

Mefeedia is listed in a poll on Business week of favorite site or service relating to video at home.

Go Vote!!

It's all about the connections

This is a nice little bit of a story.

Mica is vlogging about raising some cash for rent

Stephanie is vlogging about sending cash to someone she doesn't know. (hm...I wonder who?)


One of the many connections created from videoblogging. Good stuff.

Ok, that was the second post about other vlogs...time to get some clips up here, but first...something new from 'White Guy Eats Foreign Foods'

Two things

Two things for you to do:

1. Go watch Raymond's 2 minutes of 'being on his way'

2. Go videoblog your 2 minutes on 'your way'.

...really, go now.

On the mefeedia archive bandwagon

Mefeedia's latest bit of cool is this handy archive thumbnailer

For length's sakes I am only showing 3 here, but here should be all of them.



Video archive by Mefeedia

camping uno

Watch the video

Quicktime, 3.6Mb, 53 sec.

A very bumpy road

Watch the video

Some video from my ride down from camping this weekend.

Quicktime, ~5Mb, 1 min, 9 sec.

Amazing, the words match the intentions this time.

Thanks to Charles Hope (one of blip.tv's team) we finally have an speech where the speakers words match thier actions.

View the beauty here

Blip.tv screencasts at screenvlog.com

I have posted 2 new screencasts on our blip.tv page at screenvlog.

The blip.tv screencast page is here

Short Attention Span

Watch the video

Quicktime, ~4Mb, 37 sec.

Biopsy Day Arrives...

click to view clip

'Snotball Tea' is a better name

Anne suggested that I try "bubble tea"

Watch movie

(Original post, via white guy eats foreign foods)

linked via mefeedia's 'blog this' feature

...I will get her back for that one...

Santa on Vacation

click to view clip

Quicktime, ~3Mb, 33 sec.

Out and About

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Quicktime, ~32Mb, 4min. 44 sec.

A nice warm fuzzy.

We are going to try to feature one or two clips each week that really caught our attention, or made us think a bit..or maybe think a bit less :)

This is one of the best clips I have seen this week:
Anders from The Random Show put this clip to show the fantastic work of Matt at VlogMap.org. (Recently, Matt announced his data can be used through with Google Earth.)

I enjoyed this not because of it's quality, or content, but it's message.

The music Anders selected couldn't have driven the point home any stronger. I've had the pleasure of meeting some very interesting and brilliant, creative people since my interest in video-blogging. And the best part of it is that they are from all over the world.

Anders mentions in his post that he can't help but get a little emotional watching it, same here.

Watch, enjoy, and get a little emotional.

Mummy Mummy

click to view clip

Quicktime, ~8Mb, 1min. 57 sec.

Peachfest Day 1

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Quicktime, ~14Mb, 2min. 37 sec.

Penticton Peaches

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Clip Specs:
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~5MB
Length: 1 min. 4 sec.

Bitter Poutine

click to view clip

It seems that taking pictures and/or videos in public spaces is getting harder and harder to do...and not just in America!

I was too shocked by this incident to challenge Jeffers, the chip wagon guy, but next time, I'll be ready for a fight. Maybe we should organize a flashmob in Penticton...?

Oh yes. We figured out after taking this footage why our videos have been washed out recently. Someone (and I'm not blaming Devlon...I'm just saying...) inadvertently pushed the backlighting button on the side of the camcorder. Doh!

Clip Specs:
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~24MB
Length: 3 min, 58 sec.

Grand Prix GT

click to view clip

Clip Specs:
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~14MB
Length: 00:02:20

Adult Living

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Clip Specs:
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~8MB
Length: 00:03:09.28

Sorting and organizing...

I am re-posting some of my clips over to my other site strange days in an effort to organize a bit. The clips that will be there are just the way I see something when I see it. I want to sample what I see, and push it and shape it into something else.

I am not sure if these types of clips are vlogs, I think they are more just videos online and we'd like to try to adhere to the stricter form of 'vlog' here.

And yes, this post was nothing more than a plug for the other site :)

Her Walk

click to view clip

Clip Specs:
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~27MB
Length: 00:03:05.17

white guy eats foreign food

Inspired by a desire to try one week where I eat nothing but foods from other countries and the more exotic the better, I have started another vlog: 'white guy eats foreign foods'

check it out, now.

