I St. Lab Micro TV is a TV broadcasting unit to facilitate mobile TV broadcasts. It is being built by Container Project, a community media lab in a 40 foot shipping container in rural Jamaica. It was initiated in 2003 by media artist (h)activist Mervin Jarman, who fulfilled his dream of returning to Jamaica to start the Container Project in the community where he grew up in. !Mediengruppe Bitnik from Switzerland are contributing their know-how, experience and technical material to build up and start using the micro TV station in August 2008. look it up http://www.istreet.tv

Finally, the first prototype of a shared cinelerra .xml project file is realised. See the documentation on http://watch.deptford.tv/wiki/

report by peter:

Lisa Haskel, Bitniks & OS video discussed how can the functionalities of online and ofline systems to edit video be reviewed to facilitate open source ways of collaborative video-editing. We worked on imagining a system, exploring the possibilities of content managing systems and the capacity of timeline editors to export edit decision lists in open standards formats.

In Spring 2008, NODE.London is calling a seasonal gathering of media art, showing how London is budding with fresh exhibitions, discussions, musical events and participatory projects.

This website will soon be filling with an ongoing programme from Spring 2008. Until then, you can browse the archive of the first NODE.London season of media arts in March 2006.

NODE.London is open to any person or group who wants to help spread media art and related activity around London and beyond! If you would like to get involved, please check the NODE.London wiki and come to one of our regular meetings and introduce yourself.

The next Layer

This one day workshop “from taxi to praxi and back again” uncovers and examines some of the challenges and opportunities faced when creative artistic practice is undertaking research. Independent artists and free and open source software developers have made more rapid advances than those working within the more traditionally minded arts and humanities departments in academia. The challenge is now to find ways of re-embedding useful aspects of free and open source methodologies in academic practice based arts and technology research. How do we incorporate and negotiate research in those areas of work which are strongly inter- and trans-disciplinary? The aim of the workshop is to address and discuss some of the generic, rather than discipline-specific, challenges of undertaking practice-based research within academia. The workshop will draw on open and collaborative (FLOSS) methodologies by proposing and discussing a diverse range of taxonomies and practices thus “from taxi to praxi and back again”. http://www.thenextlayer.org (collaboration between Armin Medosch & Adnan Hadzi)

Greenwich.TV ?

For people interested in brainstorming on a converging broadband/broadcast medium, webtv – greenwich tv?
This event is a follow up session of the disclosures roundtable discussion on TV looking at “…organisational principles of openness in contemporary cultural production, by focusing on openness in the public sphere, taking participation and community TV making its starting point.”
New input to the questions asked at disclosures?:
Disclosures roundtable “… will ask people around the table to consider the different approaches to participation presented in each of the projects. From this we will reflect on how we, as cultural producers, can facilitate sustainable opportunities for open participation. The topics that will be of interest are civic reach, censorship and methods of broadcast.”
see also http://www.gasworks.org.uk/exhibitions/detail.php?id=344

dorkbotswiss
people doing strange things with electricity

dorkbotswiss presentations are meant to be fun, friendly, informal chats. they’re short, just 20-30 minutes, including questions. the standard “artist talk” format (my life history in slides + narration) does not work very well at dorkbotswiss. what does work well is a casual talk about something you’re currently interested in. pretend you’re at a dinner party and someone has just asked you, “so what are you working on?” we encourage people to ask questions during the presentations, rather than always waiting until the end.

about dorkbot.swiss

dorkbot.swiss ist ein alle zwei monate stattfindendes meeting von künstlerInnen (sound/image/movement/ etc…), designerInnen, ingeneurInnen, studentInnen und anderen interessierten, die in schaffung und gestaltung elektronischer kunst ( im weitmöglichsten sinne) involviert sind. jedes dorkbot.swiss meeting präsentiert ein lokales, ein nationales und ein internationales projekt.

die absicht von dorkbot.swiss ist es:

* den künstlerInnen/programmiererInnen/ingeneuerInnen die möglichkeit zu bieten, ihre arbeit anderen künstlerInnen verschiedenster richtungen vorzustellen und mit ihnen zu diskutieren und zu betrachten.
* ein forum für die präsentation neuer art works/ technologien/ software/ hardware zu etablieren

Open Knowledge Conference

The Open Knowledge Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2004 with the simple aim of promoting (and protecting) open knowledge. It is our belief that open approaches to the production and distribution of knowledge can deliver far-reaching social and commercial benefits in a variety of areas.

