Vid Workspaces

Hey vid world, hope you've all been doing well. Pretty wrapped up in writing chapter 3 of my thesis at the moment, and I was wondering if anyone out there would care to send me a photo of their vidding workspace, maybe with a word or two about what kind of equipment you use.

Por ejemplo, here's mine...




This is my uni office, where I have a standard desktop PC I never use, but I hook my personal laptop up to the awesome widescreen monitor for spreadsheets, multiple Word documents, and most importantly, vid watching (pictured here: killabeez 's "Little Lion Man" for SPN). The unfinished LJ post I'm in the middle of writing, and pics of Australia I've taken are there, as well as some from VidUKon... and ten miles of tangled headphone/microphone cord. My laptop is a beautiful little HP Pavilion dv6 with an 18" monitor, 500GB memory, and 2GB RAM.

In any case...

If you wanted to email me a photo of your workspace, there is the possibility that I might include it in my dissertation, so be aware of that. I'm over at fanthropology@gmail.com. :-)


And I'm starting to feel a little guilty for constantly asking for stuff without giving anything back. But I can promise is 100,000 words on vidding sometime in the next 18 months! *sheepish*

Seriously, though, you guys rock. And now, in proper Aussie fashion, I'm off to a springtime BBQ.

Recommended Readings on Virtual Worlds & Second Life

Boellstorff, Tom. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

• A bit of a tough read, but well-worth the effort. Anthropologist Boellstorff applies traditional ethnographic research methods to Second Life.
  

Meadows, Mark Stephen. I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life. Indianapolis: New Riders, 2008.

• Unusual and fascinating look at some of the personal and subjective issues involved in having a virtual world representation of yourself.
  

Malaby, Thomas M. Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Labs and Second Life. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.

• Another anthropologist, but in this case examining the Linden Lab staff, and detailing how the libertarian ethos of the company affects the thousands of Residents of Second Life.
  

Castronova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

• Analyzing the economic and business side of online games.
  

Au, Wagner James. The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World. New York: Harper Collins, 2008.

• Written by the founder of influential Second Life news service, New World Notes.
  

Dibbell, Julian. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.

• A highly personal and engaging tale of life lived in the virtual world.
  

Dibbell, Julian. Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot. New York: Basic Books, 2006.

• Dibbell attempts to make a living for a year solely from virtual cash, and then claim it on his income tax.
  

Ludlow, Peter and Wallace, Mark. The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.

• The rise and conflicts of the Second Life Herald. Deals a lot with The Sims Online as well. Documents the strange conflicts between the news service, the virtual world residents, and the companies that own the systems.
  

Taylor, T. L. Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.

• An ethnographic study of popular MMO Everquest, looking at the role of gender and gaming.
  

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

• A classic study of MUDs and their social lives. Heavily influenced by psychology, this book explores how and why different people use MUDs for different reasons.
  

Looking for sources

hey vid world, i'm looking for anyone who might happen to know who created these two LJ icons:





i'm hoping to include them in my dissertation, and I want to make sure I give credit where credit is due.

*fingers crossed*

Writing continues, and how I use quotes

I may not be dead, but I have fallen into a pit of writing, conferences, and research work here at uni. Probably about time, though, lol.

For anyone who was curious, I've completed my second chapter (barring some minor edits). This chapter is about my methodologies - what types of data collection methods I've used and what - and a general introduction to the vidding community online - about how many people, some demographics, and that sort of thing. I also address issues like privacy, consent, confidentiality, and things like that.

I've now moved on to third chapter, which I've tentatively titled "The Practice of Vidding". It is sort of a background information chapter for my readers who may not be familiar with vidding, and covers the 30-odd year history from slides to digital, and then gives a summary of how current digital vids are made (as I've mentioned before, I am focusing on contemporary, digital vidding for my dissertation).

