DLTQ.org

Social media is great. It gives us an opportunity to interact with others, to exchange opinions and experiences. What I found so engaging about videoblogging in 2004, before youtube, before the mass hysteria, was the ability to look at a video made by someone and really get a glimpse of their world. In terms of political dialogue, videoblogging could be a way to open up, of letting people who are living in the outskirts of the media sphere express their opinion to their local community. It was also a way for us to expand our range of sympathies, to get that closer connection with others. Others you might not stop and talk with on the street, or at a social gathering. A typical example of this is the sites made for/with homeless people. Arenas where they can express their world, their challenges and their joys in life.

At a certain point, its as if the focus shifted. The social element is still there, but the narcissistic elements of it have become too dominant in a way. It became a bit too much like marketing, or advertising. When mass media covered youtube back in 2005 or 06, it was mostly about how this or that person was reaching an audience of millions. The long tail, so to speak, was rarely the focus. Many people who posted a few videos on youtube and then saw that they were having view counts like 64 or 1342 were disappointed. They felt like making a video for ten people was not enough.

We have all turned to being broadcasters now. We broadcast, we beep and tweet out messages to the void, the intarwebs, and then we get some feedback from the void. A comment to our blog entry, or a video to our video, or a @ reply on twitter. Conversation begins maybe. Feedback loop is enabled and goes for a bit, then stops.

This leads me to the tyranny of the timestamp. The fact that the timing of conversation enabling techniques is SO important. It’s a hit and miss, and the structure of the system, the requirements of the media, forces us to move on. Your tweet written last night has much less relevance today, simply because the timestamp has changed. The context of you writing it might not have changed, the importance of the subject might not have changed, but the timestamp immediately treats it as outdated. Yesterday’s news, so to speak.

The Norwegian sociologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen wrote a book about time some years ago, and I remember attending a presentation he did at the University of Bergen after it had been published. I remember clearly his way of describing the problem. How our media consumption is affecting our relation to time. Our time.

It acts like a disease, now. A plague that spreads. Our attention span keeps getting shorter, and there are different psychological blocks, or habits, that strengthen it.

One style of the videos I have made in the past have been a commentary on this, or rather an exploration of it. You have a video, with 24 frames per second, and each frame shows something new. Flashing text, images, moving parts that shred, are shredded, and reused. Creating a rhytm. Our minds are adapting and what might a few decades back have been seen as a hazard flutter of images is today seen by many to be at an acceptable speed. Our eyes are so used to the flickering and fluttering of images, from the way we consume media, that it becomes second nature.

In 1966, William Burroughs and a few others made a video called The Cut-Ups, of which you can see a small sample here. (Here you can read more generally about cut-up technique).

There are several layers to time, and we are only consciously aware of a few of them. There is the actual clicking of time, the seconds going one after another. There is perceived time as we consciously appreciate it, and as our body organism sees it. There is time gone, and time that is to come. What happens when we are given something - be it a text, or a video, or a newspaper clip - and we are given no information about its timestamp? Without the timestamp layer in the middle of our consciousness. We might read it, or watch it, and notice things. Some things.

Then, we are given the date. This newspaper article is five months old. That video is 3 years old. That blog post is 2 weeks old. Our perception of the piece is changed immediately. I dont have much data on this, no statistics to back it up, but there is something there.

I have had a conversation with Michael Meiser about this - what is your thoughts? How does this relate to your own interest in google reader and linkblogging? Remember our del.icio.us experiments a few years back?

I am also interested in the work of Adam Quirk and the others at Wreck & Salvage. Here is the latest W&S video:

Fun with Muybridge from wreckandsalvage on Vimeo.

What does naked people have to do with our feedback loop?

My thoughts go to the people of Israel and Palestine. I hope they can find peace within themselves and in their community. Unfortunately, with the current political climate there, this has only a slight chance.

Let us support the moderate forces in these two communities. Those who do not seek to shed more blood as a response to bloodshedding. Those who still believes in dialogue, even after so many failed chances.

