Video as a relational medium
VIDEO AS CULTURAL MIRROR
VIDEO is “LIVE”
Video is one of the main ways we attempt to
understand “what is happening.” as well as
“what happened.”
Traditional Anchor “Live” at
the scene.
Unfolding events - Haiti Earth Quake
Cell phone videos from Iran Protests
Surveillance clips - deli crime scenes, cop
car cameras, ATM & Security video of Mommhad Atta
You Tube/Vimeo clips
Celebrity Sex Tapes!
etc...
Unpronouncable Volcano
Mommhad Atta at Logan Airport
1991 Gulf War - CNN in Baghdad
HIERARCHY OF MEANINGS
Video “readers” exercise
intense COMPETENCE:
Can quickly distinguish between an Ad and a
news story, a personal video vs. a produced segment.
Linguistic competence was defined in 1965
by Noam Chomsky as the system of linguistic knowledge possessed
by native speakers of a language.[1] It is, according to
Chomsky, this system of knowledge that makes it possible for
speakers to produce and understand an infinite number of
sentences in their language, and to distinguish grammatical
sentences from ungrammatical sentences.
“Average” audiences are very
sophisticated viewers.
THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR VIDEO DESIGNERS TO
UNDERSTAND. Your audience will “get it.”
What year?
New Tek Video Toaster
VIDEO IS A PERSONAL MEDIUM
Starting with VCR’s and
Videocassettes in the 80’s and continuing today via you
tube and streaming services like Netflix. Video has allowed a
massive expansion of the “Entertainment Industry.”
Cameras are also now tiny and personal.
Video is something you interact with in
your home, or now on a little “personal digital
assistant.”
Sony Betamax “home” VCR - 1976
RCA “VHS” Videocassette
recorder- 1977
Sony Port-A-Pak - 1967
first consumer video camera
(more on this below)
Apple’s iPhone
Flip camera
VIDEO AS “DATA” OR
“INFORMATION”
Space Shuttle Launch footage (foam impacts)
Military Nose Cone Videos
CIA Torture Tapes
Video has become a stand in for all
information technology.:
From NYT:
“When we started releasing data
publicly, we measured it in petabytes of traffic,” said
Doug Webster, a Cisco Systems market executive who is
responsible for an annual report by the firm that charts
changes in the Internet. “Then a couple of years ago we
had to start measuring them in zettabytes, and now we're
measuring them in what we call yottabytes.” One petabyte
is equivalent to one million gigabytes. A zettabyte is a
million petabytes. And a yottabyte is a thousand zettabytes.
The company estimates that video will account for 90 percent of
all Internet traffic by 2013.
Space Shuttle “foamcam”
Iraq - “Smart” Bomb
How is it possible that one medium can
“Be” so many things?
Well lets look at the history of its
development.