Video Vortex #6 Amsterdam :: March 11-12 , 2011 :: TrouwAmsterdam, Wibautstraat 127, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Video Vortex #6 consists of a two-day conference (March 11-12) and workshops (March 10) by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision on the Open Images project, and a Gif mashup video workshop by artist Evan Roth. The closing evening event will offer various performances and works by artists such as Anja Masling, Emile Zile and Constant Dullaart, who draw from video on the internet as their source material and inspiration.

Since its birth in 2005 YouTube has grown into an unstoppable force. In response to the overwhelming presence of this web giant, 2007 saw the first Video Vortex conference, with four more over the next three years.

While influenced by the legacy of YouTube, online video has become omnipresent as part of the landscape of our digital culture, finding a home across diverse platforms and sites, and developing particular and peculiar aesthetics across the internet ecosystem.

With this in mind, Video Vortex #6 moves beyond YouTube as the focus, exploring:

– the tenuous relationships between the amateur and the professional, and between grassroots and large institutional/corporate actors;
– the formation of diverse sets of aesthetics and their practices;
– the key issues faced by organizations and institutions as they make their moving image collections accessible over the internet;
– the ins and outs of some of the main platforms and standards for web video, and tools for translation as videos bound across language borders;
– the key issues faced by a number of countries in their use of online video, going beyond the oft-focused anglo-centric context;
– how moving images on the internet are galvanized as political tools, from human rights justice to use by large corporate and governmental bodies;
– how artists are exploring and engaging with the diverse possibilities of video on the web.

THEMES: Online Video Aesthetics → Platforms, Standards and the Trouble with Translation → Online Video Art → It’s not a Dead Collection, it’s a Dynamic Database → The World of Online Video: Country Reports → Online Video as a Political Tool

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: Natalie Bookchin → Andrew Clay → Florian Cramer → Patrícia Dias da Silva → Arjon Dunnewind → Sandra Fauconnier → Sam Gregory → Mél Hogan → Nuraini Juliastuti → Koen Leurs → And Lowenthal → Ben Moskowitz → Joanne Richardson → Florian Schneider → Teague Schneiter → Michael Strangelove → Catrien Schreuder → Ferdiansyah Thajib → Holmes Wilson → Matthew Williamson → Roel Wouters.