http://media.rmit.edu.au/sethkeen/

You will find all the new and ongoing posts happening there.

This video clip produced by Evelien Lohbeck an Animation and Interactive Design graduate from the Netherlands reflects the growing number of videos that are being designed to communcicate complex ideas in a short amount of time. Lohbeck explains on here website that one of her main aims is to produce as she states “catching messages through short (experimental) films”.

Kendal Coombs
Josh Mitchell
Laura James
Tse Zhou
Lynley Palmer
Ross Richardson
Shu Shu Zheng

Sean’s labs:

Hypertext:
Konstanze Sophie Weiser
Emily Katherine Shields
Andrew Christopher Erlanger
Rose Catherine Paton

Blogging:
Kathryn Claire Labrum
Tatum Emma Moore
Jessica Sara Walker
Susan Nina Anderson
Stephanie Karen Fung
Catherine Anne Clark

Spatial Montage & The Cinematic aesthetics of density:
Stevie Thomas Day
Rachel Laura Coffey
Annabelle Lucy Clark
Elliot Jared Heatwole

First, it’s important to understand what an embedded YouTube video is — it’s a link. Just a link. Nothing but a link.

That leaves contributory infringement. If you link to a video that you know is infringing, or that any reasonable person would have known is infringing, and if your link materially contributes to the infringement, then you could be liable for contributory infringement — a kind of “aiding and abetting” liability.

The Steal This Film, Part two website.
Version on Bit Torrent

2006 portfolio examples.

2007 Projects Networked Media
Karin Christensen
Lisa Fagan
Hannah Valamadre
Jamali Sawawi
Andrew Smith
Giuseppe Panteleo
Alex Grantham
Nathalie Brough

1. Landow extract
Dewani Sharifah Shebubakar skip, skip, skip
Delisa Ardhianihypertext
Mix and Match Hypertext Essay
Sally WANGSAWIJAYA hypertext
Joanna Frith Chapmandecentrality
2.Walker extract
Nyssa Tyers six degrees of separation
The Interstella Flawa fictional blogger named Berty Bench.
James Thompson this is a hypertext essay (how straightforwardly self-reflexive).
Karan Grewal Interactive Progression
Valerie LeeBlogging Mystery
Sarah Bell blogging

3. Manovich extract
chin koon lin framesets
Maria-Nicole Miriklis cinematic density

External examples of net-art projects in a previous post

Other external hypertext essay examples.

Includes the link to the Landow article Is this hypertext any good?

1. First many of the websites submitted do not have the most important HTML file and page in a website. The index.html file. All websites begin with this file as the opening page to the website. If you are sending in the URL that represents the whole of website it will be this URL, the index.html page.

When an HTTP client (generally a web browser) requests a URL that points to a directory structure instead of an actual web page within the directory, the web server will generally serve a general page, which is often referred to as a main or “index” page.

The submitted URL for the portfolio essay should look like this:
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~e62420/portfolio/index.html
or like this to display the same page:
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~e62420/portfolio/

The submitted URL for the final project essay should look like this:
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~e62420/project/index.html
or like this to display the same page:
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~e62420/project/

Basic HTML have not been used on some of web pages. A web page may still appear to work but standards have been created across the Internet so there is uniformity and reliability. These standard are also about getting websites to work across browsers which are builton these standards. Missing pivotal tags will have a significant affect on the assessment.

Style notes from Adrian Miles’ HTML resource:

Because Web pages are to be read off a computer screen, over a network, there are several general design principles that should be kept in mind, and used.

white or empty space
Make use of a lot of empty space on your page, particularly where text is concerned. Because a Web page does not have the physical edges of paper there is no penalty of using empty space (you can’t run off the page) and using a lot of space around your work simply makes it easier to read.