Today I have been thinking about what I want to write on this blog today. I have been thinking about who my audience is, what I want to communicate to you. While chatting with my friend Nathan yesterday I thought about the importance of writing for someone. I dont intend to cater to a big audience here, so why not specify more who I really want to communicate with here, and what I want to communicate with you about?

I want to talk about eastern-western culture with Nathan and a few other of my friends, including Abby and a few friends from the Pinoy community here in Denmark. There are a ton of issues I want to cover with Michael Meiser. Jeffrey Taylor’s take on different forms of conversations within the space of ’social media’ is interesting to me. Bicyclemark is a guy I respect so much and yet for some reason get to talk so little with (and I still owe you a podcast talk about my interest in countries like Georgia). There are many others I am interested in talking with, about different topics or about absolutely nothing specific, just a social call.

Last month I realized properly that this year is going to be the year of another election here in Denmark: There will be local elections in October. How will the online tools be used in the election campaigns of these local candidates? I will definitely be helping out where I can myself, but also follow what the development is. One of my main interests is the obsession people have to “be on Facebook”, but without really knowing what they want to use it for.

I originally titled this entry “A paragraph each day” because basically I need to get into the habit of writing again. But to do it without being obsessive, just like I should read more interesting blogs without becoming lost in the data jungle.

I am working on a video that I should have ready tomorrow or sunday. Have a great friday!

The internet: Spheres of infinite random.

In late 1994, I got lulled to the wonders of the internet. “Whatever information I want, I can find it immediately”. Of course, this premise became more and more true with the growth of better search engines, sites like wikipedia, and instant gratification became the norm.

In 2004 I turned to being more consciously interested in the usage of new media for communication within organizations, particularly organizations, and how organizations could communicate with the larger public using these tools. Videoblogging, when that popped up on my radar in december 04, seemed like the perfect tool. Visualizing stories to then share them with others.

But as time went by and I saw sites like Youtube take hold and not only become household names but also immensely powerful media machines in their own right, I started becoming sceptical towards it. It was not so much the dogs on skateboards that bugged me as the seeming randomness of it all.

During the christmas vacation I was going through my old notes and notebooks, and I noticed this phrase which I had written sometime in 2005: “Spheres of infinite random …”

Yes, the randomness of it all. A blog post could be written, and it was almost pure chance as to whether that post in itself becae ‘a hit’ or ‘a miss’. Factors like phrasing of headline, clever use of images, and timing the posting of course came into effect, but it was still a big gamble: Would the post become bigger than its individual comments? Would it enter a larger conversation? Or, to focus less on our ego: What good would this post do?

A few years back I would do things like linkbaiting (mention Robert Scoble or Dave Winer, and it pops up on their radar somewhere) and I would see how conversations are broadcast through systems, maybe becomes memes, and eventually die out or live their own life in some random comment field. One of these attempts to start a conversation (which is another way of putting it) was my post about ‘hacking the attention hierarchy’ (google search / my original post) which led to some comments on my blog (comments which are now lost due to my database noobness), but did not live on further. I later realized that wanting to enter larger conversations with your post is like entering a gambling contest. Will your post, if it is a reaction to some tech blog post, appear on techmeme? Will your post appear on someone’s radar when they are awake and ready to interact to your post in a thoughtful manner, or will it just become another blip on their radar?

Taking a look at mentioned techmeme or the featured videos on youtube or other sites, what is common is the air of randomness over it. Of course, on techmeme most of the major stories are either big news (like Microsoft possibly laying off 15.000 people) or things that are mostly interesting because a certain personality wrote them.

These news stories and the expressions of individuals become beacons which the sphere rolls about, the sphere of infinite random. Random because, as much buzz or comment frenzy as something might get, it becomes - in most cases - mere blips on the radar. Soon something else, written by someone else, or a news story about another tech company, grabs our attention, and yesterday’s questions becomes outdated, out of our zoom, as memorable as yet another radar blip.

Many companies and organizations are working on ways to let conversations grow organically (organic conversations is an excellent term, Jeffrey!), and several people I know are seriously concerned with the context. But I don’t know quite how much attention they are getting, or if their message is shared in a larger pool. In a world where the instant gratification of data-driven questions a la ‘what is the population of Chile?‘, how does our larger questions get served in the ecosystem? When our attention span becomes ever shorter, how does this affect our ability to process information on a deeper level? To interact closer with others, interact with their ideas in a manner that goes beyond a few @s on twitter or a quick email.

