8575 Ryan Shaw » 2004 » June

6/28/2004

Playlists, Queries, Rules

Filed under: playlist — ryan @ 8:58 pm

Today I spent some time discussing playlists with Lucas Gonze (creator of the Webjay “playlist community”), which got me thinking about the spectrum with simple playlists on one end and full-blown cinematography on the other. Both essentially describe sequences of media selected and arranged in a purposeful manner.

What Lucas made me realize is that a playlist needn’t be a static record: it can be a query, a suggestion or template that can be realized by a number of possible content sequences. For example, a playlist entry that specifies only [”I Love You” by Cole Porter] could be satisfied by either Ella Fitzgerald’s or Frank Sinatra’s version of the tune (or countless others).

This realization brought to mind something from a paper I read recently:

The rules used to generate establishing shots are based on cinematographic principles to maintain continuity… [For example, we have a rule that] defines an establishing shot as a combination of two sequences of which both shots are in color, the focus of the first has a wider angle then the next shot, and the weather conditions are similar. Note that the rule can also be described as a query that returns all shot combinations that match a certain description: we found that in this (and probably many more) applications the difference between a rule and query is rather artificial.

This makes the thread of continuity along the spectrum a little clearer. Initially we have static playlists, which arrange specific pieces of content in a sequence. Then “smart” playlists, which define a space of possible sequences as a query over a media database. More sophisticated queries return not just individual pieces of content that match the query but combinations or subsequences that match certain criteria. These more sophisticated queries can be viewed as rules which formalize the techniques involved in creating time-based media. In film or video these are the rules of cinematography such as those that govern continuity editing. In the realm of music these are the rules followed by DJs for selecting and mixing sets.

Looked at this way, the recent mainstreaming of the playlist phenomenon may be the first step on the road to a future of widespread media meta-production.

6/27/2004

Deep Linking and Multimedia

Filed under: General — ryan @ 12:39 pm

A couple of weeks ago I was describing Webjay to several managers at the company I’m working at for the summer. Their reaction was: “That’s really cool, but it must be illegal! They’re stealing bandwidth!”

Now, these are pretty smart and savvy folks at one of the world’s foremost internet companies. They are very web-centric, and would laugh anyone out of the room who suggested that linking to a page “within” a site (like a particular archived blog post) rather than the “top page” was somehow “stealing.”

So I wondered why their thinking changed when it came to multimedia.

There are two issues at work here: bandwidth and context. The first is a technical issue, probably best addressed by things like FreeCache or BitTorrent.

The second is perhaps more interesting. People want to control the context within which their work is seen. At a fundamental level this means proper accreditation–if I put your photos on my website it implies that I took those photos, unless I specifically mention otherwise.

It gets more complex that that, though. An image or a video shot, unlike a blog post or a news article, has no intrinsic meaning. These forms of expression get their meaning from the context in which they are presented. In film this phenomenon is known as the Kuleshov effect. On the web, the possibilities for recontextualization are endless, and it is this fact, the fact that I can totally change the meaning of your work and you are powerless to stop me, that leads to anti-deep linking sentiment.

This is a sociocultural issue that doesn’t have any technical solutions, and I suspect that videobloggers will be wrestling with it long after the technical issues are ancient history. More sophisticated schemes for embedding metadata about authorship, intention, history, etc. in files will help, I think, as well as media players that can understand and use such metadata. But the most difficult task will be coming to grips with the realization that we no longer control the meaning of our expressions.

6/26/2004

Ice Cube Stalagmite

Filed under: General — ryan @ 10:25 pm

Tonight Yuki and I experienced our first ice cube stalagmite.
ice cube stalagmite

6/11/2004

Last Trains

Filed under: General — ryan @ 10:03 am

The NYT has a funny article about partiers who miss the last train. This happens in Tokyo, too–the difference being that when you miss the last train in Tokyo you head back to the bar or club and rip until dawn. “City that never sleeps” my ass.

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