What is Open Knowledge?

Simply put: it is knowledge that is open! To be more specific, by knowledge we mean any kind of content, information or data: genes to geodata, sonnets to statistics. By ‘open’ knowledge we mean knowledge which anyone is free to use, re-use and redistribute without legal, social or technological restriction. For more details and a really precise explanation of what this means see the Open Knowledge Definition.

What We Do

The Foundation exists to promote open knowledge in all ways possible. Central to this is our role as an open and participatory community as well as our position as a hub and partner for existing open knowledge networks. Beyond this we work specifically to:

• Promote the idea of open knowledge, both what it is, and why is it a good idea.

• Act at the national and international level on open knowledge issues.

• Run ‘Open Knowledge’ events, for example the Open Knowledge Forums and OKCON.

• Develop tools that help us and help others develop open knowledge, such as KForge and the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network.

• Provide infrastructure, and potentially a home, for open knowledge projects, communities and resources. See, for example, the KnowledgeForge service.

Running through all of our activities is a strong emphasis on decentralized collaboration. In particular, our primary aim is to help others develop open knowledge rather than doing it ourselves. Of course, that doesn’t mean we don’t develop specific projects (for example Open Shakespeare) but we believe that the future lies in collaboration between a multitude of different groups and that no one group or organisation can, or should try to, “do it all”.

Introduction to Open Knowledge 2008: 1030
Rufus Pollock, Open Knowledge Foundation

Session 1 (1045-1200): Transport and Environment
* Gavin Starks (AMEE and dgen)
* Tom Steinberg (MySociety)
* Dr Muki Haklay (Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London)

Session 2 (1200-1315): Visualization and Analysis
* Liz Turner
* Gael Varoquaux (Mayavi2 and Scientific Python)
* One other TBC

Session 3 (1415-1530): Education and Academia
* Erik Duval (ARIADNE)
* Lisa Petrides (OER Commons)
* Dr Martin Brett (Cambridge University History Department)

Open Space (1530-1830)
* Contributed (and spontaneous) lightning talks, demos, mini-workshops

Open Media Economics Panel (15:45-16:45)
* Jamie King http://www.stealthisfilm.com
* Joerg Baach http://www.opencoin.org
* Simon Worthington http://www.openmute.org
* Holmes Wilson http://www.getmiro.org

Open Media (moderator Maria X)

Deptford.TV fundraising night for the mindsweeper with premiere of Deptford.TV shorts, Ampersand.TV performance and an openlab headphone concert. “BRING YOUR OWN HEADPHONES”

4th April 2008:
* 6pm doors open
* 6.30pm premiere of Deptford.TV docs
* 8pm Ampersand.TV & NRSZ performance
* 9.30pm Openlab performance: livecoding / homebrew software + electronics / video remixing / noise club beats

Deptford.TV is a collaborative video project documenting South/East London see http://deptford.tv These short films are coming out of a Deptford.TV/CUCR collaboration about two Deptford stories: the eviction of the squatters and businesses on New Cross Road, and the restoration of the Minesweeper, a floating community creative space recently damaged in a fire, see http://www.minesweeper.tv/
CUCR is the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths, see http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr/

about NRSZ:
NRSZ The pioneer of realtime visualization will shred the the deptford.tv footage in time with ampersand. see http://www.5VOLTCORE.com

about Ampersand.TV:
South London based Ampersand are a fivepiece that use recycled and found objects to produce sonic sculptures from random noise. Their setup features the inside of pianos, shell casings, corrugated iron, scaffold and brass pipes. All sounds mesh together creating multifaceted timbral music. For more information visit http://www.ampersand.tv

about Openlab:
OpenLab collective builds on what is now an increasingly blurred line between artists and software developers. The broad expansion of the Internet and the democratization of computers have left audiences more than ever confronted with new, hybrid software conceived by a blend of artists and programmers. As intellectual property is a fiercely debated issue, some people cling on to their little bits of territory, while others choose to share knowledge, art and collective work. This event will be a platform for OpenLabs’ digital artists, musicians and programmers, to present their collaborative works.