Seduced

Clip Specs:
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: 4MB
Length: 00:02:30.00

Time flies when you are having lunch

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Clip Specs:
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~9MB
Length: 00:02:04.19

Sunday Ride

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Clip Specs:
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~23MB
Length: 00:02:27.04

bastards

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Clip Specs:
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~6MB
Length: 00:01:37.07

Send off

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Clip Specs:
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~15MB
Length: 00:03:50.28

Finally, camcorder goodness

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Just me babbling on while I make coffee. I was so jazzed to be able to get footage from the camcorder that I had to post something!

Clip Specs:
Camera: Sony Handycam
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~19MB
Length: 00:02:52.12

Building Better Vlogs

Clip Specs:
Camera: cheap webcam
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~12.9MB
Length: 00:03:22

Pause

Staff photos Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office

I've been looking into the work of Wynne Greenwood, sole band member in the three person band, Tracy and The Plastics. I am interested in the idea of participatory video and in performance that moves between real and recorded space. Through the use of multiple personas, Greenwood's performances attempt to blur boundaries between the maker and the made and invite her audience to make the performance as well by encouraging interjected commentary.

Part basement punk show, part video installation, and part one-woman play, Tracy and the Plastics are comprised of Greenwood and her virtual alter egos, Nikki and Cola, who exist solely on a four by five foot screen via video projections. Through lo-fi electronic music and bold but simple video art, Greenwood and the Plastics explore - and dismantle - the layers of interaction among performer, spectator, and screen. Midway through her performance Greenwood addressed this altered dynamic; stopping the VHS tape she explained: "When I pause the video, it's an acknowledgment that I made the video." Harvard Gazette

Greenwood will stop her act and engage her audience in conversation. In Can You Pause That For A Second...and let yourself groove, Greenwood writes about her concentration on the ability to pause a video and what this means to her:

It seems like when you pause (a video) you stop participating with it. You disengage, you stop paying attention, you answer the phone, spill(ed) your drink. But I think the opposite. I think the space of a paused video is one of total participation and self-care...

CAN YOU PAUSE THAT FOR A SECOND? Why do I keep doing this? Why do we keep doing this (this band, this video work, this singing job)? I make this happen because there's a space I'm moving around in. And it's a hot space, it's breathing and imagining and producing revolution, culture, passion. It's the same space as a video paused. It's the same space as the spoon suction in the separated peanut butter/oil mix. These spaces ask us to bring things together for a second.

I think that the vlog is a paused video. When you visit a vlog website, video merges with text , still image, and audio and there is space for the viewer to become maker through the inclusion of commentary which can be in the form of text, image and video. Many vloggers make themselves freely available for real time conversations via chat, PoIP, and video conferencing, merging the "then" with the "now".

There is a high degree of intertextuality between vlogs as makers comment on each other's videos, respond to them with their own videos, make guest appearances in the videos of other vloggers and make new videos utilizing clips from other makers. The idea that each of us is a potential vlogger, invited to contribute to the conversation, heightens the participatory nature of the medium.

Paused video is good for the soul. It's physical. It's a participation...Your turn. Wynne Greenwood

My Car

click to view clip

An ode to my '77 Benz.

Clip Specs:
Camera: FujiFilm A200 Digital Camera
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~11MB
Length: 00:01:47.20
Music: Kruder & Dorfmeister - Cafe Del Mar - Lamb - Transfatty Acid

Saturday

click to view clip

Clip Specs:
Camera: FujiFilm A200 Digital Camera + Webcam
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: 19.6MB
Length: 00:02:53.15
music:
Menuett G flat major & Valse bluette
Performed by: Kathleen Parlow - violin ; George Falkenstein - piano
September 1912

Stupid Human Tricks

click to view clip

This one is reminiscent of 'Stupid Human Tricks' on Late Night with David Letterman way back in the day....

Clip Specs:
Camera: Cheap Walmart Webcam
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~9.5MB
Length: 00:01:52.14
Edited with Adobe Premiere and produced with Avid

Signs

click to view clip

We're still ironing out technical wrinkles with hardware and software...

But now that I've been informed about 3ivx compression, finally we can get decent video. This one was a lot of fun to make.

Clip Specs:
Camera: Cheap Walmart Web Cam
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~4.5MB
Length: 00:01:17.02
Music: Anne Hell, "The Stars Inside Piano"
Editted and Produced on a PC with Adobe Premiere

Feed me, Seymour

Unfortunately this is a text post not the video post that we battled with last night (yes, again...Premiere keeps munging the audio that comes from my webcam) Going lo-tech is cheaper but man, oh man are we paying in sweat and frustration. They say what doesn't kill ya, makes you stronger...we'll see about that.

