What is online video today, fifteen years into its exponential growth?
What started with amateur work of YouTube prosumers has spread to
virtually all communication apps: an explosion in the culture of mobile
sound and vision. Now, in the age of the smart phone, video accompanies,
informs, moves, and distracts us. Are you addicted yet? Look into that
tiny camera, talk, move the phone, show us around - prove to others that
you exist! Founded in 2007, Video Vortex is a lively network of artists,
activists, coders, curators, critics, and researchers linked by the
exchange of ideas, materials, and discussions both online and offline.
Video Vortex has produced two anthologies, a website, a mailing list, 12
international conferences, several art exhibitions, and more to come as
the internet and video continue to merge and miniaturize. The first
Video Vortex reader came out in 2008, followed by a second in 2011. This
third anthology covers the turbulent period from Video Vortex #7 (2013)
in Yogyakarta, across the meetings that followed in Zagreb, Lüneburg,
Istanbul, Kochi, and finally Malta in 2019, where the foundations for
this publication where laid before its production began in the midst of
the corona crisis. The contributions herein respond to a broad range of
emerging and urgent topics, from bias in YouTube's algorithms, to the
use of video in messaging, image theory, the rise of deepfakes, a
reconsideration of the history of video art, a reflection on the
continuing role and influence of music video, indy servers, synthetic
intimacies, love and sadness, artist videos, online video theory in the
age of platform capitalism, video as online activism, and the rise of
streaming. Click, browse, swipe, like, share, save, and enjoy!
Contributors: Annie Abrahams, Ina Blom, Natalie Bookchin, Pablo deSoto,
Ben Grosser, Adnan Hadzi, Judit Kis, Patricia G. Lange, Hang Li, Patrick
Lichty, Geert Lovink, Gabriel Menotti, Sabine Niederer, Dan Oki, Aras
Ozgun, Daniel Pinheiro, Rahee Punyashloka, Oliver Lenore Schultz, Peter
Snowdon, Andreas Treske, Colette Tron, Jack Wilson, Dino Ge Zhang.
