During the Jihlava filmfestival in October 2007 Adnan Hadzi presented the converge project and gave a workshop for documentary filmmakers on how to publish their videos with free and open source software. The text “Now deal with it” is published in the reader of the Institute for Documentary Film.
Have you broken up with the celluloid and instead got hooked to the web? The workshop is of particular interest for any film-makers, musicians and web people Enthusiasts keen to learn how to get their work online.
The workshop introduced tools,technologies and available services for encoding, uploading and sharing films, podcasts and video blogs online using free and open source software such as Broadcast Machine (RSS feed,Democracy Player, iTunes Vodcast). Participants where shown how to use x.264 technology (portable video devices iPod,sony PSP, Archor etc.),demonstrating how one can encode and prepare movies with free and open source tools that can be taken home.
Now deal with it!
This text is published under the creative commons sa-by license, for the full license see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/
Collaborative projects are co-shaped by all the people taking part in them in terms of not only expertise and fields of interest, but also cultural back-grounds, viewpoints, personalities and temperaments. My research in new forms of documentary film-making at the Media and Communication Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London focuses on the aspect of collaborative production methods for (documentary) film, one outcome is the Deptford.TV project.
The Deptford.TV project generates an online public space where contributors can discuss the regeneration process and the transformations this brings to specific, physical public spaces. This online public space exists as a weblog on the website http://deptford.tv. Video-blogging has been discussed as a form of collective documentary-making.
“In relation to the use of online (found) footage the term ‘collective documentary’ becomes highly relevant, on the one hand emphasizing the intention of telling something significant about real life events, on the other hand telling that the work is made as a result of several people working together, not as an organized team defined by a given task, but rather as a small community with shared interests.” (Hoem, 2004:6)
Hoem goes on to argue that blogs provide “an individual base for entering a community” (2004:7): on the one hand maintaining a blog is an individual activity, whereas on the other hand the process of blogging often becomes part of a collaborative effort where diverse people contribute different types of content in multiple ways and on different levels. According to Hoem blogs are blurring “the boundaries between production, distribution and consumption” (2004:7), whereas they necessarily redefine notions of media literacy so
as to “reflect(s) an awareness of both the consuming and the producing aspects of media technology.” (2004:7)
This text looks at how the participants of the Deptford.TV project perceived the notion of authorship and to what extent this is important to them as contributors of either content
or context. Do they consider personal attribution to be important within a collaborative project? How do they feel when their work is reused, remixed or re-edited — and thus re-authored? And how do they feel about the fact that their work can be reused for commercial purposes, or for ideological purposes they do not necessarily endorse?
Every single contributor feels that personal attribution is important as it protects their identity as creators of either content or context, and allows them to track down their input as well as any ‘transformations’ their contribution might undergo through being reused, re-edited or remixed. Elvira, one of the collaborators, points out that Deptford.TV can fluctuate as a group, which is why it cannot be used as an umbrella. At the same time, she feels that once her material goes on the public domain it belongs to whoever wants to watch and/or use it. She thinks that this process of sharing is there to enhance creativity as it reduces the limitations imposed by mainstream litigation.
Hoem sees video-blogging as collective documentary-making. In his paper “Videoblogs as Collective Documentary” he states that “in relation to the use of online (found) footage the term ‘collective documentary’ becomes highly relevant, at one hand emphasizing the intention of telling something significant about real life events, on the other hand telling that the work is made as a result of several people working together, not as a organized team defined by a given task, but rather as a small community with shared interests.” (2004: 6)
“The most successful online environments seem to be those which are designed in order to make it possible to post information at different levels, socializing new users into the systems publishing-culture. Blogs provide some of these socializing effects providing an individual base for enteringa community, blurring the boundaries between production, distribution and consumption. […] It is important that our notion of media literacy reflects an awareness of both the consuming and the producing aspects of media technology. This is an area where textual blogging already seems to prove its potential. Maintaining a weblog is primarily an individual activity, but since production is closely connected to media consumption blogging often becomes part of a collaborative effort where a number of people might contribute in a multitude of ways. […] When making video online the most important aspect of collective documentaries is that the raw material is provided by a number of persons and the collective editing-process where the concept of re-editing is essential. Before we look into the different stages of the videoblogging process we have to consider the basis for an online community fostering the kind of collaboration needed in order to promote media literacy through the making of collective documentaries. We may consider collaboration as communication where there are no clear distinction between senders and receivers of information. Nevertheless, all communication has to begin with individual producers who provide some kind of context, transforming data into information by creating relationships between data (text, images, video and sound). Through our experience of different sources of information we construct knowledge in interaction with others by sharing and discussing the different patterns in which information may be organized. In the end knowledge is the basis for wisdom, the most intimate level of understanding. Wisdom can be reckoned as a kind of “meta-knowledge” of relationships achieved through personal experience.” (Hoem 2004: 7)