Do you want to research or make documentary films? Are you interested in collaborative film-making? Do you want to document regeneration, gentrification and alternative urbanism in deptford and new cross? Do you want to learn how to edit and publish digital video?

This is a call for participation in a Deptford.TV/CUCR collaboration to document the closure by Goldsmiths College of the buildings at SE14 6AF (the block that includes Cafe Crema) and the restoration of the Minesweeper boat on Deptford Creek.

CUCR is the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr/ [http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr/]
Deptford.TV is a collaborative video project documenting the regeneration of Deptford http://deptford.tv [http://deptford.tv]

This call is to participate in a series of workshops from January to March 2008 and participation in the making of short documentary films about two Deptford stories: the eviction of the squatters and businesses on New Cross Road, and the restoration of the Minesweeper, a floating community creative space recently damaged in a fire http://www.minesweeper.tv [http://www.minesweeper.tv]

The workshops are aimed at CUCR’s MA and PhD students (MA Culture, Globalisation and the City, MA Photography and Urban Cultures, PhD Visual Sociology), but are open to anyone. They are free and require no previous experience. We are looking for people who have an interest in documenting stories of city change, whether they have skills in film-making or a passion for research.
You will be given basic training in collaborative digital film-making, editing with Final Cut, and publishing video, and work together to make short films. The project is based on open source and creative commons principles. The workshops will be held at Goldsmiths College.
The schedule:

Research pre-meet:
– 15th January 3 pm to 5 pm: starting off the documentary research process (optional) Workshops:
– 1st day: 28th January 10am to 4pm introduction to deptford.tv principles, introduction to themes to film, how to publish on deptford.tv, research into topics, forming of groups. – 2nd day: 4th Februaryry 10am to
4pm: introduction to shooting equipment.
– 2 wks time independent filming
– 3rd day: 18th Februaryry 10am to 4pm introduction to final cut – start of editing / parallel to shooting – 4th day: 3rd march 10am to 4pm: discussion of edits, how to upload to deptford.tv

by transpontine

From last week’s Mercury, 30 January 2008 (buy the hard copy if you can, it has got a two page colour spread of photos of the shops and the people):

‘University Landlords call time on charming shopping parade

An iconic parade of shops looks set to be consigned to the history books. Rubbish and Nasty,Café Crema and Prangsta occupy the run-down shops at 302-314 New Cross Road.
Parade landlord Goldsmiths College, part of the University of London, has told disappointed business owners to leave by March 7.

Rubbish and Nasty, an emblem of this part of Lewisham’s recent fashion and music revival, is run by Sophie Soni and Ian McQuaid. The shop operates as a working installation for the pair’s creative work and also sells music and second-hand clothes. Sophie said she would now quit New Cross, hoping to find a studio space in Deptford.

At the other end of the parade is specialist “costumiers” Prangsta whose selection of vintage clothing for hire attracts people from across London. Owner Melanie Wilson has been running the shop for 10 years and said she was sad to leave.She also plans to move to a Deptford studio.
She said: “The building does need attention and repairs, so we can understand that the businesses will have to move out. But it’s going to be very sad for the area. I have had a lucky time here, but I think that perhaps the university wants to make it part of the campus.”

Kiri Lewin and Chris Boddington have run Café Crema since 2004, becoming popular with students and lecturers with their vegetarian home cooked food, coffees and film nights.
While Sophie and Melanie will be able to move out and continue their work, Café Crema faces a tougher future. It is most closely tied to the university community and most reluctant to leave.
Kiri said: “We are emotionally attached to the area and don’t want to see all our hard work go down the drain – especially if the shop just ends up being boarded up. We’d really like to be involved in plans for the future.”

