Greengrass's Green Zone

Based on the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, this is the trailer for Paul ( Bourne Franchise) Greengrass.

Rachel Armstrong: Architecture that repairs itself?

It pleases me no end that Rachel, a fabulous person I have come to know over the last couple of years has had the breakthrough she so deserves for her tireless work.

This presentation as a TED fellow is just a whiff of a mind that would leave you breathless.

This really is her moment. Here's a background piece where Rachel explains why dominant DNA theories are wrong.

Preview to SCi Fi London - Rachel Armstrong @viewmagazine.tv from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Google says Chinese will dominate web in 5 years time

The opening para on Readwriteweb reads

"Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time". More

I'm not in the least surprised.

I lecture students from some of China's leading universities and while this is a generalisation, they adopt and mash up, and their general knowledge about the West and tech is not reciprocated the other way. Reasons of course; again this is a perception.

Here I'm giving an undergrad class a task after a forty minute accelerated lecture. What is the future of the web?

Regarding broadband speeds, although the word has already been appropriated, the concept of Outernet - the net on everywhere - has been a constant theme for me, written up on Apple Pofiles.

Most likely our ambitions will run alongside these new variables, but I'd imagine there's some furious modeliing and trend extrapolation going on.

Was it John McHale that said: "The future of the past is in the future. The future of the present is in the past. The future of the future is the present".

Should that read the future ic Chinese?

The Videojournalist ~ Cinema

Inspired by assignments that included through out the course of his broadcast and videojournalism career, which include:

• Deep diving with Turkish Navy
• filming Special Forces in Ghana
• Interview with Fmr CIA chief James Woolsey
• Global think tank - the Royal Institute of International Affairs
  
• Out with Nato forces in Norway
• And Inside Beirut.

Viewmagazine.tv's International videojournalist takes you through a visual journey Bourne-style.

Cut to a driving score from Steve Cooney, Robbie Perry and Nasar, this short promo illustrates the cinematic style of a brand of videojournalism practiced on www.viewmagazine.tv.

Today David trains others to be able to turn around reports swiftly and into engaging films.

Mashing DNA Gentic Fingerprint with videojournalism -recent twitters

Recent Tweets

Bit freaky but wonder if you can spot it. Embedded my DNA genetic finger print code into work. Big UK story behind the code. May tell soon

Meanwhile one insane story I've posted. How a client rang me and requested an Ad be made to air on CNN Int. within 24 hrs. What would u do?

Race and Intel with Rageh Omar reveals an obvious yet hardly discussed find. Will repost a vid story on Digital Diversity - winners & losers

Two cracking progs on C4. How food manufacturers lace our cereal with sugar and salt. There's so much sugar in Bran Flakes. And race & intel

It might look like a film with cuts from BBC, Channel 4, and Indies- Drama Videojournalism with score by Steve Cooney on www.viewmagazine.tv

Videojournalism - I'm not the camera guy

Memo from Director of Programmes after leaving the UK's first and only Videojournalism- driven programme

The phone call from the news desk gave the location. An event- an accident - and could you make into a package.

The package is the unit of a broadcast report comprising different interviews and locations. Then there were other times, usually an event of such insignificance that I'd wrestle how and what I would do with it.

Two things emerged. If you're a broadcast or newspaper manager who's never packaged yourself as a videojournalist then you ought to. Videojournalism does not start or finish with news gathering.

Camera men and women have their own gripes, within the pool room. Slow news days can be torturous as another "cat in the tree" story emerges.

Fifty grands worth of camera gear, a remortgaged house, years of experience and it boils down to this.

Reporters too often don't get off lightly. At some point you will begin to curse your manager's ineptitude at planning that story. Another "cat in the tree" package.

It's not that you wouldn't want to show moggy being rescued by the fire services, but that "cat in the tree" is a metaphor and even when it is the real deal, there are only so many ways you can package this singularity without seemingly adopting a supercilious tone or being cliche-ridden.

Years on the job and you're still stuck with: .." and so as Molly the cat is lured into the arms of his anxious owner to applause, due credit to Notts firefighters. Molly may be safe now, but she truly has lost one of her many lives".

Groan! Next time a friend stops you in the pub to say how exciting your job is you can tell em to go blow.


The bad luck of videojournalism
Videojournalism gets it in the neck even worse. That's because to management you're life's stenographer: a lonesome, couldn't cut it as a camera operator, working minimum wage.