I already have, and probably will continue to, be sending out some emails in the near future to various vidders I've met or interviewed, and also some I haven't, asking for permission to quote sources outside the range of personal interviews or focus groups (which is covered by the consent form you would have signed). This may include things like individual's Livejournal posts, or comments in someone else's LJ. I will be quoting from general posts to communities without tacit permission, because a larger/more public audience is assumed for these. However, I will request permission to quote by email for any comments in any LJ, and personal LJs. And I will ask permission for each quote, and not just assume a blanket permission to take words wherever I please (unless the vidder indicates this is okay).

I am planning to include a DVD of several vids along with my dissertation for the examiners / my supervisors. I am going to be sending out consent forms which need to be signed by the vidder in order to include it here. You can check out the consent form here if you are curious: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfn5rwh3_114cbkv3pfd. It usually comes with the participant information sheet, which looks like this:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfn5rwh3_7gdktk2d6

Of course, if you receive a request to quote or for vid use, you can always refuse me with no hard feelings. I'm not here to expose anyone or disrupt anything.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to run a final focus group as I may have desired. I have some tight deadlines coming up and really need to get on those. My apologies to everyone who volunteered! However, if there is anyone out there who would like to read portions of my thesis as it is written, please let me know. I am looking for some vidder/vid-watcher feedback. :-)

duh

editing second chapter particularly painful today. for those keeping score at home, chapter 2 is the only one i've written, and it's kinda multi-pupose, an introduction/demographics/methods/ethics chapter. it's probably 85% complete - fully written, but needing some sections expanded on.

decided to take a break from the editing struggle to crunch some statistical data that i'll need for one part of this chapter, where i basically describe what sort of vids are posted to the main community, what shows are being vidded, and what the community is talking about just to give an overview.

so for the past 6 months (feb-july) i've been writing down a basic summary of everything that's been posted in an excel spreadsheet. i figured it would be a bit tough to analyze later on, but at the time of recording i only wanted it to be easy to take down.

and now i'm kicking myself in the face for it.

i never studied statistics, or learned how to crunch quantitative data in my undergrad, or even in my postgrad. i'm sure it would have been excruciating to sit through such a class, but MAN do i wish i knew a better way to do this.

bumped into a colleague of mine on the way to the library, another arts postgrad, and i was telling her about this problem, and she turns to me and says...

"you know, they have computer programs that do all that for you now, right?"

duh.

Wrapping up Interviews

It's weird, but I get a bit sad when I'm wrapping up interviews with my participants, both in-person in scattered locations around the globe, at conventions, and by email over the course of a month or two. I almost wish I had more questions to ask, because I want to hear more about vidding, and keep the conversation going. But I've got to move on from collecting information, and into analysis and writing.

I'm considering the possibility of an online focus group to wrap up my data collection phase, but am not sure of the best way to do it. (I'd like to go out with a bang!) Drop me a PM or a comment if you're interested in participating (if you've been interviewed before or not). Also: any suggestions on a good place to host it? Maybe a communal Google chat? Here in my LJ? Skype? What do you think?

The multi-faceted definitions of vidding

Or... "Can't we all just be friends?"

You know, this whole vidding thing that's been going on (which I'm going to call The Great Vidding Kerfuffle of 2009) makes me suddenly really terrified to actually make any sort of statement about vidding one way or another. It seems like such an ephemeral thing, such a contentious thing, and it's obviously something that people care a lot about (myself included) that I'm almost hesitate to say anything about it, one way or another. So... I'm just hoping that I can avoid any possible vitriol or shit-storming in my journal. Please play nice in comments.

The definition of vidding I have used for my thesis is: "a fan-made remix video (known as a "vid") whereby favourite television or film texts are edited to music and shared online", with a second line describing it as "a unique new media form that combines pre-existing sources in new ways which often convey meanings not intended by their original creators".

I was trying to create a definition that was relatively more inclusive, because at the time I was unsure if I was going to include a chapter on trailer mashups or AMVs (although I no longer am for length/focus reasons).

And I can see a hundred contentious issues pop in just my two sentence definition. I think many traditional vidders (coming from the slash/VCR/Escapade line) would take issue with the phrase "new media form", as this refers explicitly to digital vidding and suggests that it has arisen in the last 5-10 years. I've also noticed that vidders tend to avoid the word "remix" as well, as this brings up connotations of DJs, political remixers, and other digital media artists. I've also included that vids are "shared online": while this has not always been the case, I believe it is such at the current moment. The last section I think is especially important: imho, vids often convey new meanings, but not always. I think vids are inherently transformative, but not necessarily interpretive or analytical. That's a criticism that's often heard of AMVs - they're not vids because they are not critical or interpretive. There's a value judgement there. So many vids are simply about joy, about love for fandom, about expressing that joy. And that's what I love about vidding the most: the emotion. (Please don't hurt me.)


So for anyone wondering, here's the type of vidding I'm going to be discussing in my dissertation:

I hope to provide a snapshot of contemporary vidding. It will be heavily informed by the history of media fandom, and I hope to detail the evolution of vidding as a practice and a community from its inception with Kandy Fong's slideshows, through the VCR collectives, and into early digital collectives. But what really interests me is what has happened to this original tradition since the inception of YouTube, new media cultures, and the mainstream accessibility of digital remix.

I am fascinated by the tensions, conflicts, communities, changes, and individuals who are involved in vidding: the new styles, the experiments and ground-breaking changes, and how they affect and effect the original ethos of the group. What happens when new people start joining the group, and the dynamic shifts? When the definition of vidding is no longer so straightforward?

I've been fortunate that I have cast my interview net far and wide, and have managed to talk to AMV editors working on their first live-action vid, YouTube vidding community members, professional editors, VCR vidders with 20+ years unflagging love for editing, mainstream artists, and so-called visual fan-ficcers on three continents, men and women (and some in-between) from eighteen to sixty. But they've all got a few things common: they love TV, they love music, they love the craft of editing, and they all call themselves vidders.

I consider myself pretty lucky, as a researcher, to have shown up on the scene at such an interesting moment.

So I like to consider a more far-reaching and open-ended definition of vidding for myself, but simply for the sake of scope I will be dealing with the Livejournal-based vidding community with its roots in media fandom-- and how YouTube and digital remix culture has affected it-- for my dissertation.

A big part of me doesn't even want to post this at all, because I'm afraid of blowback. And I really wish I wasn't.

Vividcon Vid Recs

Finally, I've decompressed enough information to pass on my vid recs from Vividcon, which I just attended in Chicago. Here are just a few that have popped into my head. More later, probably.

"Intergalactic Friends" by dragonchic. Smallville set to a Beastie Boys / Dandy Warhols mashup.

Inherent awesomeness of the music aside, I really loved how this vid evoked the entire Superman mythos, pulling it up and out of the context of Smallville itself, and connecting it to the entire history of the character. Shirtless Clark and evil, plotting Lex also help. Michael Rosenbaum is the best Lex ever cast, no competition. (Sorry, Kevin Spacey.)

"Seven Nation Army" by Charmax, to the Matrix, I Robot, Doctor Who, BSG, and Terminator.

This vid really knocked my socks off by drawing the connections across so many franchises, and I really shook my booty to it at Club Vivid.

And the most inexplicable award goes to...

But is it a vid?

check out this entrancing remix for mary poppins:

Aca-Farr

Okay, so back in Australia... stressed out about all the things on my plate right now... but hey that's the life of the PhD student!

I'm currently working on an short article for the TWC's upcoming issue on Supernatural, and have been swimming through my mountain of SPN vids to choose which to talk about. And hey I'm just curious: what's your favourite meta-y SPN vid, or one that tickled your thinky brain, and why?

Vividcon Unpacking: Vid Recs

Absolute fav vid of Vividcon: bradcpu and laurashapiro et al: Hard Sun for Firefly. This vid pulled something right out of my brain, set it to music, and put it up on a big screen for everyone to enjoy. For me, it is an extremely intimate and personal vid of that little moment where you are walking along, listening to music, and thinking about Firefly. I've had that experience, and I know a lot of other Browncoats and vidders out there have had that experience too. And it was so beautiful to see it expressed in vid-form, utterly compelling and beautiful. It also gave me a powerful sense of SHARING that experience with other fans, walking their local streets doing what I'm doing. This vid just sang to me: "We're all in this together." Yes.

Closely followed by jescaflowne's vid Can Delight: Pure, cheerleading joy. I saw it at Club Vivid, and I just had to stop dancing and stare, slack-jawed, at the screen and admire it. A must-watch.

More recs to follow, and perhaps also some comments on the simmering bad feelings surrounding the con (which is a shame, because I enjoyed myself thoroughly and was upset to hear that some people didn't).

Vividcon by the numbers

Back from Chicago, finally. Utterly exhausted and useless, and here's why: Over 4 days, I collected:

16 hours of recorded audio.
10 interviews.
1 focus group.
75 pages of notes.
200+ vids watched.
15 library items checked out.
15 GBs harddrive consumed.

and 14 hours of sleep required upon return in order to recover.

But I had a fantastic time. Proper detox post still forthcoming.

Windy City, Here I Come

My flight leaves in 14 hours for Chicago: I am finally going to go to Vividcon. This trip has been a year and a half in the making, and now that I'm finally going I can only say that I'm both extremely relieved, and extremely nervous. A lot of things have changed for me in the past 18 months, that's for sure.

In any case, I have a pretty packed schedule during the few days I'm in Chicago. Lots of interviews with fantastic vidders and vid-watchers alike that I'm supremely excited to talk to. Getting to know individuals, learning about their history and their vids and techniques and thoughts on the community is the most engaging part of this sort of research.

And I can't wait to squee wildly over the gabillion vidders I admire. Fangirl at heart, what can I say.

I am worried that my schedule is too packed, that I'll be run absolutely into the ground by the end of the weekend. But hey, I've done cons before, forgone sleep, and lived off pixie sticks and coca cola, and I can do it again!

I'm coming, Chicago.

OMGCRAP

deep breath... Vividcon is only ten days away... I leave in just over a week.... HOLY CRAP I'M NERV-CITED!

Nervous

Okay, I'm finally going to do it. I'm going to make my own vid. I'm really nervous, but my horoscope says it's a good time to start a project and I'm house-sitting for a few days so that should give me enough free time to really dig my teeth in and get started. Hopefully a good head-start will provide me with enough momentum to keep it going, and not abandon the project 1/3 of the way through like I tend to do. *looks at her mountain of unfinished fanfiction*

Taking the advice of many of the vidders I have met so far, I am planning to limit my source material as much as possible to make it a little easier as a first-timer. I'm thinking of making a chara vid for Saffron/Yolanda/Bridgette from Firefly. While singing in the shower the other day, one particular song made me think of her character for some reason out of the blue. Going to listen to it a little more closely now and see if it will suit as well as I hope.

Wish me luck, I think I'm gonna need it!

Effects Research...

...why are you so painful? As much as I love anthropology, I hate sociology. BLEGH.

(In other news, Happy Bastille Day.)

Eroticism, Sex, and Consent in the Field

I'm currently reading the fascinating collection "Taboo: Sex, Identity, and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork", edited by Don Kulick and Margaret Willson (London & New York: Routledge, 1995). Despite the fact that I only did anthropology for my undergraduate degree, I find the methodological, ethical, and subjective issues of this particular field endlessly interesting (nerd that I am). The collection of essays deals with issues of eroticism, sex, and sexuality in fieldwork, a topic that most fieldworkers are silent on. There is an unspoken rule that sex while in the field is unethical, and it is assumed that all anthropologists are somehow celibate while performing their fieldwork. I find this book very confronting in that it acknowledges the possibilities, risks, and even benefits of sexual desire for one's fieldwork. Most of all, the honesty and candid accounts of various ethnographers' experiences is touching and brings up a lot of issues that I think should be addressed in more anthropology training in universities.