The last few months I tried to disengage from the internet. I still checked my mail now and then, and I wrote occassional twitter messages, but mostly I have tried to re-align my relationship to where I am. Read books, spent time with the gf, buried my grandmother who passed away, thought a lot about what she talked to me about my media consumption a few years back.

2009 is here now, and one of my new year’s resolutions is ‘to write’. In the sense of writing more here on this blog about topics that interest me, but also to create movies again. As illustrations to the words. Instead of trying to enter those larger conversations I will be working more on making them internally stable. Cover the individual threads more in depth. One of my central topics of interest is still communication, and particularly the communication between organizations/politicians and the public. An organization dealing with HIV awareness in Kenya is about anything but randomness, and it will be interesting to explore examples of how organizations from around the world are using new media tools to share their vision, and also how they could do it.

I wish you all a Blessed 2009!

And I will end this first post of the new year with a totally random clip from vimeo

HAPPY TREE FRIENDS - Books Of Fury (www.htfonline.tk) from Happy Tree Friends on Vimeo.

[image source]

I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

It is 03:48 AM on 25th of December. Winding down after an evening of eating and drinking and talking with friends. I had guests here in my Copenhagen apartment today, instead of going to Norway to celebrate there.

Since I returned from Norway and my grandmother’s funeral las month, I have mostly stayed offline. Mostly stayed inaccessible for that firehose of information, which messes with my head and always keeps me wanting more.

I have read a few good books, among other things. Currently, I am reading the book ‘Det Nye’ (= The New) which is a novel by Vibeke Grønfeldt. It basically is a book about a woman who loses herself in her quest for always being updated on the news. Knowing what happens around the world. But her own life, her own close relations, steps into the background.

This has been a tricky year for me. On the one hand I have participated in a few interested things, particularly the election observation in Georgia in May/June, and on the other it is as if the whole year has been lived in a separate bubble. I have not made many videos this year, and in general I have almost no output. This will change. I just cannot guarantee When that change will take place

When my grandmother died last month, it really shook my foundation. She meant so much to me. She means so much to me.

I have the tendency to keep saying “I will return”. As in: Now I will begin making videos again, or write more here on this site. But I don’t. So I will not do that now. Things will unfold in their own rhytm.

I have now been with Lira for a bit over four months, and she has transformed my life more than I can express to her in gratitude. Most of all she has helped me to be filled with hope.

I hope you have a blessed Christmas, wherever you are and whoever you have around you.

Yesterday morning, my grandmother died. My mother’s mother. She died quietly in her nursing home in Bergen. I remember when I was four years old, and I was in her house in Fana outside Bergen. She was living in her big house that she had built with my grandfather in the 60s. I was sitting in a little chair, a children’s chair made of wood, and I had this little table that I was eating from.

vlomo05:

I remember having the big book of faerie tales - of Asbjørnsen & Moes collection of folk stories from around Norway - with me on that table. I would look at the classic illustrations and I would try to make up my mind what story I wanted my grandmother to read for me that evening.

vlomo06:

I remember when my grandmother, who was an art historian and author, would take me to the University of Bergen close to her work at the Museum, and we would eat in the canteen at the Arts faculty. I remember being allowed into the part of the canteen that is for employees only, and I remember the sandwiches with brown goat cheese I would eat there, and the little boxes of yoghurt.

My grandmother meant so much for me while I grew up. My mother and stephfather were not great readers, but my grandmother’s house was filled with books. I remember when she still lived in Fana. I would walk around the house, look at the books. As I began to be able to read myself, I would start reading in the books. At random. And I would be told - over and over - to remember to place the book at the same place where it was. To not make a mess out of her books.

My grandmother was a very strong woman. A few decades ago, while she was the house wife with four girls to take care of, she would start studying again. She would eventually take a doctorate’s degree in art history. I remember reading in the book she got published of her phd paper - it was about Norwegian wall carpets. And I particularly remember her other presentation - which was to be of a topic of her own choosing - and (I cry while I write this) I remember the pictures she showed me. The pictures she took in Zurich of this graffiti artist who went by the name of “Der Sprayer von Zurich”. She happened to visit Zurich at a time when he was very active, and she took these beautiful pictures of his paintings.