When it comes to chasing ambulances, you're the person with the bright orange cap. Your manager will dump on you, the camera crew have found the person who's going to take all the drudge stories, and the reporting team can walk tall knowing, "you get Molly next time".

These circumstances are not. But the present predicament stems from the misnomer classifying videojournalism; that it's cheap and a poor substitute of television.

You're not a real journalist, they'll say. Laugh loud now because soon you won't be able to.

Think it through. You want to become a film making. In the past you researched, associate-produced, produced, produced/directed, directed a series, waved goodbye to executive producing, then sought out your first independent film.

Now, you research with the caveat you must be able to use a camera, then you associate produce with the use of a camera, then if you're lucky you're made a videojournalist. Then you're stuck there for life.

Forget the idea you have producer qualities. To management you're rapid deployment. Don't think, do. So, OK there are a kerzillion ways of becoming a film maker, but many will have recognised the aforementioned route with the odd changes here and there.


Videojournalism's stuructural flaws
Videojournalism doesn't come with a career structure. As yet there's no such thing as a senior videojournalist, chief or maestro videojournalist. Once you're known as the guy or gal with the camera, every walking zombie of a piece of so-called-news is yours to be sent off to scavenge and make sense of.

Most outfits still understand when to use the big band and when the trio with the synthesisers can take centre stage. The BBC for instance does not let its videojournalists ambulance-chase.

Yep that's official so I'll say it again: no ambulance chasing.

Sky News recognise videojournalism, but won't be using it any time soon, with minor exceptions for particular projects. Yep that's official as well. I got that last week visiting Sky.

The best videojournalists often have backgrounds as camera operators or photographers and for that you'll be equipped with a technical proficiency that most can only wonder about.

White balancing, black balancing, back focus, light rigging, reds, blondes, may be terms that are a little unfamiliar and without the prospect of interchangeable lenses, you're not quite in the league of camera operators. That much they'll tell you. That much I always got told in the early days circa 1994.

Truth is if you had your way, why would you want to be called a videojournalist? The most recent tweet I RTed from @yemisiblake was "The art of photography is imagining. It’s very related to poetry. Suggestive and fragmentary."

I then suggested film and videojournalism be added.

Where do you want to be
There's never going to be a consensus. Videojournalism will for a forseeable time be the low hanging fruit. I don't work in the news machine any more, so I can naively state my luxuries.

And for me, man or woman with a movie camera is an artistic practice; a multidisciplinary agent which if used well can yield high gains. And artistry requires motivation and intelligent perception of what the outcome should be.

That's the message in the Zero Principle.

Sadly, we're a long way from where we want to be, yet and by dint of having a camera,will still be asked to grab footage of Molly the cat before she loses another life.

+End

Videjournalist David Dunkley Gyimah is an artist in residence at the South Bank Centre

Should broadcasters entertain racists views?

By the time you read this it'll probably be all over. But the fall out is likely to be huge.

Hindsight is a wonderful foresight, and months from now could the BBC rue the decision, with the comment that: "Perhaps in hindsight we would have done it differently or not at all.."

Tonight the BBC screens its weekly open ed current affairs chat show with six panelists called Question Time.

And for the first time it has invited Nick Griffin - who heads up a party with overt racist views.

An ex-senior BBC manager tells me the BBC is damned if it didn't and if it does.

So why is the BBC doing this?

The reasons appear plenty. Are the panel of cross questioners up for it? And why is Mr Griffith's organisation licking its lips?

If anything, one thing is abundantly clear, Mr Griffith's party is playing to a bigger audience - on the Net.

So expect to see Mr Griffith clipped in an assortment of ways which will find its way edited to favour his organisation, surrounded by the BBC logo - which provides an unerring, yet from the BBC wholly unintentional legitimacy.

Like I said, someone may likely say "perhaps if we'd thought about that we would have done it differently or not at all".

One last thing: there's a string reason within British politics why this is happening.

Footnote: Have you noticed I haven't mentioned Mr Griffith's organisation. Why?

Press Release: Videojournalist joins renowned global arts body, South Bank Centre

To be published on South Bank Centre site


Videojournalist and academic David Dunkley Gyimah has been made an artist in residence (AIRS) at one of the largest single-run arts centre in the world, The South Bank Centre.

This is the first time the South Bank has invited a videojournalist into its Artist program.

