What is RISD.TV?
PROJECT GUIDELINES
1. RISD.tv hosts an online laboratory for pedagogical experimentation and research into the possibilities of non-linear, networked video production.*
2. The site utilizes Lepton, a set of video collaboration tools developed by the Lepton Group [composed of Dennis Hlynksy, Chuan Khoo and Daniel Peltz], that provide the means to create and visualize non-linear works in which the interconnections of submissions are obvious and emphasized.
3. The visualization and tracking of how ideas are associated across and within cultures of media makers is the focus of our initial explorations.**
4. RISD.tv provides a framework for dialogue through web-based video production. Using video as our language establishes a means for cross-cultural, multinational dialogue that does not depend on common spoken or written languages.
5. The social network of RISD.tv consists of individuals and groups who are invited to participate on a short or long-term basis.
6. The notion of individual artist voices persists but the pedagogic mission of the project is to explore the creation of collective works where the association of ideas and assisting in the production of a larger work becomes the "work" of the individual creators.
7. RISD.tv is a public venue that encourages remixing of posted footage within the context of the site. The video works posted to the site adhere to creative commons restriction on republication. Copyright law for submission is adhered to.
*It is also important to remember what RISD.tv is NOT, it is not simply a new distribution outlet for video content in the broadcast model [such as YouTube]. RISD.tv is a space for reflection on and experimentation with connectivity and disjunct. It is aware of the media landscape, within which it exists, as it seeks to create an alternative to dominant methods of video production.
** Each uploaded video is connected by the maker to at least one previously uploaded video, thus creating a collectively composed network of associations. Uploading an associated video is only one way to create meaning in RISD.tv, an individual "media maker" can also intervene by creating a network of associations within the existing video content on the site.
NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION
RISD.tv utilizes Lepton as a web-based tool for dialogic video production. This tool allows multiple users to create and visualize non-linear videos and makes it possible to study the network of cross- cultural, transnational associations that result.
How it works
A student makes a video in our studio here at RISD, for example, and posts it to the RISD.tv website. Within days, students in the network of participants have seen the video and a student in another RISD studio section, or in a video studio in France or Cameroon, produces a response in the form of a short video that they connect to the student's original submission. The production of these responses begins a video based dialogue, with students communicating across classes and around the world through the conduit of video. Through this process, we are seeking to create a dialogue that simultaneously represents a multiplicity of perspectives and requires a new form of activity on the part of the viewer. We are seeking to create an audio-visual dialogue that is complete in and of itself, capable of advanced practices such as commentary and analysis without resorting to written language. We attempt to explore the fullness of dialogue from a non-prejudicial perspective; allowing for such maligned practices as miscomprehension, radical reinterpretation, loss, distrust and impossible desire.
RISD.tv is a project of the Film/Animation/Video Department, at the Rhode Island School of Design [RISD] in Providence, RI, under the direction of faculty members Daniel Peltz and Dennis Hlynsky. Our current productions involve all video students in their junior year at RISD. Each studio section is involved in the production of a collective project produced in collaboration with external groups. The guiding principle is that the production should unite the varying video sections under a common project and explore the dialogic potential of networked media production.
RISD.tv, the website and pedagogic intitiative, was initiated in Fall 2005 by Daniel Peltz [FAV] as a way of facilitating an engagement with web-based and collective video production practices amongst the students in the Film/Animation/Video Department. Dennis Hlynsky, the senior video instructor in FAV, joined in from the outset as a principle collaborator in the project. Since Fall 2005, they've used RISD.tv as an integral part of the junior level curriculum. Both Peltz and Hlynsky bring their extensive experience and research interests, in the development of new media tools and socially transformative uses of media, to the RISD.tv project. Since its inception, the students involved in the RISD.tv collective have engaged in various production experiments including episodic serials, a theme-based project and our current call and response video series.
We invite you to visit the site regularly and share your responses to the work. If you really want to know what the practice is about, create an account and begin posting responses. Try to commit to doing at least four before deciding what you think, it is a practice that reveals itself over time. If you or your school are interested in joining our current or future projects, please send us a note through the contact link.