In DISTANT FEELINGS #6 we will bring together people from their different locations in the world, to share 15 minutes of togetherness across the network. We will meditate on who/what where “we” are, when we are connected to others while remaining silent with our eyes closed in front of our webcams. The experiment will be projected in front of the conference audience in Malta, where two people will be participating live on stage. A special sound file with participant reactions on former DISTANT FEELINGS sessions will accompany the performance. DISTANT FEELINGS – an ever-changing re-enactment of our intra-action with machines.DISTANT FEELINGS is a project developed by Annie Abrahams, Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro.The project brings together the three artists, based in France, United States and Portugal,respectively in a series of online encounters which through time, since 2015, evolved into an online ritual of contemplation on our situation of being together while separated. Activated yearly since its 4th iteration (December, 2017), the project has also been shown in other contexts, opening up to the participation of anyone interested in joining (online). It emerges of the intersection of their artistic practices: the investigation of the possibilities and limits of communication under networked conditions by Annie Abrahams and the research on methods for creating live, movement based, performative work using telecommunication technologies by Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro in LAND PROJECT.

This 360 – cultural heritage of the canals installation, by the artist Adnan Hadzi, lets the conference visitor experience the ‘boattr’ project through a VR headset, and access the boattr micro-computer book over any WiFi enabled device. The installation encompasses a photographic triptych showcasing canal life, a seating representing a narrow boat’s bow on which the viewer can sit and immerse into a journey on the narrow boat Quintessence.With the evolution the moving image inserted itself into broader, everyday use, but also extended its patterns of effect and its aesthetical language. Video has become pervasive, importing the principles of “tele-” and “cine-” into the human and social realm, thereby also propelling “image culture” to new heights and intensities.The boattr 360 installation makes use of video as theory, reflecting the structural and qualitative re-evaluation it aims at discussing design and organisational level. In accordance with the qualitatively new situation video is set in, the installation presents a multi-dimensional matrix which constitutes the virtual logical grid of the boattr project. The installation translates online modes into physical matter (micro computer), thereby reflecting on logics of new formats – by rendering a dynamic, open structure, allowing for access to the boattr micro-computer book over the ‘boattr’ WiFi SSID.The boattr DIY infrastructures offer a unique set of special affordances for local services to the narrow boat community, outside the public Internet: the ownership and control of the whole design process that promotes independence and grass-roots innovation rather than fear of data shadows; the de facto physical proximity of those connected without the need for disclosing private location information, such as GPS coordinates, to third parties; the easy and inclusive access through the use of a local captive portal launched automatically when one joins the network; the option for anonymous interactions; and the materiality of the network itself.

Download SD image of issue one from archive.org

The after.video video book is exploring video as theory, reflecting upon networked video, as it profoundly re-shapes medial patterns (Youtube, citizen journalism, video surveillance etc.). The first volume more particularly revolves around a society whose re-assembled image sphere evokes new patterns and politics of visibility, in which networked and digital video produces novel forms of perception, publicity – and even (co-)presence. A thorough multi-faceted critique of media images that takes up perspectives from practitioners, theoreticians, sociologists,programmers, artists and political activists seems essential, presenting a unique publication which reflects upon video theoretically, but attempts to fuse form and content.

This presentation takes the form of a walk-through of A Machine for Viewing, a seated virtual reality experience co-produced by the speaker and virtual reality studio Vrtov. Set in an empty cinema auditorium, it transplant the narrative video essay format into an interactive virtual space,so as to provide a fresh perspective on the haptic experience of watching a film in a cinema. A Machine for Viewing will, in turn, itself be installed in a physical cinema auditorium, resulting in an experience that enfolds cinema and VR within each other. In this way, each becomes a machine for looking at, and reflecting on, the other. Delivered from inside a VR headset, this presentation will add an extra layer to the themes of immersion, isolation, and communality explored in the VR experience itself. My immersion and isolation inside the virtual cinema will be projected onto a screen and shared with the audience, who will be able to experience the walk through communally. By mixing these various modes of engagement, the presentation will investigate and perform the experiential continuities and contradictions that exist between film and virtual reality, two related but very distinct machines for viewing.

Moving Membranes revolves around the visual rhetorics of Frontex. Frontex is the governing agency held responsible for the management of all border control in the Schengen Area. By studying the ‘artistic’ utterances produced through the agency’s annual staff photo-competition— and exploring their relation to the broad range of analytical imageries produced by the agency as a whole — the artist-duo Confusion of Tongues question whether aesthetic modes play a role in the contemporary performance of automated Schengen Area border control.