David has worked across all media - radio, television, video, imagery, design, conceptual media and blogs - for 23 years, 16 of those particularly as a professional videojournalist – one of the first UK union-recognised VJs.

For his residency, which will run throughout 2009/10, David will be developing a new form of artistic film journalism that operates both as documentary and as an aesthetic response to the artistic form being communicated.

Additionally, David will explore the possibilities of setting up an interactive media space at Southbank Centre, ( see Apple site) to be mirrored elsewhere in the community, and look at ideas of how culture is shared both in an arts environment and on the street.

On his site viewmagazine.tv David has created projects, which will eventually be moved to a bespoke AIRS web site he is creating for the South Bank:

• Portraits
  
• AIRS -
• Pixels without borders -
• Obama 100 Days
• Is television killing the arts?

David, the recipient of international awards in video journalism and innovations in journalism, is also completing a PhD into future forms of the moving image and says of his residency: ‘This is truly exciting, not just for me but the videojournalism movement breaking into creative video and programme making.

I feel the the term videojournalism is underated. Its signage points to, at its basic level, "Video" and "Journalism". However as a visual language in our hyper-modal times it is influenced by many forms beyond the semiotics of the news construct.

I believe the erosion of arts-based programmes from our TV screens, the latest being The South Bank Show merits a deep need to reinvigorate arts reportage, and in this case build on the tradition of Southbank Centre’s public information, in this case using video.

As a deep reservoir of knowledge, arts and cultures it would be my wish to find new discourses for creating arts reportage, but also to work alongside other artists, and through the style of solo video journalism I have practiced for the last 16 years continue to develop styles and manners in which we can exploit new and digital media forms to both tell stories and create our own visual and literary footprints."



See: http://www.viewmagazine.tv
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/viewmagazine

Mind your health new journalists & video journalists

So your good cholesterol looks OK, but lets look at your what we call bad cholesterol, Mmmm!

Head now cocked to one side, trying to rationalise what "mmm" meant, the doctor came back with the other whammy: "I'm going to recommend a diet".

I'm a 175 pounds, 12.5 stones to us English folk, eat my greens and every Saturday ingratiate myself into an aerobic class as one of the three token males amongst forty women.

"What's going on?"

I make no secret about my eating habits to friends and family. Once where I might have been ribbed as "difficult", almost everyone understands that when I say "no" to my favourite "fried plantain and beans" or Palm oil ( whoah!), I mean "no".

In the last two years I have finally given up sugar and salt. My taste buds are screwed. About the only thing I can openly crave for is umami - the recently discovered fifth taste.

So hearing the doc say "diet" is like saying "pilots belt" in a car when I'm already strung down with a seat belt.

But the news was underscored by some good feedback. Whatever I was doing for the last couple of years was very good. The lapse has been lately.

Watch what you eat
I know its cause: travel and international food are at its root.

In South Africa recently my hosts mirthed over my decisions for water-based beverages rather than the alcoholic kind. In Egypt, I completely lost focus and went mad over fried falafels and koftas.

I have come to know my body and the minute it whiffs oily or sugar foods, it defies chemistry's last frontier and goes into fusion mode manufacturing great quantities of its own.

But this story underpins a wider issue of health amongst journalists and videojournalists in particular.

The latter first. In VJ world you're everything, so if you're after the exclusive or need to fight to get to the front of the pack and then double back for tracking interviews, you have to be fit.

And often that can involves a fast sprint or a fair good run with your equipment on your back.

Few Vjs will make a deal about it, but quietly after a shoot, they're shot mentally and physically.

And it's small wonder you've been prescribed statins, when the canteen thinks the EU butter mountain is yours to consume.

Healthy Days
In times, now almost a flicker of the past, London's journalism landmark Fleet street heaved to erstwhile banter in the pub after a shift.

It still does elsewhere, but not in the same vein many will tell you compared with the excess days of the pre-80s when drinking was part of the game and a bag of dripping fish and chips substantiated your journalism credentials.

Indeed them were good days, lost in translation as "what you didn't know, didn't hurt". Curries, Yeah; Spotted Dick, Yeah; a fag to line those lungs, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.

Not any more. Now there are new concerns to consider.

At Channel One TV, the company hired an in-house chiropractor to sort out videojournalists with back problems. With most of journalism being screen-based, there are health warnings for the amount of time taken staring at the screen and also maintaining the right posture.

The pressures and stress to complete a job are silent punishers. Missing that interview quickens the pulse. But such is the clamour to become a journalist that these issues can often be overlooked.

The so called "death march", the stock-in-trade for the computer world finds itself in journalism all the time.

"I haven't slept in five days", you can often here journalists gloating over their mocca.

"I'm a %$£&* insomina" says another, the truest badge of honour - which draws huge admiration.

The DIY culture has and will continue to yield less monitored practices that aren't part of the words and pictures that go on the screen. And social proofing confirms amongst managers that everything is hunkedoree.

"See Mary over there people, she's the first in and last out. We love Mary".

Fortunately Mary's also minding her greens.

Sky News goes HD -That was the week that was

Mayor Boris Johnson's Question Time with the former mayor Ken Livingstone watching proceedings

Sky News to go HD. It's a headline-in-waiting with a couple of months yet.

But a visit to Murdoch's enterprise revealed their behind-the-scenes plans, boldly going where no one else has gone before.

The implications for HD will be wide and significant.

The video I shot with a running commentary by one of Sky's longest serving and most senior execs is something I'm looking forward to editing and posting. You can see an opening clip of Sky News on viewmagazine.tv

Talking of viewmagazine, lots of things coming up that could be of interest.


The Seat of Power
On Wednesday, I was at the Comedy Club. Apologies, City Hall - London's seat of power.

We were a dawn away from one of the biggest hikes in transport fares, but if you closed your eyes and imagined the heat of a TV studio, at times you could be forgiven for thinking this was Comedy Central's Saturday Night Live.

Mayor Johnson, jutting jaw, gladiatorial seated-posture, his flop of hair occasionally sashayed back like a commercial for hair colour streaks, does one liners that would be the envy of most stand-ups.

Labour assembly members, more often than not were furious; one called him -an-economical-with-the-truth kinda guy.

The chair asked the Labour member to retract, who then duly repeated the word. Is City Hall qualified or absolute privilege for libel? In any case the Tories in their pin stripes were harrumphing it. "here, here".

I wrote copious notes for a sketch, but alas they are no where to be found - at the moment.

South Bank creativity
Steve Reich, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Music comes to the South Bank. And in a couple of Saturdays I hope to be producing something, ( we're yet to refine that) at the Royal Festival Hall, where he'll be playing and be interviewed afterwards.

The South Bank has this super wide screen to which I have expressed an interest to fill, so some creative work ahead.

My editor came back. Phew! the first few chapters are OK. She was more generous than that, but the hard work starts. Separating academic talk ( my research thesis - where I'm going to in 30 mins) and accessible book writing is Frankestinian.

Research for this is coming along, with visits due to Moscow, Serbia and South Africa.

So here we are, a week plus of research and presentations at the SMARTlab. It'll be great to see friends and swap our perennial stories of how utterly bushed we are.

Living HIstory - the royal Society

The two figures moved into a room and had tea whereupon one occassioned to the other about a theory. Why does not the apple falling from the tree fall sideways? Why does it fall straight down?

It must be attracted by the earth and the earth must be in some proportional way be attracted to the apple.

We know the story ( I have embellished it a bit) too well, but the actual recording of it along the lines above is a rare sight.

This was a meeting recorded by Stuksky and the great Sir Isaac Newton in the actual memoirs tucked away from public view, within the veins of The Royal Society.

The Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific academy and still going strong since its launch in 1660.

Yesterday a number of airs ( artists in residence) were given a quiet tour about this eminent club and building in Pall Mall, which included going into the vaults, where original minutes of the Royal Societies inauguration are to be found.

We were able to handle, with great care, the books and see seeds brought back by botanists from far off voyages ( which means the East) 350 years ago.

Lemn Sissay, Poet and artists in residence, will be creating a piece for the RS for an event next year.

I captured some images on my phone and will post some more soon.

Archive videojournalism programming - The Marchioness

Fifty one young party goers aboard a pleasure boat lost their lives.

One hundred and thirty people were on board as an almost 2000 ton dredger ran into the boat. There was no contingent emergency service on the Thames to help anyone.

An inquiry found the captain of the dredger, Douglas Henderson, had drunk six pints of beer that afternoon. There was no mayday, the lookout sighting the Bowbelle's path was described as poor.

The ensuing inquiry over weeks found that the coroner Dr Paul Knapman cut off the hands of 20 deceased to identify them.

The disaster came to be known as the Marchioness - the name of the pleasure boat.