Deptford.TV requires that each individual contributor undertake part of the responsibility. This means that ‘amateurs’ are taking control of domains that were strictly reserved for the professional ‘classes’ of media-producers. “Whether in music file-sharing, radio broadcasting or the writing of fanzines, the amateur media producer is intimately involved in dominant cultural practices, at the same time as they transform those practices through their own ‘autonomous’ media.” (Atton 2005: 15)
“Documentary makers must refuse to sacrifice the subjectivity of the viewer. […] Make sure the viewers know that they are watching a version of the subject matter, not the thing in itself. […] it would make the documentary model a little less repugnant, since this disclaimer would avoid the assertion that one was showing the truth of the matter. This would allow the system to remain closed, but still produce the realization that what is being documented is not a concrete history […] It is this nomadic quality that distinguishes them from the rigidly bounded recombinant films of Hollywood; however, like them, they rest comfortably in neither the category of fiction nornonfiction. For the purposes of resistance, the recombinant video offers no resolution; rather, it acts as a database for the viewer to make his own inferences. This aspect of the recombinant film presupposes a desire on the part of the viewer to take control of the interpretive matrix, and construct his own meanings. Such work is interactive to the extent that the viewer cannot be a passive participant.” (Critical Arts Ensemble, 1996)
Following the Critical Arts Ensemble’s argumentation, one could say that the distinction between fiction and non-fiction film is misleading, since both use the same language, both manipulate the moving image. Non-fiction films follow the same narrative patterns like a fiction films. Documentary films most often end with a conclusion and a “show down” prepared by the filmmaker from a montage of sequences. Creating a database which would provide access to the rough material as the film’s ‘source code’, as well as allow the contributors to share this material through an open content license, could liberate the
medium of documentary film and facilitate innovative forms of interactive, many-to-many documentaries.
Society got familiar with mass media as a one-way channel of communication. Nevertheless radio, the first mass medium, originally was a two-way communication channel. In the early 1920s Berthold Brecht saw the potential of radio as a medium that could support a two-way political discussion program format. Brecht believed that the collective approach to production could be applied to both radio and film.
Berthold Brecht was enthusiastic about the potential of radio as a liberating medium when this was first invented in the early 20th century. For Brecht radio was a two-way communication device: a receiver as well as a transmitter. The first radio sets were indeed designed as both receivers and transmitters. In his letter to the German Director of Radio Broadcasting in 1927 Brecht wrote:
“In my view you should try to make radio broadcasting into a really democratic thing. To this end you would already achieve much, for example, if you were to cease production only on your own for this wonderful distribution apparatus you have at your disposal and instead allow it to make productive topical events simply by setting up and in special cases perhaps by managing it in a skillful, time-saving way. […] In other words I believe that you must move with the apparatuses closer to the real events and not simply limit yourself to reproducing or reporting. You must go to the parliamentary sessions of the Reichstag and especially to the major court trials. Since this would be a great step forward, there will certainly be a series of laws that try to prevent that. You must turn to the public in order to eliminate these laws.” (Silberman 2001: 35)
Brecht wrote the radio play Lindberg’s Flight for an interactive many-to-many radio event, which opened at the Festival for German Chamber Music in Baden-Baden on 27 July 1929. The play’s subject was the first flight over the Atlantic Ocean by pilot Charles Lindberg, in May 1927. Lindberg’s Flight pictured the flight as a struggle of technology against nature, and as an achievement of a collective rather than an individual. The audience was participating in the role of Lindberg. Brecht was showcasing “how the medium itself can transform social communication through its technological advantage: the ear is to become a voice.” (Silberman 2001: 41)
Brecht’s vision never materialized. Instead, radio became a one-to-many medium, distributing content controlled by centralised radio stations to the masses of audiences.
Today, digital networks provide new possibilities for liberated media practices through the use of Free Software. Since art and ideas never develop within an art-historical vacuum but always feed on the past, free culture ideals promise to make our cultural heritage accessible to everybody to re-read, re-use and re-mix as they like. According to Armin Medosch: “Without open access to the achievements of the past there would be no culture at all.” (2003: 15) His project Kingdom of Piracy, a book and a CD software package, was released under Open Content licenses and it was free to use, share and edit. One of the softwares found on the CD is the Dyne:Bolic, a Linux distribution used for the Deptford. TV project, as discussed later on in this chapter. An ever increasing amount of recent and current art projects require that artists work collaboratively with programmers in order to create such projects. They also often require the use of controversial technologies such as file-sharing or concepts of computer viruses. Such projects are of course, more often than not, criticised by the media industry as giving ground to piracy.
“This is not piracy, as industry associations want us to believe, but the creation of open spaces in a number of different ways; they facilitate freedom of expression, collective action in creation and political expression and the notion of a public interest in networked communications” (Medosch 2003: 18)
“The Internet is not simply a more efficient way of maintaining subcultural activity, it is potentially a space for its creation and recreation on a global scale: it remains an invitation to a new imaginary.” (Atton 2005:8 )
Over the last few years “Free Libre and Open Source Software” (FLOSS), a form of collaborative software development, has grown rapidly over the digital networks. “Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer”.