Here is a small description of Harald Naegeli’s fate:

In September 1977 strange “wire frame” figures where appearing in all the concrete walls of the city of Zurich (Switzerland), always fitting in nicely with surroundings, and only painted with black paint. A vast majority of the residents of Zurich did love theses graffiti which they did see as an embellishment of the ugly grey concrete walls.

But a minority (mostly the owner of the walls…), the police and the Justice department did not see it that way.

The police went searching for the unknown painter. And in May 1979, he was arrested. About 900 paintings where then counted on the walls of the city of Zurich. Harald Naegeli fled to Germany to avoid trial. But Heinz Kreiss, the Attorney general for Zurich, was determined to get Harald in jail, notwithstanding of all protest from cultural circles and the people of Zurich.

In both countries (Switzerland and in Germany) Harald Naegeli was then seen and understood as an great artist. Museums and art galleries were exposing his work. Great artists such as Jean Tinguely and Bernard Luginbuhl did start an hunger strike in protest for the action of the Justice department. The Swiss TV made a special program to show his work. He also received a prize “for his outstanding contribution for the environment of Zurich”.

(source)

vlomo07:

My grandmother would once talk with Naegeli and he would tell her that she had one of the most beautiful collection of photos of his work.

This was my grandmother. Academic, always curious. Mixing her interest for the classical with the modern.

I had a rather strained relationship with her at times. We had arguments. When I lived in Bergen (1998-06) she used to invite me for dinner at these nice restaurants in Bergen, and we would talk. I would tell her about whatever I was doing at the time - be it being the active student politician at my university, travelling across Europe as part of my international responsabilities - or I would tell her about my eternal quest for ‘what I wanted to do when I grew up’.

All of yesterday I tried to find pictures of her, here. Seems like I have none left. I remember she had given me tons of books in the past, I only have a few left.

I will go to Bergen to her funeral - I do not know the date yet but it seems like it will be monday or tuesday next week. The whole clan will gather.

Last I visited my grandmother was last christmas. I knew back then that it would probably be the last time I saw her. She was senile, she couldn’t even recognize me. I hugged her, she would not recognize me.

My grandmother, the artist. She would write these poems or plays, and she would have them published, and she would have her friend, Arild Haaland, which is an important character himself - I will write about him later on - write about her work in the local newspaper. She used to tell me he was one of the few who really noticed her work.

But she would keep at it, book after book. In the end she had 17 books published. Plays, poems, or a book about angels.

My grandmother died yesterday, 88 years old. I will talk more about her here, and I will talk with relatives about her. The last years she was stuck in that home for the elderly, and she hated it.

My grandmother was stubborn.

She kept me sane during my childhood. With books, with folk stories, with visits to museums.

One of the things she taught me was to observe. To take notice. Of the life around me. While she was alive I did not manage to fully do that. Maybe after she now has died I will be able to.

Now, right now, I miss Norway. My own country. I miss Bergen. Good I will be going there in a few days for her funeral.

03: The Simple Things

04: Moments

Click To Play

Image, a still from the movie “Children of Don Quixote”, is from cphdox.dk

Today CPH:DOX, an international documentary film festival here in Copenhagen, begins.

I have always liked documentaries, especially the ones where the director clearly is aware of his own role as well. The fact that you point a camera at something changes it - like we videobloggers are well aware of.

Already tonight there is a movie which I really want to see: Children of Don Quixote. Here is the description of tonight’s programme:

Free Open Air filmscreening benefit for the homeless with French director/activist Jean-Baptiste Legrand French activist Legrand is introducing a free screening of his film Children of Don Quixote, on the corner of Ravnsborggade og Sankt Hans Gade at 7.30pm. There is a free meal for the first 150 guests, and in the spirit of the film there will be tents and blankets to keep you warm - and to put the homeless issue on the political agenda.