I was the videojournalist from Channel One TV assigned to cover the inquiry proceedings and the ensuing package, working with a producer, we put together captured an event, like many other progs, that should not be forgotten.

As I write this I feel uncomfortable. This is not about videojournalism and most certainly not about me trying to tell you how wonderful videojournalism is. This is about remembrance. It's the reason we, particularly young people should be privy to images of the Great War, WWII, 911, 711, Holocaust, Marchioness and many many others.

I'll post the 15 min film later next week. I'll also see if I can make contact with Margaret Lockwood-Croft who lost her 26 year old son, Shaun, in the tragic event.

In the end it matters less how we capture images, so long as we can and I believe we should do our sensitive best to do so.

Back then, and it does seem like yesterday, there was no mass use of the Net or mobile phones.

In this context, thoughts should go to those who were caught up and affected by this - one of the most tragic stories on the Thames.

Response to Leftclick about videojournalism

This post on LEFTCLICK ( a blog) prompted this response from me. However LEFTCLICK has disabled links so I have carried the email reponse over here.

VIDEO Videojournalism -- new media and the activist milieu
Posted by Dave Riley at Monday, October 12, 2009

I had been researching the various online options in way of advancing one's political perspectives. So I moved from cinema verite to documentary making to journalism -- but to a new type of journalism : video journalism......


-----------------------------------------

Hello Dave

Nice comprehensive post. I certainly wouldn't call myself a star and wouldn never ever dare suggest I've exclusive rights on the form i.e. videojournalism.

Videojournalism is such an amorphous categorisation of a relatively new art, compared to say feature film making or television.

Our history in the UK is that a group of journalists, including myself with backgrounds working for network TV e.g. BBC (1987 onwards) and ABC News (94), were fortunate in the mid 90s via Rosenblum to launch the UK's first and only dedicated videojournalism station. It was owned by a newspaper.

Before us there were people shooting video by themselves, they just didn't call themselves VJs at the time.

At Channel One TV circa 94 when you're producing 540 stories a year, something happens. You begin to develop over the years new ideas about video form. Call it Gladwell's 10,000 hour (not a strict premise) towards expertise theory.

Today by my reckoning videojournalism can be video news, features, motion graphics and even integrated cinema-journalism - a form which is practised on my site viewmagazine.tv and has since been introduced into one of the world's leading single cultural arts centres The South Bank. They now recognise videojournalism as a new art form.

The previous poster Jerry Lazar captures the zeal of this VJ explosion, as do a number of other sites Mediastorm, and multimediashooter.

It's worth noting that whilst there are semiotic differences within the form, there will also be cultural schisms. Hollywood is different to UK or European film making as US television news' metronome is different to the UK. Videojournalism will also thrown up differences. It's not a one size fits all.

As an academic and one of the directors of the UK's broadcast journalism training council - UK wide body that bridges broadcasters with universities - the aforementioned has become increasingly evident.

Your quoting of Kiarostami also chimes here with a reply to a post from last year.

If you're planning on immersing yourself in the form look out for someone/an outfit who can introduce you to the diversity of the image in the moving form e.g. docs/tv, stills, vertical cutting, accelerated video and the rest.

I was in Beirut recently working with some superb young videojournalists. Hope this here helps seeing what's possible.

David
twitter/viewmagazine
Happy vjing :)

I am a videojournalist

THE VIDEOJOURNALIST MANTRA



I am a videojournalist.

I have been a professional videojournalist.

For 15 [x] years I have been what I am.

And five years before that touched the void of videojournalism.

Videojournalism is a misnomer - not so simply extemporised

It is the Bauhaus of Television News, the Impressionism of documentary, the intermediation of video art - designed visuals dancing within borders.

I am a videojournalist.

I have seen wars, been caught in conflict, filmed the unforgivable.

The frame is my palette - rarefied and sometimes saturated. It speaks a visual semiotic. It requires deciphering.

It is a closed system in an open prairie of data constantly craving attention, selective sifting, processing.

Experiential learning is my tutor; pedagogy is my release; the film my satisfaction; sharing, my reciprocity.

I am a videojournalist.

I go where my camera takes me. I prime my instincts- anticipated accidents- to the narrative.

What I am interested in is not just the event, but the construct, the movement image, the vertical cut, the phenomenology of the image.

Its strength is debunking the fixed agenda, its weakness is not realising its strength.

I am a videojournalist.

Shaped by diagonals and rhythm, perspective and tone, Dogme and theatre.