Hardware/software troubles aside we are steadily progressing towards being fully immersed and available in vlogs.

With some great help from Josh over at FireAnt and tutorial #7 (which I should've viewed first...) at freevlog.org we now have a feedburner feed that works in FireAnt. (feedlink)

Woo-hoo!

Some of the clips look a bit nasty in FireAnt if the viewer windows is large but that will be resolved once we improve the quality of or clips.

...another step forward.

Communication Art

Posted on No Practice

I've borrowed D.'s laptop while I try to figure out what is wrong with my Mac. What an awful thing for a cyborg - the breakdown of a virtual body.

I found an interesting article about Communication Art. While it specifically addresses telephones with an emphasis on the mobile phone, the definition of the genre covers technology based participatory works of many kinds:

Telecommunications-based art is primarily concerned with connecting distant and contiguous spaces. According to Frank Popper [7], communication art has six main characteristics: (1) it stages physical presence at distance, (2) it telescopes the immediate and the delayed, (3) it focuses on the playfulness of interactivity, (4) it combines memory and real time, (5) it promotes planetary communication and (6) it encourages a detailed study of human social groupings. In a broader sense, it can be said that telecommunication art not only foresees new developments for existing technologies, but also changes our perception of space. It focuses on the relationships between participants, rather than on the creation of material objects, in a situation where the author is the context provider, not the content creator.

I was thinking about how vlogs are participatory in a way that video art is not. Vlogs allow for direct communication with the image creators and are often intertextual. Like a conversation on a bulletin board, the videos are posted, viewed by many who respond with written, audio and video comments. Sometimes, the videos are taken and remixed or expounded upon. The viewer is also a potential creator.

D. and I have joined a vlogging community and are finding out just how much the various vlogs are interwoven. We only wish that we had the money to attend the various real time/space meetings between this worldwide group.

On a related note, Eric Deis sent me an email pointing me to his drawing board project. This is also a form of communication art. Deis has provided a forum for others to collaborate and converse via drawing. While this is not a new concept (my youngest daughter has been participating in this activity for years on the many draw chat sites), the drawings done on Deis' site will be printed out and displayed as art. Who is the author?

Eek!

click to view clip


We threw this up while the screen flickered and shrunk...no time for edits or credits or finesse of any kind. Exciting!

Oh, and it's formatted in mp4.

Learning curve

Since the purpose of this site is to explore and report on the new technology and it's effect on our communications, etc. I should share my experiences through this vlogging learning curve.

After fighting with one particular video last night for hours and then more time this morning I have come to the conclusion that I can't completely 'dummy' my way through this.

I have been lucky with the last few vlogs, but since we are starting lo-tech and capturing video and audio from several different sources...and I am stuck with a PC for now, there are times when producing a nice clean product is very frustrating.

I guess it is time to roll up my sleeves, open the hood and put my software-engineer hat back on. Time to figure how all this mess works. I want more control.

I was determined to get a small file, but now I see that with the progressive downloading, that isn't a big deal. Once I get a TV Tuner card in my PC and we can use a camcorder to capture and that will reduce the capturing issues, but I'd still like to be able to grab clips from anything since they all have a certain 'feel' to them. (webcam, digital cam clips, etc.)

We have Anne's Mac to fall back on, but I am determined to be able to produce from my PC....I am sure by the time I get it figured out I will have saved enough to buy a Mac....ah, c'est la vie.

Very frustrated, but undaunted. (sometimes tenacity isn't a good thing)

Post-performance performance post

click to view clip

We extracted the audio from Anne's post-performance vlog of her ...performance to use as the audio track. She was filming herself and I was filming her.

After several runs through Premiere to get a nice small file with decent quality I forgot to set it up for streaming...so you'll have to wait until the clip loads.

Clip Specs:
Camera: Cheap Walmart webcam
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: 2.6MB
Length: 00:01:06.16
Edited and produced in Adobe Premiere

Chevlolet Six

click to view clip

It was a lovely evening for a drive, the sunset was setting painting the sky with color. The audio track is compliments of Archive.org. It suited the mood of the drive. Apparently it is a song that was record in 1929 in New York. He is singing about the Chevrolet Six, favored by moonshiners since it was faster than the law.