This includes breaking your writing into smaller textual units than is ordinarily the case, which simply means you should make your paragraphs smaller. It also means that whenever you want to write a series of things, then instead of punctuating them with commas, simply make it an unordered list.

break larger pages into smaller units
If you have a 2000 word essay that you’d like to put on the web, then don’t just place it as a single large web page for downloading. Rewrite the page so that it consists of, for example, 4 500 word essays, each interlinked and each navigable by a text or graphics navigation bar at the top or bottom (or both) of the pages. (There are some good examples of this in the student project work that has been done.)

keep file sizes small
The total file size for a Web page should not exceed 30kilobytes (30,000 bytes). This rather ad hoc measurement is based on the premise that a modem can reasonably download approximately 1K per scond, which means that your pages are designed to take no longer than 30 seconds to download. This is important, particularly as many people pay up to $10 per hour for their Internet access. This size limit is the total of your web page (the html file) plus any graphics it may contain. You can get a rough idea of the file size by selecting each file (a graphic or the HTML page) in the folder window (so that it is highlighted) and choosing Get Info from under the File menu. This will tell you how much space the file actually takes up. Careful use of graphics can let you extend this limit, as once an image has been downloaded it is cached on the local machine (the computer that the reader is actually using), so it does not need to be downloaded again. This means it is very fast and efficient to reuse graphics across pages, and you can add one or two small new ones on additional pages if you like.

Linking Very few web sites utilised links in varying ways to cross-reference the material. This is links within the body of the text that makes relationships across the material.

Non-linear and linear paths Some people provided both non-linear and linear access paths for users. It is good to think about providing varying ways to access content. At the same time others only provided a next page type option with no ability to access web pages in a non-linear way.

Click here etc The ‘click here’ and other variations were used widely as a link description. These should be avoided! Think instead about Miles’ idea of trying to use verbs and words that are ‘meaningful’ for the reader. Look at the resource Composing Good HTML in the section ‘Meaningless link text’.

Design of the body text: Link colour - Some people played with link colour where it becomes confusing for users and the text hard to read. Users become very used to these defaults in terms of recognising which are links and when they have been selected.

Generally there needed to be more consideration of text colour, bakgrounds, text size and style. Along with line length. Many missed suing tables to drop the number of words per line to 8-10 for readability, with text running right across the browser.

Menus need to be designed to in way so that they present clearly what information and content is in the website. What is the scale of the website? How many pages are there? Many of the menus presented the hardcopy essays in a linear way with introductions and conclusions. The conversion did not go far enough in terms of thinking about the content being accessed with no beginning, middle or end. A rule of thumb, the user should be able to easily locate what they would like to find.

Scrolling pages Many fragmented there page into a scrolling page rather than into separate discrete pages. These style of pages can be difficult to navigate and often the amount of content daunting for a user. Think about the way you access content on the Internet generally as first within the browser as it appears on your screen.

Video and Audio files should NOT be embedded into websites for the project essay. The focus should be on images and text only this semester.

Use the following ‘hats’ critique in any order and create a link from the post to portfolio work you are critiquing.

These will be reviewed randomly in the lab.

Weblogs are densely interlinked. This anchors blogs in the public arena, as part of a communal discourse. Posts to a blog can be very short and unpretentious. The threshold for publishing a single post is very low. This allows single, small, insignificant ideas to be expressed and formulated. Sometimes these thoughts are left as they are. A paragraph is enough and there is no more needed. Other times, the ideas grow. Someone links their site to the first post, comments on it, and a conversation grows forth. The initial post, or follow-ups, are linked to a web site or a newspaper article or something else. Links are like roots, tendrils, reaching out between fragments, creating a context for bits and pieces that at first glance may seem to be unconnected fragments.

Mortensen, Torill, and Jill Walker. “Blogging Thoughts: Personal Publication as an Online Research Tool.” Researching Ict’s in Context. Ed. Andrew Morrison. Oslo: University of Oslo, 2002. 249-79. p.259.

Following threads

My aim was to conduct a research approach that emulated to a certain degree the ways links as in Walker’s quote can make a short idea grow and expand. I saw this inquiry as being an example of the process that might occur when you start researching one of these extracts.

Approaching the exploration of links in an experimental manner, I decided to examine in more detail the Michael Wesch viral video Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us - (The download version/duration 4.30)

Linking content and people

Wesch made this video when he was working on a conference paper on “digital anthropology”. He decided that the use of the medium being discussed seemed like a much more tangible way to tackle and present this research. Of course in 4 minutes 30 seconds it is hardly a conference paper that could be considered to be in-depth, but what it does do is document the process of using the Internet and make that process part of the concepts that are being presented theoretically. Content and form come together in this clip, which plays a part in making it so successful from a viral perspective. Looking from an anthropological perspective Wesch is literally using video to document using the Internet, an engagement with writing and linking.