A spokesman for Goldsmiths said notice on the shops had been served following a fire enforcement notice. He said: “The college has been seeking an inclusive approach to the problem. In autumn 2007, we invited all of the businesses to send representatives to attend discussion meetings. We are currently looking at a number of options for addressing the building issues. We are committed to ongoing dialogue with the businesses when these have become clearer”‘.

Transpontine comment: Nobody is denying that work is needed on these buildings – Cafe Crema aren’t arguing that they shouldn’t move out while work is carried out, they just want the option of moving back when it is completed. What is clear from this story is that Goldsmiths have no clear plans or timescale for carrying out the works, or for what they will do afterwards. I understand that there are two options being considered – one to turn the parade into student accommodation, the other to have flats upstairs but to have some kind of ‘market place’ downstairs, possibly with stalls selliing student work, shops and a cafe. It would certainly be another nail in the coffin of any idea of New Cross ‘town centre’ if Goldsmiths gets away with the former, taking a whole stretch of street frontage on the high street out of public circulation.

by neil

I can’t believe that my friend Paul Hendrich is dead, but he is. He was apparently cycling from his home in Battersea to Goldsmiths in New Cross when he was hit by a lorry on Wednesday. He was just 36 years old, and leaves behind his wife Sasha and their one-year old daughter, Agatha.

I first met Paul a couple of years ago when he got in touch to interview me for a project he was doing about the former Deptford Town Hall, taken over by Goldsmiths College in 1998. Like me he had drawn the connections between its maritime statues and Deptford’s links with slavery and colonialism. Unlike me he decided to do something about it, not only making it the focus of his Masters dissertation – the basis of an article to be published in the April issue of Anthropology Matters – but launching a campaign for Goldsmiths to publicly acknowledge this history in the context of debates about marking the abolition of slavery and the appropriateness of apologies and reparations. He was instrumental in organising an event at the Town Hall in June 2007 on ‘Repairing the Trauma of History: What does an apology of substance look like?’ which featured a group of people on the Sankofa Reconciliation Walk wearing yokes and chains attempting to make reparation for the acts of the seamen carved in stone on the front of the building.

Paul also organised a Town Hall Pirate society at Goldsmiths to have fun playing around with piracy while raising serious questions about an alternative maritime narrative from below. The photo of Paul here doing his Captain Hook pose was taken on a visit by the Pirates to the Island, where I met them to talk about the history and wonders of this New X traffic island.

In September 2007 he was involved in organising the Migrating University/No Borders events at Goldsmiths. We then worked closely together on the Lewisham ’77 events, including a walk and a conference to mark the 30th anniversary of the anti-fascist demonstrations in New Cross and Lewisham. Paul’s active opposition to racism carried over into his job, where he worked with young refugees. At the time of his death, he was preparing to sail to Arizona, USA to research the various forms of activism that have taken shape around undocumented cross-border migration of Mexicans into the US.

Sophie Day from Goldsmiths Anthropology department is right to say that ‘Paul’s enthusiasm, generosity, kindness and inclusiveness drew everyone he met into the broader issues that he was thinking about and working on’. He made many things happen, and everyone who knew him will also be mourning all the other numerous things he never got to make happen – he was always bubbling over with ideas. We never did find time to have those conversations about Brighton raves back in the day, the Yeovil music scene or contemporary americana (I believe Paul was learning to play the banjo) – we were always too busy planning and scheming.

Deptford.TV takes part in the Transmission.cc workshops (during the Video Vortex conference in Amsterdam in January 2008). VX:mission will look at how distribution of Social Justice Video is happening using Free and Open Source technology. It is a chance to find out about existing distribution projects, get feedback for your own projects or ideas, find collaborators and scheme about how best to distribute your video. This is event is associated with the transmission network. For more info check http://transmission.cc

The kinds of things we’ll discuss and work on are…

• Open source Video Content Management and transcoding systems
• Translations and Subtitling tools
• Help files and Documentation to help people get involved
• Video Distribution Strategy

This gathering is planned in a association with FlossManuals .net and clearerchannel.org. It has a focus on how we can better document projects and create user-oriented help.