Clip Specs:
Camera: FujiFilm A200 Digital Camera
Location: Penticton, BC
File Size: ~2MB
Length: 00:00:52.12
Edited and Produced on an iMac with iMovie and Audacity

Creative Licensing

You may have noticed the Creative Commons license on the site but don't know much about the movement. Well, now there is a fun video that explains it all:


click to view the video

Commentary

click to view clip

I have been shown the truth...Mac's do rock. Being a PC user forever I never understood why Mac users were so die-hard...until Anne showed me how easy it is to make video on them. A few clicks and the footage from my digital camera was converted and compressed into a nice, tiny clip.

I must get one.

This is something we put together as the result of me playing around with iMovie. The footage was taken from my FujiFilm A200, editted on an iMac with the commentary laid over it in iMovie

The sound might be a bit low. We are working out the kinks of this low tech approach as we go.

This vlogging is terribly addictive, I want to sample and re-sequence everything I see...change it, re-order it, re-create it.

Trouble With Vlogging

click to view the video

Damn that D. for beating me to the punch!

This experiment was made with my Fujifilm A200 (same model as D.) and I overlaid the audio by speaking into my Mac's internal mic (not the best way to get voice, but it suffices for this example) and smoothing it out with Audacity. The editing and compression was done through iMovie - simple to use and gets the job done.

This is mostly what D. looks like lately - working away furiously at his computer(s), swearing and smoking and muttering. Once in a while, I sneak up and bite him but he is oblivious. He is "in the zone".

First VLog

Well, after a lot of cussing and fuming, I have something that I am proud to submit as my first vlog.



click to view clip

I spent more time trying to get another clip working, but for the sake of my sanity I had to walk away from that for the day. Once I get that clip together it's posting will contain the trials and tribulations required to make it happen.

This clip was created with my FujiFilm A200 Digit Camera. The two clips were put together and the fades were via MovieMaker, saved as an AVI. Then Adobe Premiere (which I am sorry, but truly sucks!!!) added the audio track (2 tracks with a fade)...then exported to a MOV.

The clip will be posted to archive.org, but I was impatient, so I posted on another server for now.

Phone/Sex/Video

I've been thinking about cellphones since I read Cellular Phones As Sexual Objects And Human Implosion by Emily Lacy

The cell phone represents a human desire to connect with others, to be sexual and capable of sex anywhere. There are no boundaries anymore; we can talk 'til the end of the world. I am continually confronted with my sexuality because the cell phone is a signifier of my sexual and social life, which has now become somehow more unbearably "endless". The portability of the phone allows for a constant intercourse of communication, and it is done via a machine.

Now, I want a cellphone.


Encoded Presence [auto-portrait of E. Puente]
Michael Takeo Magruder [02.2005]

Michael Takeo uses a smartphone to create lo-tech video portraits of his subjects and releases the results in three formats: standard computer, PDA and Smartphone. The resulting video is highly pixelated. I'm not sure that I like the standard computer version (the image is blown up and there is an annoying audio component in both the standard computer and PDA versions) but the smartphone version works on my computer (Mac) and is truer to the source.

...Generating transitory and ephemeral networks, the mobile phone mediates our most intimate of communications and exchanges – at all times and in all places – and continues to erode the actual and perceived divisions between public and private space.

Within this technological and sociological framework, there exists the potential to implement this medium as a mechanism to explore, critique and expand the conceptual and aesthetic structures within the classical genre of portraiture...

Without artistic direction/interference and utilising only a SVP c500 smartphone as a recording instrument, a subject was requested to generate cinematic content interpreting the notion of ‘auto-portrait’. From the resulting material a single nine second audio/video stream was extracted and utilised as the exclusive source material for the artwork.

Digitize Me

How much of ourselves can we break down into IP packets and disperse into the ethernet?

Does it change us, diminish us or does it allow us to experience new facets of ourselves and others?

I will strive to showcase, sample and comment on evolving technologies that change the way we communicate and express ourselves.

The documentation of a vlog from the ground-up starting lo-tech will be one area that I hope to further digitize myself.

A Short Introduction...

Chat, email, telephone, bulletin board, blog. We use technology to form and maintain relationships between dispersed flesh bodies. We are cyborgs, extending our reach via cables and wi-fi, creating the internet as we surf.

As an artist, my function on this site will be to explore ways in which artists use technology in order to interact, communicate and collaborate. I am particularly interested in online projects that explode concepts of authorship and limited editions. Isn't a limited edition DVD an oxymoron?