I have been meaning to draw attention to an interesting project by J D Lasica and Marc Canter who are two instigators of the project.
It is now obvious to state that one of the impacts of the internet is that individuals with access to a computer can produce and quickly publish material for a global audience online. In the past people who wanted to self publish media faced technical and financial limitations. For instance to self publish in print an individual needed access to a print house and a means of distributing the published product. On a practical level for the vast majority of people, this was costly and time consuming process. Not only that once something was printed it had to be distributed also a time consuming and complex process. However self publishing online changed this leading to a phenomenal bubble of home grown creative projects. Many reject self published personal sites as mere vanity, as publications they are dismissed as the domestic trivia of the web cluttering server space with family photos and home movies. However Our media see these digital creations differently. They are endeavouring to enable people to place online their projects (including multimedia), in a repository which is free, easy to use and access.
Their mission statement describes the project as:
“Ourmedia is a global community and learning center where you can gain visibility for your works of personal media. We’ll host your media forever — for free.
Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, audio interviews, digital storytelling, children’s tales, Flash animations, student films, mash-ups — all kinds of digital works have begun to flourish as the Internet rises up alongside big media as a place where we’ll gather to inform, entertain and astound each other. “
The implications of this project for students and emerging artists are wonderful and really something we can only guess at. The big thing is that a site like this does provide a space for a community of people online who create online media to share their work and form informal networks. In sharing media productions that people use in their everyday life I am sure a grassroots movements and networks will shape themselves into clusters which in turn will influence the sort of digital artefacts that are produced and used by people.