Also, the short duration and working with this clip like a blog post, as Walker writes “Posts to a blog can be very short and unpretentious” forces Wesch to simplify large complex ideas into a format that makes them accessible and entertaining to digest. The clip ends up being informal in style but works hard on making some key points around Web 2.0 clear. A skill that some bloggers begin to develop over time as the work on getting complex ideas into short blog posts.

Within this video, I had remembered his focus on links in this work as playing a significant role in the broader development of web 2.0 and subsequently blogging. Quotes from his video:

“hypertext can link”, 32.0

From the Kevin Kelly, We Are the Web Wired Magazine, August 2005.
“When we tag and post pictures…we are teaching the Machine…Each time we forge a link…we teach it an idea…Think of 100 billion times per day humans click on a Web page..” 3.24

“Digital text is no longer just linking information…Hypertext is no longer just linking information…The Web is no longer just linking information…Web is linking information…Web is linking people…Web 2.0 is linking people…people sharing, trading, and collaborating…”, 3.44

In this video clip 4 mins. 30 secs. long, Wesch condenses down the broad concept of web 2.0 into some basic underlying ideas, which are affected by his own field of research, anthropology. The concept of linking is taken from being a functionality that joins fragments of content together (text, images, graphics, animation, audio and video) on the web to also include the way that links are used socially to bring people together. Understanding both of these aspects provides a useful framework for thinking about blogging.

Blogging like most social software platforms provides through posts and permalinks, which are specific and discrete URLs assigned to each blog post the opportunity to link fragments of information. But, also the ability to comment on posts and trackback those links, along with web syndication provides ways for people to develop networks and communities around specific topics. The same also occurs around videoblogging. I have observed in the development of video blog software that these communities see a vital aspect of that development relying on the ability to use these linking functionalities to maintain and develop communities forming around video blogging.

HTML & XML

A applied example of using HTML and links in the production of the video clip is Wesch’s use of a number of web pages. In the badly titled video ‘Professor Walsh explaining “The machine is us‘ shot candidly from the side at one his lectures he explains some of the background behind the production process.

“that is 6 HTML pages just back to back and I just click through them ” 4.19

Returning to Wesch’s viral video in relation to content I was interested in his point about the difference between The XML and HTML mark up languages.

“Form and content can be separated”, 1.17

[XML] does not define the form. It defines the content”, 1.40

“XML facilitates automated data exchange”, 2.40

“XML + U & Me create a database- backed web”, 3.06

In this description of XML:

So XML is Just Like HTML?

No. In HTML, both the tag semantics and the tag set are fixed. An <h1> is always a first level heading…

Why XML?

In order to appreciate XML, it is important to understand why it was created. XML was created so that richly structured documents could be used over the web. The only viable alternatives, HTML and SGML, are not practical for this purpose.

HTML, as we’ve already discussed, comes bound with a set of semantics and does not provide arbitrary structure.

Wesch argues that XML by providing a way to “exchange data” and more specifically content opened up the potential for web users to circumvent code and as in his example of setting up a blog literally in 19 seconds created the potential for people to focus on the production of content. Blogs are one of the early examples of a form of online media that utilised the potential of direct publishing for anyone who had a computer and access to the Internet.
Linking as you have experienced is built into the blog posting functionality using WYSIWG, What You See Is What You Get type buttons. Bloggers could get by without learning any HTML code.

Understanding XML and the ability to shift fragments of content freely is important when considering ‘linking’ as being both about linking content and people. The spread of content like viral video and the ability to share and embed is an example. Wesch uses this point shrewdly to segue into the Kevin Kelly, ‘We are the Web’ article, as explained in his lecture video.

Networking Video

Sticking with Wesch as way to explore links I moved onto his more recent lecture ‘‘An anthropological introduction to YouTube’ at the Library of Congress, June 2008. Moving on from the January 2007 upload of Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us this video looks back at what occurred around this video going viral. Including again using the anthropological approach of providing historical reflection and context. What Wesch does is show how powerful linking can be from a social perspective, the connection of people globally. The potential for information to be classified, shared and distributed through user-generated processes. In his description and tracking of his Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us clip he covers “user-generated flitering…user-generated organisation…user genereated distribution.” All examples of how something quite small and insignificant can grow exponentially.