VX:mission:

A night of films and ideas from the world of radical social justice video. VX:mission is a working gathering of video activist and open software technology hackers. We are working together to increase the noise of social justice video on the internet and the digital pirate airwaves. Join us on this night as we bring you videos, news from the digital underground and a plan to save us from the corporate digital vacuum cleaners like YouTube.

• Introductory short Indymedia films
  and summary of Imc-Video situation.
• Demo of Plumi http://www.engagemedia.org – 10 mins
  and films from EngageMedia
• Demo of http://ifiwatch.tv and films introduced by Ifiwatch.tv’s coordinator, Zoe Young
• Demo of and Video docs on Floss Manuals and Films from Clearerchannel.org
• Demo of VisionTV custom Miro player- 10 mins
  and VisononTV films
• Show in a Box, the WordPress video blog and films
• UK Indymedia films and video activist collective Reel2Real

Drupal as a Video Distribution platform: Saturday Hacklab session

Co-ordinators Mick Fuzz, Zoe Young, Mark b
Looking at Film Forge and ifiwatch.tv as examples. Pros and Cons of Drupal

Aggregation : http://ifiwatch.tv

IFIWatch.TV exists to aggregate independent media on the International Financial Institutions – that is, on the World Bank, IMF and Regional Development Banks. This video portal has lately been redesigned to suck relevant feeds from online video publishing websites, display appropriate content and enable users to create their own feeds from the results of searches for video that interests them. To reach its full potential as a new model ‘node’ in emerging independent media networks, the system will require more and more feeds to feature standardised video metadata, so that content management systems can automatically sort and present video information in ways that make it easier for humans to find the media they want. The Transmission Metadata Standard is now ready to implement, and we will be promoting this to all who wish to facilitate more effective exchange of online video.

Video Upload and distribution : http://wiki.koumbit.net/FilmForge/

FilmForge is a distribution (or profile) of the Free/Libre Open Source Softare content management system Drupal, tailored to the needs of videomaking communities. FilmForge makes it simple to install and run your own video sharing site.

Video Documentation / Flossmanuals : Saturday Hacklab session

co-ordinator Adam Hyde

Presentation Floss manuals system and new Video related docs on Flossmanuals and Suitcasemanuals.net

In this session we’ll be looking at Floss manuals system, new video distribution documentation and other relevant work. FLOSS Manuals provides quality free manuals about how to use free software.

There are new manuals on Video Encoding, Video Distribution and DVD and subtitle creation. We hope that this can be useful for the Video activist and independent video production community.

Show in a Box : Saturday Hacklab session

Co-ordinators: Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson (from http://ryanishungry.com)

Presentation: Show-In-A-Box, Word Press video distribution system

Many video creators are shy of the web since they want to make sure their work looks good online.
Being artists ourselves, we know that presentation is very important.
Being media activists, we also know that using open source tools and sane copyrights are also important.

WordPress is a fantastic blogging tool and we’ve been using it to run videoblogs for a few years now. Over time we’ve begun to develop and use some tools that make WordPress better suited for video. Show-In-A-Box was created to bring these all together and create the ultimate videoblogging platform.

http://showinabox.tv/wordpress/about/

We are making custom WP plugins to better manipulate video. We are also making beautiful, original themes that better showcase video. We have video tutorials and a strong community to help guide newbies to creating their own videoblog to document the world around us.

We’ll show lots of awesome examples of what online video can look like using free and open tools.

Customising Miro Player: Sunday am

Co-ordinator: Richard Visionontv

Presentation: Transmission branded Miro player (Richard), and Visionontv customised Miro player (tbc)

Collectives are changing the Miro player so that they can offer a download of the player with their own channels, search features and other features added.

We’ll look at how this is done and what it means to video networks.

Subtitling Video and the Internet : Sunday pm

Co-ordinator Harcesz

Presentations Proposal for a new subtitle website, Subtitle workflow for creating DVDs

This session will look at some of the issues and opportunities facing film makers who can use the Internet to co-ordinate, create and distribute subtitle for their films.

• Specifically this session will look at plans for an open source DotSub type library website for for social justice films.

• Looking at the functionality of new tools like G8tv.org and subtitle horse. http://subtitle-horse.org/

• Outlining a workflow for creating a multilingual DVD via online collaboration.