The users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Linux is one of the most famous FLOSS developments. Linux is a computer operating system which can be installed for free on any computer without having to pay for it, unlike the commercial mainstream operating systems like Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS. All its source code is available to the public and anyone can freely use, modify, and redistribute it.
“A useful starting point is in the political philosophy of anarchism and Proudhon’s well known formulation, “all property is theft”. But even if we accept this axiom, with what might we replace it? Murray Bookchin (1986: 50) has proposed that we consider “usufruct” as a counter to property rights. […] usufruct should be contrasted with property. Where the latter implies the permanent ownership of resources, usufruct is a temporary property relationship based on utility need which meets the demands of communality […] The continuing history of Linux is a significant working model of usufruct. […] It is anarchism in action” (Atton 2005: 101-102)
The Open Source and Free Software movements share the source code of their programs under a copyleft license. In the same way, collective film-making web interfaces will share the film ‘source code’, that is, the rough material plus the meta-data created by logging and editing this material. Such web-interfaces and technologies like File-sharing challenge the notion of traditional broadcasting: on the one hand the production and distribution processes merge together; on the other hand the audiences can participate actively by undertaking a role that has always, within the frame of traditional media production, been exclusively reserved to producers. These changes challenge expectations of the film as a finished, linear product, and of the audiences as passive consumers of culture and/or entertainment.
File-sharing is thus seen as controversial because of its key role in this blurring of old concepts; what was earlier seen as stable commodity forms and circuits of distribution are now turned upside down, what was once seen as a delineation of stable roles for the human actors involved is now severely called into question. (Andresson, 2006)
Why would mp3 files necessarily replace retail CDs, for example? Wouldn’t they rather replace radio? Why would avi files replace retail DVDs? Wouldn’t they rather replace a visit to the video rental shop, or two hours of Sky Movies, or — for that sake — the free DVD that came with Sunday’s newspaper? Why shouldn’t the public broadcasting services not be fileshareres, as the tax payer already payd
The end of this text is a remix out of the collectively written reader “Deptford.TV diaries”, the original text can be found on http://Deptford.TV with many thanks to Jonas Andersson, Maria X, Andrea Rota, James Steven and all the collaborators:
Nowadays, everyone knows that anyone could copy that file, yet the industry persists with
even more vitriolic rhetoric. The genie is doubtlessly out of the bottle, and we are faced with a public which is more aware than ever of the controversies at hand, whilst being
increasingly skilled in getting what they want — for free.
Communality, collaboration and public sharing here constitute a living, long-established, interesting challenge to the conventional financial system — and a sphere which can still
promise profit and growth. The Asian counterfeit economy (real piracy!) is a thriving, semi-hidden counterpart to the corporate economy — and the gains from this pirate economy are often more beneficial to the world’s poor. When it comes to copying of so-called ‘immaterial’ produce, the collective gain is so high that also those with modest margins of sustenance can afford to share that which is only multiplied and never reducible: culture, ideas, knowledge, information, software.
It is, however, illusory to believe file-sharing is entirely altruistic. It is highly motivated by personal gratification and notions of comfort and instantaneity. Scratching the veneer of most human behaviour this is of course a far from unexpected finding. Still, most people would argue, through the simple physical phenomenon of aggregation sharing generates something which could certainly be described as a ‘greater good,’ something which the agents involved can make continuous use of and take pride in — in fact, they often
even describe it as altruism.
When we freely share content on the Internet, we are currently bypassing the established forms of the market place — generating, in effect, new systems of exchange. Appropriation and consumption are just that; it is all about the uses of media content*; turning it into something else, or using it beyond the means dictated by the producer. We could therefore ask ourselves: is cultural appropriation piracy?
Rasmus Fleischer and Palle Torsson — the authors behind the influential ‘grey commons’ speech — insist on talking about file-sharing as a horizontal activity;
“Digital technology is built on copying bits, and internet is built on filesharing. Copying is always already there. The only thing copyright can do is to impose a moral differentiation between so-called normal workings and immoral.” (Fleischer and Torsson 2006)
To put it bluntly: People collaborate, copy and share because they can. Now deal with it.
Bibliography
Andersson, Jonas (2006) “The Pirate Bay and the ethos of sharing” in Deptford.TV diaries. London: Openmute
Atton, Chris. (2005) Alternative Internet. Edinburgh: University Press.
Critical Arts Ensemble. (1996) The electronic disobedience. New York: Autonomedia
Hoem, Jon. (2004) Videoblogs as “Collective Documentary”. Vienna: Blog Talk conference.
Medosch, Armin. (2003) Piratology. In Kingdom of Piracy (ed). Dive. Liverpool: Fact. pp. 8-19.
Rasmus Fleischer and Palle Torsson. (2005) ‘grey commons’ speech at Chaos Communication Congress 22C3 in Berlin.
Silberman, Marc. (2001) Brecht on Film. London: methuen.
An excited crowd gathered at the Albany Theatre, where they were wowed by the whirling crystal ball of money, which sat, enticingly at the front of the auditorium. By the end of the first 45 minutes, the audience had decided to use the £1000 to buy something that could be shared by everyone who had put their money in the hat.
