CCA News
CCA to Host Summit to Showcase Digital Visual Culture
Posted on Thursday, April 14, 2011, by Jim Norrena
On Saturday, April 16, California College of the Arts is proud to present 24/7 2011: The State of the Art in DIY Video a one-day summit presented by the Visual Studies Program. The event is dedicated to the world of video-making practices and digital visual culture and will offer a series of workshops, panels, screenings, and discussions related to the emerging trends and techniques from the DIY video scene.
The theme of the 2011 show is “collective action,” as videomakers reach out to others, creating active communities in dialogue. The program includes examples from the most prominent forms of amateur video production:
- lip dubs, in which students craft single-shot music video portraits of their schools
- brilliant auto-tune spoofs that transform quotidian and ridiculous moments captured on tape into sublime musical events
- video remixes that are by turns overtly political and hilarious
- videoblogs documenting everyday life and collective action around the world
- fan vids, in which fans re-imagine their icons through editing, sound design, and remix
Visual Studies Faculty Support
"Visual culture is going through a vertiginous transformation as the tools for video production, reproduction, and remix are now accessible to an unprecedented amount of individuals," explains Visual Studies adjunct professor and summit co-organizer Matteo Bittanti. "This raises a series of challenging questions related to issues pertaining to creativity, originality, copyright, participation—not to mention the nature of the artwork itself.
"The DIY Video Summit event will provide some answers but also raise new, intriguing questions. Hosting the the event at CCA makes perfect sense considering the eclectic and electric nature of this institution; after all, CCA is where cutting-edge visual works are developed, discussed, and distributed."
About the Summit
In 2008, when several hundred DIY video creators, curators, digital culture scholars, and internet industry leaders gathered at the University of Southern California for a summit on the future of video creation and communication, it was the first event of its kind—at a pivotal moment in the evolution of media, convening the wide-ranging communities that were just starting to come together around grassroots, everyday, and amateur video creation.
After a successful second summit hosted by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in October 2010, the event makes its 2011 Bay Area debut at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, with the latest in amateur online video and featuring an extensive lineup of funny, passionate, political, and creative DIY videos culled from diverse genres and highlighting recent trends and techniques emerging from the DIY scene.
Additionally, the event features panels and workshops related to video-making practices, all open and free to the public. (Note: Registration is required).
Watch the new feature-length 24/7 DIY Video Summit program video of the latest in animé music videos, political remixes, fan vids, videoblogs, and the YouTube scene.
Event Reception
A reception following the summit is scheduled from 6:30–8 p.m. in the Nave for food, drinks, and a musical tour de force by Kid Kameleon. Deejay, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music, Kid Kameleon is a champion of outsider music styles and eclectic mixing techniques rooted in a core of hip-hop, jungle, and dub, although these days the Kid’s sets take in ever-widening genres from breakcore to b-more, dubstep to dancehall, club, pop, juke, and even rock.
His performances are wild, eclectic, flamboyant, humorous, energetic, and passionate. A prolific mixer, writer, and journalist, Kid Kameleon keeps one ear tuned to the cutting edge and the other to the glories of the past.
Acknowledgments
The summit has been curated collectively with input from Matteo Bittanti, Francesca Coppa, Sasha Costanza-Chock, Ryanne Hodson, Jonathan McIntosh, Tim Park, and Mike Wesch, who each made selections from different DIY genres, the final program includes dozens of examples in a fast-paced overview.
About CCA's Visual Studies Program
CCA's Visual Studies Program trains students in the skills necessary to analyze and interpret the images, objects, and architectural structures that surround us. Through a rich curriculum informed by both theory and history, students acquire a critical awareness of how visual culture is entangled in systems of meaning and power. Learn more, including how to apply »