Video.indymedia.org : Sunday pm

Co-ordinator Clara

Presentation What is the current situation with imc-video site.

A discussion bring people up to date with developments concerning a global indymedia video site. The aims would be to search across video feeds created by regional IMCs and provide a space to upload video .

There is a wiki page on this subject on the global indymedia wiki

giss.tv

Co-ordinator tati

Presentation giss tv
giss.tv is an independent voluntary platform for sharing streaming resources between different groups. It was born after the piksel

festival and has been evolving since then aroudn our empathic networks.
Is a ring of icecast2-kh servers that allows automatic forwarding when the main servers are full of clients.

also provides a web interfaceto open a mountpoint and create a landing webpage for your channel, with chat, information for next scheduled streams, etc.

it started between several admins from servers that had an icecast and wants to be a way of sharing resources, as the streams can reach peaks but the streaming servers usually have more power than they need (until they need 20 times their power!).

We are working closely with the icecast developers in the kh branch, that allows automatic relay forwarding.Icecast version: Icecast 2.3-kh18c from: http://www.icecast.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
We are being used by many small radios, and some more commercial ones, but the idea is to serve free content streams.
We are still in
development and have some big questions to answer, like:
* How can we provide admin tools or sharing options to the adins of theservers?
* How can we really protect the anonimity of the streamers? (icecast
serves the IPs – specially asked by indymedia)
* How can we link the users with the streams they might like? (working
currently in rss feeds, and yellow pages stuff.
* How can we clean the server of commercial music, when our own groups use it as part of their material? (how can you convince apunk radio that the clash is not punk enough for us? is it needed?)

Please do follow the discussion on irc if you can’t make it in person. irc.freenode.net #transmission.cc

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/NewVideoIndymediaOrgProposal

Producing Collaborative DVDs for screenings via the Internet : Sunday am

Co-ordinator Mick Fuzz

How can we create DVDs in a Decentralised way. Is there a demand for a European wide DVD of social justice events to be used for screenings.

Past projects RuffCuts and the indymedia ENR have looked a decentralised way of creating CDroms and VHSs for screening at public venues. Broadband technology opens the door for a new level of collaboration. Broadcast quality Video files can be exchanged and on-line translation tools used to create and distribute multilingual DVDs.

We look at the question, are there existing networks of Video producers who can benefit from these technology and explore possible future projects and how can they work together.

Network Distribution Services and International Screening Database : Sunday pm

Co-ordinators Simon Worthington, Laura Oldenbourg and Merijn Oudenampsen

Presentation Mute Agents site

Existing distributors consistently fail the cultural sector and have not taken sufficient advantage of the Web for e-commerce and social networking. The mission of NDS is to provide an alternative. Using the Web’s ability to help people share information and collaborate, it enables the global promotion, sales and fulfillment of goods, improving cultural producers’ sustainability and visibility at national and international level.

The system works by creating a global web of locally-inputted information, ranging from producers and agents to outlets and goods.

Two core barriers to the creation of a global market place for independent cultural products are high freight costs and a parity of goods’ prices. We are tackling these through systems we (and others) call ‘Community Couriering’ (CC) and Peer-to-Peer E-commerce (P2P EC). With CC, people carry goods for less than commercial couriers’ rates (when they are taking certain routes for other purposes already); with P2P EC, producers and buyers negotiate prices to index them to the purchasing power in the relevant region rather than via a straight currency conversion (this is known as Purchasing Power Parity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity ).

See: dev site http://agents.metamute.org and our work area http://3d.openmute.org

The 0xdb, developed as part of the “Oil of the 21st Century” project, is a proposal for a new type of cultural database, build on top of file-sharing networks — and a practical intervention in the ongoing conflict between the protection of intellectual property and the exercise of fair use rights.

The 0xdb is a rather unique kind of movie database. It uses a variety of publicly accessible resources, like search engines and file-sharing networks, to automatically collect information about, and actual images and sounds from, a rapidly growing number of movies. What the 0xdb provides is, essentially, full text search within movies, and instant previews of search results.