This manuscript introduces the reader to the unique case study of Algeria. Since 2019 the country has been undergoing a social and political revolution, similar to the Arab Springs of2011, which seeks to overthrow a long lasting “fachade democracy” and authoritarian military currently in power via a coup d’etat. This military elite which, to the eyes of the Western powers is trying to establish a constitutional democracy, is in fact attempting to perpetuate itself in power via the control of: the web 2.0, 3.0, cellular networked technologies such as 3G and 4G,social media such as Facebook or Instagram, You Tube, Vimeo, the press and the mass media;imprisoning and in some cases murdering activists, lawyers and intellectuals which use these mediums as means to denounce basic violations of human rights.Through a number of video and audio interviews carried out in Algeria and the autonomous region of the Kabyle with key players of the revolution during the Ramadan of 2019, this manuscript will herald the hypothesis that Algeria is in fact a “Dictature 4.0”, a “plen air” prison supporting radical islamism, human rights violations to minorities such as the: Amazigh or the Mozabites Berber and their cultural heritage. A regime exercising an absolute control over networked technologies, which in fact and paradoxically are playing a vital role in connecting and informing those which resist this fundamental authoritarianism.

Sexcam platforms can be considered platforms for the laboring of affect: machines that exploit,accelerate, and capitalize on it. As expected, the primary source of value is the broadcast of sexual performances. However, this presentation argues, the extraction of value on sexcam platforms relies as well on some of the early established conventions of _webcamming_–such as simultaneity and the perception of a particular version of _real- life_. The location and quality of the shows are relevant for these reasons, along with the various sorts of personal interactions between the audience and performers. While some of these interactions resemble personal or human ones, the characteristics and scale of exchange that the platform enables, with thousands of viewers connected at the same time demanding the attention of one performer require new technologies of assistance that involve humans and software—and some entanglements in between. Those technologies are located in the tension of generating value by accelerating exchanges while preserving the attributes that give them value in the first place. By focusing on the JenniCam–the first webcam featuring a human–part one of this presentation examines how the conventions of the genre, their established relationships, were outlined in the late1990s. The second part explores some of the technologies (such as chat moderators, apps,and bots) that Chaturbate.com–at this time one of the most popular sexcam platforms–uses for replicating those conventions in a larger (and accelerated) scale. A critical examination of the conventions of the webcam helps to reveal the uneven landscape of the platform contributes to illustrate the non-linear history of media.

“Amazon – A River Story” is an emotional audiovisual cartography developed by Ecoarte / UFBA.It is a collection of short videos, documentation, data visualization, whiteboard, rotoscoping,political critique and text clips that create a geolocated audiovisual narrative of the Amazon River. The initial plot of this mapped video narrative was the first outrigger canoe expedition along the Amazon River from Santarém to Belém. It was almost 1000 k of paddling on this great and mysterious river. Humidity, heat, mosquitoes, tiredness were part of the greatness of this11-day paddling experience to sense the biggest river in the world with our own bodies.http://amazon.ecoarte.info/

The Electronic and Digital Art Unit (EDAU) was a specialist research unit within the School of Art, Design & Performance at the University of Central Lancashire. EDAU was involved in projects related to electronic & digital art including practice-based MA, MPhil and PhD research(fine art practice) into the historical and critical context of video art and new media practice.During the period that EDAU was operational (2004-2012), the unit supported research through publications, exhibitions and practice. A core aspect of this research activity was the establishment of the Film and Video Artist’s Study Collection. My presentation will trace the establishment of EDAU and its aspirations, purpose and function, outlining the activities of the unit and the significance and value of the study collection as one of its most important outcomes.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. Oakley in the Land of the Video Bloggers is my personal video/theory project due for completion in 2019 as an experimental documentary/biopic about YouTube video blogging, focusing on Peter Oakley (1927- 2014), YouTube user ‘Geriatric1927’. I discuss the work around issues relating to remixing YouTube videos, and examine the psychology of both early and current YouTube video blogging. Controlling his own narrative (Sørenssen, 2009), Oakley addressed fellow ‘YouTubers’ primarily through a biographical retrospection as part of a practice that emerged as a ‘poetics of early YouTube’ (Hillrichs, 2016). Adopting a Kuleshovian assemblage approach to ready-made video, my experimental geographic project explores the aesthetics and psychology of YouTube video blogging. We are not (yet) ‘after YouTube’. Video continues to absorb the web (Treske, 2015:48) with its ‘zone of intimacy’ (Treske,2013:51), and these aspects of online video theory are examined in relation to the progress of the work.