I am a videojournalist. I am an artist. An artist. A videojournalist. Words. Image. Frame. Videojournalism.


David Dunkley Gyimah started his career in 1987 across the BBC as a reporter, producer, presenter before becoming a videojournalist in 1994 producing 540 films a year. He is a senior journalism educator and artist in residence at the UK's prestigious and leading arts body, The South Bank Centre.

A week in media, the arts and academic Review

A week in media, the arts and academic Review

06.10 Saturday 10th October. David's log....
" After leaving my academic institution and introducing Masters students to blogs, I have now reverted to a student as I continue my exploratory journey along this space-time continuum.

Our Lt of the star ship SMART lab summed up our predicament in a piquant fashion: "Where as BAs and Masters students have a designed module to follow, you will be responsible for devising your own and then justifying it".

Whereupon, she also informed us that this was approach resembled an inductive epistemology.

Seven years back, I would have gurumped mildly under my breath for the evocation of such obtuse words. In my ear would ring the words: I AM A JOURNALIST. I AM A JOURNALIST. ( I AM A LECTURER TOO BUT) I use words sparingly and eschew this excessive verbal display.

Come to think of it, second para above, replace "piquant" with "clever" .

This odyssey has me marveling at what others are doing and many times drawing wry smiles or squinted eyes. In two hours time, instead of our obligatory RnR ro round of the week, we will be back in the simulator room. A two hour journey. ITS SATURDAY Grrrr

Today's lesson: "writing for your academic thesis" - the Kantian art of writing impartial, objective, attributed copy with the air of authority and chutzpah". That's my definition.

0.6.20 Saturday
The week has finished how it started, warp factor something. An intro semiotic of news was deconstructed. It can be such an elliptical thought process: "What is News?".

It holds steady in some areas, yet is steadily changing into a Humanoid-Klingon. In the background the voice of a Ferengi asks : "Where is the profit in this?"

Then it was media law, defamation, contempt and the rest. Yesterday when I listened to Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, Stalin's grandson, say he had started libel proceedings against a liberal Russian newspaper for defaming Stalin, I gestured: "In the UK, you cannot libel the dead".

The journalism that we once knew. Yes and I too once edited tape and two-machined an edit, is becoming a distance galaxy. Next week I'm sharing data with out Masters about writing for robots and google. Who would have thought?

But as the saying goes: " If you can't be found, you can't be read. You write for two audiences"


06.30
Midweek Aastrid a postdoctoral researcher from Norway sat me down for an interview. We had Caribbean food and in between the succulence of chicken she fired away. It would be unfair to disclose the nature of her interview, because its very uniqueness is why she is researching it in the first place and why her oversee ers will endorse its veracity.
But it involved some reflective questions, with me explaining an area of creativity within journalism discourse.


06.35
Lemn Sissay is to poetry what Hitchens is to journalism. It's energizing, provocative. If words could physically slay a man, then Lemn should carry a human board saying: "Don't speak to me or your dead".

I'd that morning had a shoot for a friend. Reciprocity. Berman, aka as Sitbonzo is a photographer extraordinaire. He needed me to document a shoot. I was more than willing to oblige. By 12.00 shooting vistas and perfectly formed species ie models, it was time to head off to the South Bank for National Poetry Live Day.

Did I tell you Lemn Sissay is extraordinary. In speaking to our artist in resident (AIR) coordinator Becky I have agreed I'll produce a site and accompanying films for the AIRS.

06.42
I have now lobotmised my brain: Here, you do Art, you do Journalism, and You, yes you.. were do you think you're going.. you do Academia and Research.

I'm told there is a mind melder soon to come in our midst who will help me collapse all into one.

Us plebeians cannot perform those feats where we seamlessly switch personalities. Who said you should anyway, other than I'd hate the idea of walking into a journalism class and start talking about hermeneutics.

But at some point soon I will be presenting to some at the South Bank where all three disciplines will collide. I have an idea of presenting on the day in a Pollacksion fashion".

David's log end++

Reasons why you should still blog - students et al

David uses his blog to reference more studied articles on viewmagazine.tv that change only periodically, thus still attracting google.

If all the hoopla is to be believed blogging is dead. Long live twitter.

Across the UK this week a myriad journalism courses will fire up to train a next generation of journalists. They do so in a climate that is both unpredictable and equally exciting.