Consider this passage from Ralph Bolton's chapter, speaking as a gay man who frequently had sex with his participants while researching the gay community and the AIDS epidemic in Brussels:

"I cannot imagine doing fieldwork without sex, perhaps from a feeling that life is too short and one must enjoy it while one can. We don't get younger. Perhaps it's because I came out late and am 'catching up'. In truth, it's probably because I enjoy sex too much to remain voluntarily abstinent. It is most definitely not a sacrifice I would make for my profession. But the question of identity is implicated as well. In the hierarchy of components of my personal identity, gayness ranks higher than ethnicity, nationality, and profession. And that aspect of my being is expressed and celebrated through sex." (pg. 149)

This passage just floored me. What a brave statement to make, first of all. I commend Bolton for so openly stating such things. The role of the body, of emotion, of sex, and indeed of love is one that hardly ever enters ethnographic discourse, and certainly not in such frank terms. The scandal of Malinowski revealing his sexual desires in the field in his "Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term" shocked and scandalized the anthropological discipline. Despite all the recent hubbub on self-reflexivity and auto-ethnography, the silence remains.

And as someone who always struggles with issues of consent and ethics (even though my research has never been with high-risk communities), I find this also deeply unsettling. Obviously Bolton's partners were all consenting adults, and likely also educated Westerners, but obtaining data through pillow talk seems questionable.

Later in the chapter, Bolton details the ethical concerns in performing this type of research. Regarding consent, he explains that he did not obtain signed consent from any participants (partially out of concern for their privacy), and did not hide that he was researching when asked. But would these men have consented to sex if they knew in advance that Bolton was studying them? Would it have affected their decision in some way?

Or am I placing my own subjectivity onto this? Bolton seems unworried for the consequences, and I am neither gay nor male, and certainly cannot claim knowledge of the role of sex in the gay male community. Bolton states that he engaged in sex for personal and not professional reasons, but if he stood to gain professionally from the encounters I believe he should have obtained consent in advance. "...The purpose of informed consent is to prevent hard to the individual, or if harm could occur, then to obtain permission and acceptance of that risk by those who would incur it. In my judgment, no risk was involved in the Belgian fieldwork." (155) I find this statement problematic for many reasons: if someone slept with me and then started quizzing me as an anthropologist, I would feel at risk. I wonder how Bolton's participants felt. I agree with Marshall's review of his work, when she called it "passive deception", even though Bolton himself does not.

Bolton also points to the necessity of participating in sex in order to fully be a member of the gay community, and of course participant observation is the cornerstone of anthropological methodology. You learn by doing. My own participants have insisted that I make a vid myself in order to fully understand their practices, to be "in" I need to become a vidder myself. Could Bolton have achieved his research goals while abstaining? I doubt it.

I can just imagine the reaction from the UOW ethics committee if I even thought about suggested a project like this!

Focus Group at VVC

Just sent out a bunch of invitations for people to be interviewed at VVC, and I'm going to send out another round soon.

I'm wondering if anyone is interested in participating in a focus group while at the con, which is kind of like a group interview with four or five people all together. I've found this type of interview format to be really useful, engaging, and tends to be more social and fun than traditional interviewing. The questions will be a bit meatier and more open-ended, and are designed for everyone to discuss and debate with each other, dealing with trends in vidding, remix culture as a whole, the role of gender in the vidding community, and fair use and copyright issues.

If the idea of participating in this appeals to you, hey, let me know! I'm sure we can arrange a time for all of us to chat together at some point, perhaps over dinner?

Email me at fanthropology@gmail.com if you'd like to participate, or leave a comment and I'll get back to you. You're welcome to join the focus group even if I'm interviewing you separately as well!

History of Vidding: The Struggle

Struggling to write my chapter relating to the history of vidding... It's probably because my supervisors are pushing me for another chapter before I go back to Canada, and I really haven't done enough research on this yet to write about it with any confidence. I've watched Francesca Coppa's great documentary on the genealogy of vidding from the DIY conference, checked out the Fanlore articles... But it's really scattered and I'm finding it difficult to piece together. I really do need to wait until I get back from Vividcon and manage to meet some VCR vidders and such there to get a more complete picture before I write any more. If anyone wants to help me out, let me know!

In other news... my ambitious side wants to plan a small vidding convention here in Australia somewhere. How sweet would that be?

VVC Here I Come

I just made my hotel and flight reservations for Vivicon... So excited!!!