Interestingly enough, Wesch is also a member of the "Open Access Anthropology" Google group and has been telling us a bit more about the video. He seems surprised by the success of the video but attributes part of that success to the type of community which it designates (and which pushed the video up).
Wrote blog entries about that video myself...
Wrote blog entries about that video myself...
This is a beautiful and useful video, but only to the sighted. This strikes me as rather ironic in that one of its key points is about the separation of form and content but it doesn't separate form and content - they are welded together. Flash videos of text HTML pages are not text. I blogged about it here .
I sat with a blind colleague this morning while he used a screen reader to read my email containing a link, then went to the Youtube site and 'played' the video. Well we heard the music but that was all. He also pointed out that had there been describing text, the music would have interfered with it.
There are some very brief text transcripts on the Kansas site but I am not sure how that will help users of text screen readers.
I'll be blogging some more about this - it's a very interesting issue, I think.
I sat with a blind colleague this morning while he used a screen reader to read my email containing a link, then went to the Youtube site and 'played' the video. Well we heard the music but that was all. He also pointed out that had there been describing text, the music would have interfered with it.
There are some very brief text transcripts on the Kansas site but I am not sure how that will help users of text screen readers.
I'll be blogging some more about this - it's a very interesting issue, I think.
Excellent points and I'm sure Wesch would be interested in discussing them in detail. (He seems somewhat busy these days, but it could make for a fascinating dialogue, once he gets his head above water.)
He told us (Open Access anthropologists) that the video "is a draft for a video I was working on for a special web-based edition of Visual Anthropology Review" and that he "recently uploaded it to Mojiti where people can add their own subtitles and animations."
One thing about the field of Visual Anthropology is that they do tend to emphasise the importance of visual representation even though they're well aware of the "visual bias" in some cultural contexts (including Euro-American societies).
He told us (Open Access anthropologists) that the video "is a draft for a video I was working on for a special web-based edition of Visual Anthropology Review" and that he "recently uploaded it to Mojiti where people can add their own subtitles and animations."
One thing about the field of Visual Anthropology is that they do tend to emphasise the importance of visual representation even though they're well aware of the "visual bias" in some cultural contexts (including Euro-American societies).
To me this video wasn't about the text, or even the grand message, but more about the aesthetics, visual transitions, the music and an entertaining collage of some of the web 2.0 ideas.
Would a content of a movie be best served to a blind person by reading the script out loud, accompanied by the sound maybe? Or by reading a book that the movie was based on or a book made about the story in the movie? I think that I'd take the latter to entertain me (if I was blind, obviously I can't be sure as I'm not blind). If I'd want to study the movie itself, then I'd read the script and maybe watch the sound of the movie.
Also if I wanted to know more about what the buzz is about a certain movie, then maybe somebody (movie professional maybe) that has seen the movie could try to interpret why it created such a buzz, if the reasons are not clear from the script + movie reviews + sound of the movie etc.
The content of this video (and visual arts in general) is tied to the form, strictly speaking. To explain web 2.0 in an entertaining way with a text-only or text+audio in a similar spirit than in this video, that's a different thing then, even though many might think of it as transporting the content of this video to a non-video environment.
Would a content of a movie be best served to a blind person by reading the script out loud, accompanied by the sound maybe? Or by reading a book that the movie was based on or a book made about the story in the movie? I think that I'd take the latter to entertain me (if I was blind, obviously I can't be sure as I'm not blind). If I'd want to study the movie itself, then I'd read the script and maybe watch the sound of the movie.
Also if I wanted to know more about what the buzz is about a certain movie, then maybe somebody (movie professional maybe) that has seen the movie could try to interpret why it created such a buzz, if the reasons are not clear from the script + movie reviews + sound of the movie etc.
The content of this video (and visual arts in general) is tied to the form, strictly speaking. To explain web 2.0 in an entertaining way with a text-only or text+audio in a similar spirit than in this video, that's a different thing then, even though many might think of it as transporting the content of this video to a non-video environment.
One thing that's interesting is that the video was made less with artistic intentions than as an exercise in digital ethnography. I happen to think that Wesch did achieve the kind of insight we typically get from ethnographic research. And he now needs to respond to different needs.
Since the video has already been translated in different languages, there could "easily" be a version oriented toward visually impaired people. It would, in fact, strengthen the point Wesch was making in that video (for Visual Anthropology Review).
In other words, while art isn't directly translatable, this video's main points can and should be made through different channels.
The draft was posted so people could add subtitles.
Since the video has already been translated in different languages, there could "easily" be a version oriented toward visually impaired people. It would, in fact, strengthen the point Wesch was making in that video (for Visual Anthropology Review).
In other words, while art isn't directly translatable, this video's main points can and should be made through different channels.
The draft was posted so people could add subtitles.