Kevin Kelly has a great post today on CT2 about vizuality, or visual literacy. Specifically, he writes about tools that are emerging to assist vizuality in regard to annotating and cross-referencing text and moving images.
The most intriguing thing he covers is an immensely popular Japanese video sharing site called Nico Nico Douga. Seeking to make a more integrated hybrid of Youtube and forums, the site offers users the ability to comment on videos while watching them. But rather than have the comments show up below the player, the text in superimposed right onto the video. If a video gets too crowded with text, old comments drop off to make room for new ones. A typical frame from a Nico Nico Douga video looks like this:
Sometimes the text obscures the image beyond recognition, this is called a "danmaku":
Although the site has millions of users and is the 6th most visited website in Japan, it has had little cross-over success, largely due to the fact that users have to sign up for an account before watching any videos, and the sign-up screen is all in Japanese. Kevin Kelly provided a helpful link to a short English language guide to the phenomenon on a blog called Metagold. You can also watch the video I pulled those stills from.
I'm sure there are more capable scholars than me thinking about where Nico Nico Douga fits into the visual history of the Far East, but I couldn't help but be reminded of Japanese printmaking. For one thing, most of the videos on the site are collaborative, as viewers make mash-up upon mash-up of their favorites. Printmaking is also a medium that lends itself collaboration of all kinds, from assembly-line production of early mass-market woodblock prints to posters of Hokusai's Wave selling in Hobby Lobby. But perhaps the most intriguing parallel is the text superimposed over the image by someone other than the artist. Many Japanese prints bear red stamps on near the edges of the image. These were not a part of the original image, rather they are marks of ownership added later by various collectors who have owned the piece over the years.
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