Homelessness has always interested me. I am sickened whenever I see a person smelling strongly of urine drag a cart filled with plastic bags. I wonder how it is possible for them to live. I rather mean: How do they live. What do they wake up to? What can society do better to help them? How can they better help themselves?

I also am reminded of Homeless Nation which was one of the videoblog projects talked about during the 2006 VloggerCon session on “Political Vlogging and Social Change”. You can actually see the session here.

In my opinion, a society is not measured on how well the well-to do are doing, or the middle class. It is measured on how those lowest on the social ladder are being treated. The outcasts.

I am not sure, but I might bring my camera tonight and take some video from the showing.

Tomorrow I will not be able to view any films - I am going to attend a 40-year birthday party, but on sunday I plan to watch “Så kort og mærkeligt livet er” which is a Danish movie about the Danish author Dan Turèll. After Sunday, I have no idea what I want to see.

What documentaries do you enjoy watching? Do you have a favourite?

VloMo08 - Day 6 - Moments Like This from David Howell on Vimeo.

It was while watching the above video by David Howell that I realized a few things. Basically, the memory of looking into the fire at my aunt’s hut east of Bergen many years came back. The thoughts I had then.

It is highly difficult for me to write this. I have actually had this coming for a long while. The need to look you in the eye and tell you how things are, my take on things. To look at you and tell you where I am, and where I intend to go.

Yesterday morning, after having read a good friend write about the death of a family member, I sat down and wrote some words about my own father’s death to cancer in 2003. It is one of those things that has greatly affected me ever since, but I have been too blind to realize it. I think I have only referred to it once on this site - in 2005 in this video which I have been tempted again and again to just take offline. In the past five years, I have been too busy worrying about things to see the bigger picture, see where I am myself. So, this is also a mirror in front of me. To be able to face myself. Straighten my back and look, observe, and see where I want things to be different.

I am 30 years old. I live in Copenhagen in a shared apartment. I don’t know quite why I am here, in Denmark, and I don’t really know if I even want to move back to Norway. I am dating a girl that I love. Professionally I am a joke. I have passion for things, but having a passing passion is one thing, quite another to have Plans for those passions, ideals and goals, and then - most important of all - the ability and will to execute. To let that passion actually lead to things that matter. For myself, most of all.

It’s like my mind is stuck.

Stuck, stumbling, running in circles.

It’s always easier to talk about problematic periods while they are a thing of the past. “Three years ago, my life was very different from now” “Those months were my darkest hour - then came a new dawn”.

Even though I have done some things the last 5 years, I have most of the time - deep inside - felt like a zombie. Even while making tons of videos, documenting things I see and say, over the course of the last four years, I have felt like I was not really there.

It is 07.40 in the morning on this Friday. It is yet another friday. Another week has gone by, and I assess the week, and I loathe myself.

I did not email MA the things I have promised him months ago. I did not reply AKMs Facebook message. I did not go to any of my jobs. I called myself sick on monday - not because my cold really was crippling me but because my mind was.

I have mostly been at home. In bed or in front of the computer. I have been reading a bit in Edward Teller’s autobiography. Fascinating.

No.

I have been trying to figure out what the glass wall is. What it is that stops me from really - Really - having a relationship to the world around me. As in seeing how it can affect me, and I it. What happens currently is that my fatalistic way of thinking is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I have had incidents like this before. Where I feel a crystallization happen. Something takes form within me. A conviction maybe? But alas, it passes in days or at most a week. My habits of mind take over again.

Basically I need to change. Yes, you might say, you have heard me utter these words before. And yet so little actually happened.

My negativity is the drug, I the crack addict trying again and again to quit but who creep back once the body starts shaking.

The sight of my father’s body back then is blocking me from seeing all the life there is around me now. I am on autopilot, you may think I really am there, noticing, but I know myself that I am not really there, and this knowledge is killing me.

Let’s make a deal.

I will tell you more about where I am, what I think, what I do, what I did Not do. I will ignore the flames that come.

You will be there, also sharing. Where you are.

These are the questions driving us. The question that I keep losing, despite the title of this site (’Don’t Lose the Question’).

Conclusions? I have none for you at this time, besides this: Time to start living.