Everything Else.

[caption id="attachment_3074" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="Example of computation"][/caption]

I'd like to say I'd planned to see this talk, that I'd been looking forward to it since my tickets were booked, but that would be a horrible lie. I walked in to the nearest room on the 4th floor in a zombie like hungover state. And I'm glad I did, it was excellent.

Stephen Wolfram is a man who achieved more by the age of 21 than many of us will our entire lives; being accepted to Oxfrod at 17 and leaving shortly after, only to find himself at Caltech picking up a PHD in partical physics. All before he could legally drink or kill a man in the US.

This sort of CV speaks of a precocious mind, active and never satisfied. This was almost immediately backed up with Wolfram's early claim that "Computation is not about computers and programs, it is how everything in our universe works". He argues that we can understand our physical world through uncovering which basic computational rules underpin everything around us. According to Wolfram understanding computation "changes the economics of creativity".

He showed Wolfram Tones to demonstrate how computation can be broadly applied. It has mined the "computational universe" and rendered algorithims as music. Simple rules can produce complex outputs, or in this case early Nokia 3 series ring tones.

• Tags: computation, sxsw, wolfram alpha

We were promised a battle, between the soulless machine that is aggregation and the carefully considered choice of a living, breathing blogger. However when we arrived, we were told that such a battle was unfeasible given the time. Not quite as disappointing as the failure to get Pacquiao and Mayweather in a ring together, but false advertising nonetheless.

So rather than a showdown to settle who can detect a viral video with greater accuracy, we were treated to a conversation between Marc Hustvedt of Chill and Neetzan Zimmerman of the Daily What. The focus was on how Zimmerman decides what videos to post on his blog, and insight as to how he became the man who "broke" Rebecca Black to a mainstream audience.

We talk about "half life" when it comes to video content online, the fact than on average a You Tube video gets half of its views in the first six days it was live. Friday, one of the most "popular" videos of all time, lay dormant for 29 days before it was posted on the Daily What. Neetzan then posted it and autotune pop was never the same again. But what gets the attention of these so-called "supernodes" such as the Daily What's Zimmerman.

The 51 and the 30k
They want to be there first and will never post something that has over 30k views, looking for videos that has views in double figures ideally. So if a brand has pumped a load of bought views into
a video, it will never be picked up by a blog like the Daily What.

The remix
A video can only be considered a success if it has a remix. If someone has taken their time to create a spoof version then it has clearly resonated. The more remixes a video has had, the more "viral" you can declare your video. Or the more video editors you've paid off to get cracking the minute it goes live. There exists a world of mini-studios creating content based on acknowledged hits. We should be thinking less about bloggers and more about these guys if we want to engineer success.

The introduction
Can't be straight. Needs to have a unique angle that will grab attention, and brand plus are the hardest sell for a "supernode". These guys can't be bought.

"Not all cat videos are equal"
This was an unforgiveable quote said without irony by one of the speakers. I won't say which one as I'd forgiven them by the end.

• Tags: online video, seeding, sxsw

Kirby Ferguson is an Internet film-maker and creator of goodiebag.tv  where he publishes funny short films, from mockumetaries to performances.

His video series, Everything is a Remix demystifies the creativity in the films, bands and cartoons that impressed us the most.  Consider those movie scenes that always come to mind when you create a mood board for an advert. Nothing is original. Even when it comes to big names like George Lucas or Tarantino – one studied cinematography the other spent his youth in a video shop.  Their film background is apparent in their work.

Everything is a Remix is also the title of the Kirby’s talk at SXSW with Austin Kleon (author of NEWSPAPER BLACKOUT and STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST .

Ferguson talked about the three basic elements of creativity: COPY, COMBINE and TRANSFORM: meaning carrying a notebook around to collect ideas (copy). If you find things that have some resonance with how you see the world, you re-contextualize them (transform). Combining has a lot to do with putting your own voice into whatever your remix is about.

If you think about it, the Dadaist Readymades followed the same principle: artists like Duchamp would choose an everyday object, reposition it in the context of the gallery space, label it, and transform it into Art.  He “combined” a bicycle wheel and a stool, put them on a pedestal and changed the course of art history. As Duchamp puts it, a readymade is "an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist” (in Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme).

Kirby talked about Star Wars, which heavily relied on previous artistic material. He mentioned names like Joseph Campbell, who popularises the structure of myths in his book, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces”  . The so-called “Monomith” Campbell talks about can be found in Star Wars, in themes like “The Call to Adventure” and  “Supernatural Aid”. Other influences include the Flash Gordon Series  from the 30’s. From Kurasawa Lucas took the masters of spiritual arts, arms chopped off and cinematographic techniques, not to mention the numerous scenes from various war films and westerns, including existing shots used as templates for Star Wars special effects.

You can find more remixes here

The difference between a remix and a rip off is that a remix always acknowledges the source of its material.  A forgery would be something different. I find Austin’s point interesting – for him forgery is thinking about what your heroes might have done and doing that.

• Tags: sxsw, Technology

When combining different ideas together, new creations are born. There are a couple of examples from different talks at SXSW that belong to this remix culture.

Viral Remixes

Next Media Animation on SXSW:

Art Remixes