I originally wrote vogma (a manifesto for vogs) on December 6, 2000. I amended it on February 2, 2002. Some time this year (so the date of this entry can be the ate of amendment) I amended it again.
(After all, what’s the point of a 21stC manifesto if it can’t actually mutate?)
The Manifesto, currently, reads:
- a vog respects bandwidth
- a vog is not streaming video (this is not the reinvention of television)
- a vog uses performative video and/or audio
- a vog is personal
- a vog uses available technology
- a vog experiments with writerly video and audio
- a vog lies between writing and the televisual
- a vog explores the proximate distance of words and moving media
a vog is dziga vertov with a mac and a modem- a vog is Jean Luc-Godard with a mac and a modem
- a vog is a video blog where video in a blog must be more than video in a blog
I have this naive ‘osmosis’ theory where I think that if I write something like this, it will just make sense and the job is done. This is why my research output is so thin, particularly around vogs, I think the above says an awful lot and turning each point into an essay (which would be easy) is just some sort of academic sleight of hand. On the other hand it is probably what I should be doing – because I’d be pissed if someone else did, I know a lot about this stuff, I care deeply about it, and <feigns deep indignation and misunderstanding>I should realise most people, most of the time, don’t get what I’m on about.</feigns deep indignation and misunderstanding>
Tags: hypertext, Vogging
maybe you should make an Ezedia qt essay about your manifesto? that would be cool. and you’d also get an idea of what its like to actually write/shoot/edit/compose one of these new fandangled essays :)
what exactly do you mean by performative video/audio here? is it that the content is produced specifically for vogged/networked environments/interfaces, or is it something to do with the malleable materiality of video (allowing others manipulate it)?
video, ahem, should read: networked, digital video :/
I’m not sure I agree with numbers nine and ten, if only because I think it’s sort of futile to cite specific examples (specific examples, no less, who are filmmakers working for the most part with a mind to have material projected to an audience in a darkened cinema!) and, what’s more, specific equipment. I mean, you could just as soon say “a vog is Jonas Mekas with Windows and a Wi-Fi.” It seems sort of pointless, although I do see what you’re getting at, and I understand what you’re saying.
There’s another difference too though, and that’s that Godard, Vertov and Mekas (and others; c.f. Greenaway) are far more conscious of their reinvention of cinematic form. The vast majority of vloggers seem to me to be unconscious of what they’re doing–even though, I agree, they are doing it. You, Adrian, are one of the only vloggers I know of who I would call fully conscious of his formal experimentation (I’d appreciate some links to others though!) and even then I wouldn’t compare you to artists like Godard or Vertov, but rather to someone like Eadweard Muybridge!
But maybe that’s just me.