Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

BEyONdTV at the ESF - REPORT BACK

undercurrents | 12.01.2005 16:13 | Culture | Indymedia | Technology | London | Oxford

PROPOSAL
The proposal was to set up “mini-cinemas” in official and autonomous spaces during the ESF, showing short, punchy activist films. The technology would be re-cycled computers which would be of sufficiently low value to be left unattended, placed in a box and with a continuously running playlist programmed at the beginning of the day. The screen would therefore be a computer monitor. The aim was also to enable people to “DIY” encode their own films for them to be added to an ever-expanding playlist.
Politically it would be an anarchic, upbeat intervention in the more hidebound conventions of the political conference. Practically it would provide the opportunity for the showing of activist shorts which conventional cinema screenings can be reluctant to programme. It would also enable screening spontaneity and last-minute, urgent, campaign-based screenings. Potentially it would be very transferable to other venues and events.
It would also offer campaigning film makers an opportunity for “copyleft” distribution via “Ruffcuts” CDs, and had the wider remit of helping to build an effective network of radical film makers.

Audience for the Palm Court lobby (the entrance of Alexandra Palace)
Audience for the Palm Court lobby (the entrance of Alexandra Palace)


OUTCOMES

Technology / Equipment
Basically the technology can work fine with the ecologically-sound method of using re-cycled computers – the requirements for video playback are quite low-spec – but much greater stability (and therefore less risk of breakdown and need for on-site maintenance) would be possible with a higher grade of computer (Pentium 500 64MB with 6GB drive). This holds the risk that the equipment is more worth stealing, but a more robust wooden container for the gear would make the equipment difficult to carry away. Use of computers certainly incurs much less risk of theft than the conventional video or DVD player. There is an additional benefit that it introduces many viewers who do not yet have access to broadband or do not have a DVD drive in their computer to the idea of watching TV on a computer, which will soon become a commonplace. Distribution of radical video now works best as VCD, playable on home DVD players as well as computer CD drives. (DVD is still somewhat exclusive, and VHS is becoming redundant as a format).
We tried to use Linux as a platform for the computers instead of Windows, but this proved impossible, as Linux even though the were volunteers who know some Linux appeared incapable of working. A future version of this project would research the software necessary to do this, so that the project could go “open source” with a Linux platform.
As a result of the ESF BEyONdTV project, we now have a collection of 4 computers, ready for further screenings, and a computer with a larger hard drive and spec for the encoding and storage of video material, and for the making of screening CDs. This equipment is not lying dormant, but is being used daily in a new community media resources centre in Oxford.

Locations
There were two BEyONdTV mini-cinemas in the official Alexandra Palace space. The most successful of these was at the side of a café in Alexandra Palace, where chairs could be pulled in to make watching more comfortable. In the context of all the dull speechifying this was an attractive “infotainment”. The one in the Palm Court lobby (the entrance of Alexandra Palace), although watched for shorter periods of time, was important to introduce the idea to large numbers of people on a busy thoroughfare.
There were also two “min-sins” in the autonomous spaces. One ran in the RampArts space in Whitechapel before the main programme of activities began, benefitting from the sofas furnishing the space. The other was in the indymedia centre at the Camden Centre, in a gallery space to the side of the main hall. Because of the logistical and technical difficulties, we only managed to get this one partially running on the Saturday of the ESF.

Publicity
2000 copies of a double-sided A5 leaflet were produced and distributed, with an 85% take-up. The reverse of the leaflet publicised the Activist Video Seminar in the Alexandra Palace cinema on Saturday, a complementary activity attended by some 60 people where some of the films seen in the mini-cinemas were also screened. An e-mail list of video activists was taken. E-mail “spamming” publicity for BeyONdTV also took place.
(See appendix for leaflet)

Encoding
Encoding of other people's films only happened minimally. As with many DIY media projects, most people are as yet passive consumers, or at best expect someone else to do it for them. People did come to us, mainly with long-form DVDs, unsuitable for the “activist video lounge space”. These could be accommodated in future by an open, bookable space.
The “min-sins” were designed to showcase high-quality short films, appropriate for the busy spaces in which they were located. In future, people should be able to organise their own screenings of longer films on at least one screen, a bookable space, with keyboard access to the CPU, basic instructions, and the computer equipped with a DVD drive.

A further possible development would be to enable interactivity in all the screening spaces so that people could review films and show to friends / colleagues films they have liked, with the possibility to burn CD compilations.

Conclusions / Proposals for the Future
A massive amount of work with minimal sleep by the volunteers meant that the project was successfully trialled, and lessons learnt.

We can as a result make a number of recommendations and proposals for the future development of this project:

1.A slightly higher-specification computer for the screenings would increase reliability to a point where on-site maintenance was minimal.
2.The development of a small piece of software for Linux would enable the switch to an “open source” platform.
3.Screenings could become interactive, with one screen an open, bookable space, and others possibly with a variable, selective playlist.
4.For encoding to work adequately so that screen playlists could be updated with new material, a full-time person is needed to train film makers how to do this. More lead-time with publicity would alert more film makers to the technical requirements for screening their own films in the “min-sins”.
5.The network of video activists begun at the ESF should now be built on, and more training provided.
6.Most excitingly, such a network of radical film makers could contribute to a peer-to-peer computer-based “offline” TV project, which is a planned future development of BeyONdTV.

for more info on offlineTV project
 http://beyondtv.blogspot.com/

undercurrents
- e-mail: hamish@riseup.net
- Homepage: http://www.undercurrents.org

Comments

Display the following comment

  1. Thanks for the report — Pete
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech