Definition
Videotexten is an image-based, artistic, client-server based communication software. It converts a text message into a dynamically generated animation consisting of photographs or short video sequences of urban communication.
Concept
A registered user logs on to videotexten.de and sends a text message. This text is stored in a database via server software. The server software sends a notification to the recipient, in which a link to videotexten.de appears. This link contains an assignment to the composed text message in the database. When the recipient calls up the link, the server software transmits a coded file that is translated by the client software into an animation consisting of photographs and video sequences. Thus, the image data is not transmitted until the message is called.
The file transmitted to the client is text-based and contains, for each image stored in the image database, information about the word or symbol depicted on it, the photographer, the location where the image was taken, as well as annotations by the photographer and control information for the client software. The text message is now converted into a sequence of photographs and video sequences for the recipient and played back. All meta information, such as shooting location and annotations, can be displayed at the end of the message. If a word in the text message is not stored in the image database, it is composed of individual letters. The image database is under construction, so in the future the number of compound words will decrease. It is maintained and monitored by a small editorial team to ensure appropriate artistic quality and to prevent possible misuse. Technical developments are also in progress. A videotext can then be sent by any registered user to any e-mail address/mobile number. In addition, own photos and videos of words can be added to the database via an editorial system.
History of origins
I developed an interest in the collage technique during my advanced art course at the Urspringschule near Ulm in 1993-1994. During the professional orientation phase after my community service, I began to create my first stop-motion animations from letters cut out of newspapers using an old Super8 camera. This was how my first moving collages were created. At the same time, I got to know the Lomo camera, which was very popular at the time. During my first internship, which I did in Heidelberg to prepare for my studies, I worked with computer-based animations for the first time.
During my subsequent multimedia studies at the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences (1998-2003), I combined the classic Lege-Trick technique and animation programs in my basic studies, e.g. with the help of a scanner, and thus created small animations for the subjects typography and AV design. At the same time as the design education, I also learned the basics of computer science, object-oriented programming and database design.It was then that I first thought about a project that would combine my previous areas of study and interest, the classic Lege Trick technique, lomography, interactivity and literature. Nevertheless, I decided on a thesis topic that would combine digital still images from urban situations into a computer animation. Over a period of three months, I photographed urban motifs with a digital camera, including typographies such as street signs and advertisements
On New Year's Eve 2007 in Berlin, I explained to an art historian friend my idea of creating a typographic-topological map combined with a dynamically generated animation. She encouraged me to tackle this project. The next day, I bought a handy digital camera at Alexanderplatz and started collecting the first words with it. Back in Munich, I expanded my word collection in everyday life, worked out a more detailed software specification and programmed the frontend with Macromedia Flash and the backend in PHP.
From an art historical point of view
The technique of collage is probably the artistic method and means of expression that, in many different variations, had the greatest influence on the art of the 20th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, the use of everyday objects and their fragments through gluing and artistic processing had the goal of giving the abstracting formal language of the cubists a higher character of reality. Pieces of patterned wallpaper, fabrics, printed letters and numbers from newspapers or posters - papiers collés - were the artistic material for Georges Braque's Still Life with Fruit and Bowl (1912), which is considered the first painting created using the collage technique. As a means of artistic expression, collage stands at the beginning of the classical avant-garde movements and was adapted by a wide variety of styles. In the First Manifesto of Futurism (1909), Filippo Tommaso Marinetti propagated faith in the present and a vision of a future of unimagined human heights in every respect. He was joined by painters who portrayed in their art the central themes of the urban society of the time, the big cities, their noise and speed in traffic and entertainment venues, and their inherent power. The Futurists were particularly interested in the visual impact of words and writing. They demanded a dissolution of valid syntax and traditional static typography. In this way, they exerted a strong influence on the Dadaists and their sound poems. The latter used, among other things, the collage technique as a means of expressing their anti-artistic attitude. With photomontage, Hannah Höch developed a special form of collage that, by combining various photographic motifs, creates new pictorial content that also involves a critical examination of reality.
On the first level of meaning, text messages composed by a sender and transmitted to a receiver are represented by means of videotexten made of words found and photographed in everyday life. The original meaning of the words, be they terms on street signs, billboards, construction sites, or parts of billboards, lose their everyday meaning, which is valid for every street participant, and are given an individual, personal meaning by the sender by means of videotexten, which is addressed exclusively to the one recipient. The general validity of the abstract signs for every participant of the urban everyday life is withdrawn and transformed into a new, personalized and only individually valid statement. Location information about the place where the used terms were found - as GPS data or through a written annotation by the photographer - lend the personal message a topographical assignment on a second level. The transmitted message thereby experiences a topographical map and reflects the ever larger, ever faster and ever more necessary mobility of our society. On a third level, the individual words contain stories about their origin and creation or about the associations made during the photographer's visual selection. These can be as much experiences during the photographing process as reasons for the selection or feelings and thoughts about the terms. Strung together, they lend an overarching, uncontrollable narrative to the text message, which is determined solely by the sender. Each impersonal word of the public world, valid for everyone, thus becomes not only the bearer of a single personal meaning conveyed by the sender in his text message, but is at the same time the bearer of a personal remark by the photographer.
Dr. Gundula Lang, 2009
Legal notices
According to § 2Abs. 2 UrHrg, intellectual creations, in particular works of literature, science, art, computer programs and database works are protected if the intellectual creation or artistic achievement has an appropriate level of creation, i.e. put simply, the work is creative enough or the individuality of the creator is expressed in the work.
videotexten.de combines science, art and cross-platform client-server based software into one artistic work, and is therefore the intellectual property of:
Heiko Stückle, Dipl.-Des. (FH)
Kerpener Straße 75
50937 Köln
herr-stueckle.de
Data from access by third parties is not possible. The sending of not expressly requested advertising and information materials through the use of contact data, which are disclosed in the context of fulfilling the imprint obligation pursuant to § 5 TMG, is hereby expressly prohibited. We expressly reserve the right to take legal action in the event of the unsolicited sending of advertising information, for example through spam mails (especially newsletters).
Privacy policy for the use of Google Analytics
Our website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc ("Google"). For this web analysis service, Google Analytics uses so-called "cookies", i.e. text files are stored on your computer, which in turn enable an analysis of your use of the website. The information generated by the cookie about your use of our website will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. If IP anonymization is activated on our website, your IP address will only be shortened beforehand by Google within the member states of the EU or in other contracting states of the Agreement on the European Economic Area. In a few exceptional cases, the full IP address may be transmitted to a Google server in the USA and then shortened there. Google can then evaluate your use of the website on the basis of this information, which is stored, in order to then provide a compilation of a report on the advertising website activities. Based on this report, Google can then also provide further services to the website provider related to website and internet usage. The IP address transmitted by your browser via Google Analytics will not be merged with other Google data. If this evaluation based on your visit to our site is not in your interest, you can prevent the storage or installation of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser software. At the same time, we would like to inform you that in this case you will not be able to use all functions of our website to their full extent.
By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above. Furthermore, you can prevent the collection of data generated by the cookie and related to your use of the website to Google, as well as the processing of this data by Google, by downloading and installing the browser plugin available under the following link:
http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de