The core idea behind the 0xdb is that file-sharing networks can not only be used to download digital works, but also to just retrieve information about them. Even though most movies in the 0xdb are copyrighted, and many of them are practically inaccessible for legal reasons, the monitoring of peer-to-peer traffic allows the 0xdb to identify and index these materials.

The 0xdb is not a place to download movies, which in many parts of the world would constitute copyright infringement. The 0xdb simply exercises a few elementary fair use rights: it collects metadata, provides citations, analyzes and contextualizes different types of media, and makes both the information it gathers and the tools it employs available for personal, non-commercial use.

Quite obviously, the 0xdb is also intended to serve as a point of reference for private or public institutions that are planning to make accessible large collections of films. Rather than a universal solution for the problem of cinema, or a definitive answer to the question of the archive, the 0xdb tries to provide a few practical starting points for the digital future of moving images.

The 0xdb has been developed as part of the project “The Oil of the 21st Century” (www.oil21.org).

Another recent development is Pad.ma, an annotated film archive based in Bombay (www.pad.ma).

DISPS exists to provide a novel revenue source for content producers. The architecture we describe derives from a pragmatic assessment of the increasing inefficacy of copy restriction given massive increases in storage space, bandwidth and interconnectivity. If we accept that restricting copies is becoming a Sisyphean task, it follows that we must look beyond copies and copyright in conceptualising systems of remuneration for cultural work.

Looking forward, we see a great opportunity for small-to-medium sized media enterprises (SMEs) to maximise usage of efficient, scalable, free p2p networks by encouraging free copying and distribution of their materials, whilst actively seeking voluntary supportive payments from consumers.

Embracing the Pirate: The New Landscape of Online Media Sharing by Resources, review by Pamela Cohn:

IDFA is the largest documentary festival and market in the world. And this being my first foray to the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, things have been a bit overwhelming. But certain themes are cropping up that reflect the sign of the times, not only in documentary, but in making and disseminating art for the marketplace, in general. So here’s a short missive from what I’ve been hearing the last few days.

Films Transit CEO Jan Rofekamp says that,The circuit of documentary festivals has created the partly-true illusion that the market is immense, which in turn has fed immense production volume. But the question is whether the traditional distribution channels can absorb it.The one thing I keep hearing from folks who have been coming to IDFA for years, is that the stars of the festival seem not to be the filmmakers anymore, but the sales agents and other industry entities that come to buy films and other media products here.

In response to that, there is very vocal pushback from the filmmaking community as DIY production and the possibilities of DIY marketing and distribution on the Internet take precedence over more traditional scenarios. Rofekamp also says, In the near future [Jamie King would argue that the future is now, in this regard], I think the revenue stream for entrepreneurial producers will be found online. . . . Internet distribution will mean complete freedom to the filmmakers: they can obviously offer a five-minute masterpiece or an extended five-hour version, depending on their intentions. The consensus seems to be that for all the mass proliferation of online studios that are offering revenue sharing to showcase, market and distribute film and music, filmmakers no longer need to feel that that’s the wisest choice in terms of making money for themselves.

Yesterday was the last day of the IDFA Forum and at the Now Media Hour that closed out the three intense days of pitches, Jamie King from the UK talked quite eloquently, even poetically, about the latest developments in DIY distribution. King is a writer and publishes articles on new media in various online and off-line magazines, and is also one of the makers of Steal This Film I and II. These films talk about media file sharing, and the Old Guard’s fear of new distribution forms. During his presentation, King showed a clip from Part II and explained that both brick-and-mortar and online distributors should be fearful. He’s helping to create freeware for Distributive Supportive Payment (DISP) systems basically using the same model that, say, Radiohead is using for its latest album release of voluntary supportive payments that go directly to the artists.

King preached to the audience, Embrace piracy it is the most efficient distribution system out there. Stop trying to keep people from seeing or using your media. King also reiterated that pay models are doomed because the distribution problem is solved; there is no longer a scarcity of media (hardly), and that lack of product scarcity makes the possibility of making money vanish’s time to give it away and reap the rewards. A completely anti-intuitive concept, yes, but apparently true as we watch the landscape shift irrevocably beneath our feet.