Last year in November we held VIDICON (streams and info vidicon.org) in a dirty warehouse in central Phoenix. We had a great time with many lessons learned. The idea was to hold an event with equal parts speakers, workshops, events and play/free time. The event was a week long, and had public events on the weekend in which we hosted a Resonant Frequencies and showcased the artists attending. It was definitely a ton of fun, and we had plans to do the event in Portland this year, even having a venue lined up…
Then everything changed across the world. Even with a November start date, the reality is that many places will not be open to public events for some time. I think this is an interesting opportunity to transition to a virtual event.
What would you like to see out of a virtual Video artist event like Vidicon?
Some questions I am thinking of:
How can we still have an impact from the event in physical spaces around the world?
How can we support the groups of people around the world who need our support the most?
How can we communicate the social changes our world is going through?
How can we create a new space for video artists to express themselves in a community?
What platforms allow us the freedom of interaction, participation, curiousity and education?
What means of equitable taki distribution can take place when we are not all under the same roof?
I’d really love to see a permanent overlaid virtual vidicon grow this year and continue in years further, too many people were left out because of the physical requirements of time, space and money. But we will need a lot of thought and assistance to make it happen!
I basically have no answers for your very good questions, but:
I was sad when watched the videos of last year’s event that were put online because I so wished I could have been there, and so I decided I would really try to make it to a future event (no mean feat - half way around the world from here).
Please do all you can to have the most extensive virtual presence you can - I will most likely take time off work to participant in virtual events (which for me will necessitate switching timezone and staying up all night!)
Mini-event “trial runs” in advance of the main event would be great, to iron out problems and perfect techniques.
The thing that I see as being the most difficult is a way to sit down and meet new people one-on-one and form new friendships with like-minded people. How could that work virtually?
One day the possibility of physical events will return. Maybe it’ll take 5 or 10 years, but I’m confident it will happen.
Thank you for organising this - I can only imagine how much work it is.
i feel like the first thing to do is figure out what kind of format (or formats?) it should be in and how to present it and how to allow for reasonably effortless communication between everyone. does anyone have experience with using discord for streaming?
something we tried once with the giant internet feedback loop was embedding a large grid of twitch streams on a seperate webpage which i thought looked pretty great, it took advantage of twitch quality but you didnt have to actually be on twitch to watch stuff. it was pretty simple to set up and might make for a nice format. can also embed a different global chat room /discord/rocket chat kind of thing in the page as well so you wouldnt have to deal with the kind of lame twitch chat stuffs.
any way that it turns out im glad to put whatever time i can for organizing and helping with the virtual infrastructure
@VisibleSignals The first event was really a dry run. We had some lofty lofty goals (like the hilarious 100’ video wall that didn’t work). I liked the online component but when I was so focused on the physical event it was hard for me to put much effort in the web presence.
A discord group definitely has potential, or maybe even a Riot server (similar but self hosted). I was super impressed by the infrastructure in place with Currents.FM’s online Mutek event. They had it so anyone could submit streams and do their own thing. I would love to have that ability instead of a static page. I would also like to have collaboration spaces and “galleries”. I have always dreamed of having a video art web/tv channel, maybe this is the time to launch that? A directory of all the streams, and a main stream that switches between streams every so often would be amazing.
Here I am not trying to be ambitious and I end up thinking of fulfilling dreams from years prior. Sigh.
Of course, we should also have the much lauded “Patch Games” by @Pbalj and @cskonopka
Maybe we start the event with a 24/7 stream olympic torch style video art handoff from one side of the world to the other.
@andrei_jay I believe the format discussed previously would work (4 days long, a mixture of seminars, workshops and play time). Taking place November 12-15th. Friday and Saturday would be “party” days in the evening with musical performers. Hardware workshops could be done DIY by sending a package of parts ahead of the event. Talks would happen each day. I have the website set up to take submissions for talks/events/workshops already.
I’d actually really like to see some talks from you Andrei, you have been crushing it on the vsynth classes etc. I think that format and focus on software would be really valuable to attendees.
We need volunteers for the following:
Social Media - promote, communicate, community management
Media Intake - Sort, archive, ingest
Web/Programming - make something cool or assist with setting up something already out there
Interface/Design - make something pretty
word! i meant format in terms of streaming servers, chat/discussion rooms, potential a/v syncing for remote collabs, presentation, and how to make it as effortless as possible for everyone on both sides of the equation. from the handful of experiences ive had putting together online shows and collaborations and workshops i cant say that ive got things figured out but ive definitely learned a thing or two about shit that doesnt work
id like to nominate @ojack and @cyberboy666 and javier plano (dont think they are on here but i can drop them a line) to participate in some manner as well if they are down!
can def help out with whatevers on that list and also as always pretty down to ramble on about whatevers on my mind.
Great! Let’s get some interest generated here (and perhaps if someone wants to generate interest on FB, I no longer have an account) and then perhaps we can set up a call to discuss the platform we desire to create. I am already writing down ideas
@edk i love the sound of your lofty goals ! (and also know the difficulty of not being too ambitious lol)
i am happy to help out on the technical / infrastructure side. we looked into riot.im when thinking about the chatroom here on scanlines. the chat side of things seemed better on rocketchat than riot , but dont know anything about the videocalling etc (rocketchat doesnt have video conferencing built in but does integrate with jitsi/bigbluebutton) : maybe @v3d will have some more insights on running virtual art-gathering by then too
seems like Resonant Frequencies (/ @d_b & co ) have a pretty smoothed out system for collaborate online av performances , which could useful here too perhaps
also never tried it before, but maybe i will submit to try doing a by-mail-circuit-building-workshop for this
another idea that might be cool, renting out a zoom party for the month so that during performances/screenings the viewers can interact with one another in a higher bandwidth environment? think its like 15 bucks for 100 participants, 20 for 300. could be a cool way for folks to meet connect while checking out the live sets and doesnt seem like itd be hard for it to pay for itself with a ticketing and/or just a paypal tip jar
These are awesome ideas! @andrei_jay Love the idea of drop in Zoomrooms, especially with how I have seen some people connect their video setups. I think posting some “how to set up your video for use with zoom” type articles would be very helpful to post in advance.
@cyberboy666 I have no doubt your project would be amazing! The informal recur workshop we did at Vidicon was a hit.
Resonant Frequencies, the return of, would be amazing.
Also, definitely we should have a hubs VR room, if possible with a video feed because that would be hilarious and tons of fun. It has a discord bot, not sure about twitch/rocketchat/etc.
Basically here I am hoping for guerrilla projections and causal placement of web connected CRTs. Viewing parties are unfortunately for many places at this point, out of the question. I love the idea of Vidicon being dispersed everywhere.
Please do steal, and I will definitely be down to attend virtually. Let me know if you want to pick my brain for any ideas!
Hubs is absolutely hysterical. I had not laughed so hard in a very long time. The venues are quite small, I believe it’s limited to about 20 or 30 users at a time. But you can create a venue with multiple rooms. There is a lot of info on the Hoops.net discord which was exploring using it: Discord