It's often in the flux of uncertainty and confluence of new ideas that we see the emergence of real paradigms. It's a recurring feature of tech break throughs.

Even the great Guttenberg was not immune, neither was he alone in producing the greatest invention there ever was.

The basics will need to be addressed. Invariably when wemedia journalists talk about their new bag of goodies, they do so not at the expense of traditional practices, but as compass points that facilitate new finds.

Blogging to Discover
When the BBC Natural Science team discovered a new species of rat by equally using innovative explorative techniques we marvelled. Yes the product of their find was substantive and tangible, but their methods: infra-red cameras, doggedness, ambition and guile is a template for us all.

As many of us that will unveil the package for blogs, there will be many others, why I ask, deriding its use. But also disheartening is that for every student that starts a blog because they've been told to, after their module winds up, so the blog will be abandoned.

In many ways that's natural selection; nature at work sorting out those who believe in the power of blogging and those that feel it is an unnecessary burden.

The 15 minutes it's taking me to write this could be better spent elsewhere. A drink perhaps?

The blog is still a gift. Less rare now than it used to be 6 plus years ago, but it still has the power to propel you into a club. A club with no rules, but yields followers based around your ideas, the quality of their execution and your ability to engage.

So here are a few more, which no doubt have been discussed ad nausea elsewhere about why you should have and keep that blog. And if I sound unconvincing: Adam Westbrook, Dave Lee and Richard Brennan are just three reasons to continue.

1. The blog gives you visibility
2. Your blog allows you to hone your writing
3. Your blog allows you to try out new ideas
4. Your blog demonstrates your power of research
5. Your blog tells an editor how serious you are at writing
6. Your blog is a marketing tool. Your de facto CV
7. Your blog is a forum. Less a magic wand, but a space to experiment
8. Your blog revolves around ideas such as crowd sourcing, twitter, social networking et al
9. Your blog allows you to blog
10. Your blog could, at that interview, be the difference between getting that job.
11. Your blog says things about you not immediately apparent: time management, critical analyses and prioritising.
12 Your blog is you. It is the identikit used to judged you, form an opinion of yourself. Use it; keep it and nurture it wisely.

Tip of Technology entropy+twitter, Videojournalism

Augmented reality has arrived - on the iPhone. Icons that float geopositionally, proving a range of services Jack Bauer 24 would dream of.

Augmented reality is by no means new. Four years ago I spoke Adam Clayton Powell III about his work which has attracted mass attention, including the military.

His fascinating technology enables users to sync satellites to produce real time images.

With the iPhone we're not there yet, but the leap into star trek technology no longer looks as such.

Meanwhile the combination of outernet screens and iPhone apps means remote control takes on new meaning. As demonstrated by a friend and I hope to bring you video soon, he's been controlling his Mac via his IPhone 20 miles away

We're moving into new territory and the phone is fulfilling what experts declared would be a seismic next tech revolution.

But we also know there have been advances in public screens and gesture technology. The Screens featured on Apple Pros site no longer see that far fetched.

It all adds up. And the beneficiaries of this are many, but my attention is to content dissemination.

My work in videojournalism is steadily progressing and I can see rich seams of interest between these disciplines.

That much I will be telling a CEO group next month. The future of the future is the present said John McHale. At times it looks like we're overtaking the future.

Languages and semiotics are being remodelled and it will be a brave soul now that isn't experimenting in the "white heat" of moment.

Art collides with journalism which transfers entropy symmetrically to technology, which impacts on aesthetics ( sensorial definition)

It has never been a more fascinating time to be called a factualist ( journalist).

Tweeting to meet up cosily.

You dirty bunny. Bunny gets too cosy at London's Cosytweetup - a social gathering of twitters.

At the bar, Jason hunched over his drink, then faked that busy look staring into his drink as he drew for his phone. Yuk! One of those long evenings aheads.

But this being 2009, no need to suffer in silence. Why not tweet a friend.

"Anyone here that knows Retropmq?"

And that was it. Minutes later Jason was approached by a few other tweeters who he'd swapped ts with.

Sounds familiar?

Yesterday courtesy of my mate @Illico at Reuters I attended his joint friend Tweet get together cosytweetup.

It's a simple yet effective idea. Twitters who have built up a friendship albeit online finally meet as sentients and the obvious difference is as soon as you walk through the room, half a dozen people make you feel welcome.

Made some new friends yesterday. No need to stare into those drinks anymore. See #cosytweetup for more info