Another resource worth looking at to explore Walker’s idea of joining fragments together as in the quote:

Links are like roots, tendrils, reaching out between fragments, creating a context for bits and pieces that at first glance may seem to be unconnected fragments.

is the book ‘Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A unified theory of the web’ by David Weinberger, which has some content available as free downloads.

In terms of this experimental study the first 12 minutes of the Wesch video ‘An anthropological introduction to YouTube’offers some relevance. The rest of it goes into Wesch’s ‘participant observation’ method of anthropological study of YouTube where he and his students study YouTube by signing up and becoming YouTube contributors and part of that community.

Interesting to see in this video the move away from using links to working with video and a lot of YouTube video. Wesch is looking for now in a more slick professional manner again the coming together of content and form. An approach in hindsight that replicates his anthropological ‘participant observation’ method.

Links as a commodity

Moving in another direction there are other perspectives to apply on the evaluation of links. Trawling through Jill Walker’s publications there is an article titled “Links and Power: The Political Economy of Linking on the Web’. This paper draws attention the economic value of links using Google as an example. A simplistic view on this is the way Google uses links to generate advertising revenue. Google receives income when sponsored links are clicked by users. A recent conference on “DIY TV”- online video, every development seemed to be about incorporating links into content that generated advertising revenue in a similar way to Google. Walker also mentions in this article how ranking on the web can be controlled by organisations like Google. Money can be paid to increase your ranking on the Internet, a practice that Walker calls “link slutting”. This practice demonstrates the monetary value of links and politically methods of control that can be used around links.

Wesch describes in the video on his presentation how his wife and he kept hitting the refresh button to help his Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us get to number one. Links in this instance create rankings where content is pushed to the top. Traffic and the amount of links that content and websites receive become again another form of commodity for marketing and advertising. With blogging Technorati is an example of how traffic to a blog is ranked around varying subjects. Every blog post as a discrete URL is logged and becomes part of a taxonomy of subjects. Technorati aims to help bloggers develop professionally and commercially.

The formal qualities of links

Looking for another angle on links I was interested to see the perspective that George P. Landow has on links. In the chapters I read in his book Hypertext 3.0 he follows more of a formalist line, with observations on the way that links work. For example, it very easy to miss that the Internet only allows links to be uni-directional. This is where a link on the Internet can only take the user to one node compared to a multi-directional hypertext system like Tinderbox. This software allows for multi-directional linking and could be seen as being a much more evolved hypertext system that the Internet. Landow examines these type of formal qualities of linking in detail and exposes the way links are responsible for creating some of the inherent materialities of the Internet and subsequently how these may affect the way content is produced in this environment.

The hypertext essay

As a quick example of research for the project exercise these observations on links begin to provide a number of distinctive themes on links as a concept. The next phase would be think about how these varying themes might be represented in a hypertext essay. Could these varying notes be fragmented into a number of web pages? How could these varying ideas be represented visually? How would this research be connected to the final essay? What specific idea on linking in this research could be developed further? How could these varying threads be pulled back towards blogging more specifically?

Bibliography (Examples of Academic references) :

http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~e56720/blog/?p=345

Video in blogs:create account @blip.tv
2. then either a) use an existing video of yours
OR b) just so we can demonstrate the export process, find a video file with creative commons license you can use ( from blip.tv or archive.org) and download this. ( The downloaded video should be a quicktime .mov or .mp4 video, so it can be edited / exported in the lab).
3. Edit video as need be. ( Just using cut and paste commands in Quicktime Pro for now )
4. Choose a thumbnail image to represent the video.
( Use quicktime to do this. Play your video and stop it at a frame you think best represents the video. Then use file - export - export to picture. Select jpeg under settings. Note a quicktime bug exports this with a .pct extension, and change that to .jpg )
5. Export video ( for settings see blip.tv/learning/export ) (The settings they suggest are good, except that we use 24 frames per second in Australia ( PAL) as opposed to the 30 frames U.S. / ntsc standard ). When ultimate destination is a blog, ensure video dimensions are 320×240 pixels, as anything larger, although fine @ blip, will be too wide for a blog ).
6. Upload video @ blip.tv/file/post
7. Get the ‘embed code’ from blip, ( found underneath the viewable clip, by pressing the embed icon, then selecting embed) and paste this in your blog.
(See also Seth’s notes on putting video in your blog.)

My other supporting post.
Making poster movies on the miki.