Re: <nettime> discussing zoom fatigue

Thank you for the link, Geert. I thoroughly intrigued and perplexed my students with your piece about Web 2.0 in the context of their "love" of social media last week.

I have an anecdote from Halloween - holiday here, maybe not so much in parts of Europe. The street has once again become a site of great interest to us as restaurants in San Francisco, a deeply restaurant oriented city, struggle to survive Covid-led economic ruin by 'parkletting'. For those readers who may not know, the 'parklet' was an invention of Re-bar, a San Francisco-based collective, for International No Car Day. The first parklet appeared here - maybe elsehwere? too? since International No Car Day or Car Free Day is international - on Valencia Street in the late 90s. It was some artificial turf, a couple of aluminum lawn chairs, a fake palm tree, a boom box cd player (typical 90s tech) and a few hearty players in hawaiian shirts reading and smoking (before CA non-smoking laws) They had rented a parking space for the day. Soon after this performance, "parklets" began to be designed and went in front of interested cafes and restaurants as "extra space" - creating some discussion around homeless using them for beds, the "sit/lie" law which was voted in to deter residents sitting or lying on the public space of the sidewalk and so forth. In Covid times, blocking off streets to allow for socially-distanced dining and night-life has become the way. Valencia Street is traffick free from Thursday to Sunday now to help faltering businesses. We are an eminently resilient city so this gesture to the street is not only common, but an 'ethos' of San Francisco, as was the resistance to Sit/Lie, and the many legal/illegal seated readings and musical jams that protested it. Anyway, the parkletts go in now, some rather official and obnoxiously private dining spaces for yuppie restaurants we already avoided or must avoid due to boring clients and prices. But, Halloween is a holiday of the street and has been since it was started...when anarchists and punks did 'tricks' upon places they did not like; and dressed up and tossed eggs and ran away. Bivoulab.org set up a portable screen (now deliciously lightweight) and a small cubi projector (4 x 6") also deliciously simple and lightweight and portable, and we screened Japanese monster films, back lit, and ran the audio through the JBL speaker (also portable and lightweight). This was our gesture this year to the street. A cinema. And, what came to pass for myself was this incredible feeling of being home once we could sit and listen and when neighbors came around - all socially distanced - and I realized then and there that probably the most difficult and most missed part of our existence under Covid (after the thousands of deaths which could have be avoided in this country) was missing going to theatres --small or large--- to sit with other humans to watch a screen ===and the very unsatisfactory replacement of individuated seeing films on a home screen or on Zoom.

I was so moved to feel that kind of space again for even a few hours...the SOCIAL SPACE of cinema.

We all need to speak on these losses - so I am speaking of them; It's more than impressive the musicians getting on Zoom, and the performances, and the talks and panels that have gone on from the arts culture, which is also remarkably resilient, but there is simply no trade off at all for attending a film in a public venue. Not for me.

molly

molly hankwitz - she/her

http://bivoulab.org

On Mon, Nov 2, 2020 at 8:21 AM Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl> wrote:

Dear nettimers,

in the first half of July we had a very interesting dialogue here. I used parts of it in my ‘chorus’ essay that is out now on the Eurozine website. Here is the link:

https://www.eurozine.com/the-anatomy-of-zoom-fatigue/

Thanks so much to all, also to all readers. I wished it wasn’t going to be such a relevant topic, but now, at least here in Europe, in the midst of the second wave, it’s sadly, again, back to Zoom. I wish you all good luck with your Zoom and Teams meetings and classes, and stay safe! Let’s continue the critical exchange here, as video conferencing is now, for many of us, our way of life.

Best from Geert

On 3 Jul 2020, at 11:27 am, Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl> wrote:

Dear nettimers,

I suppose many of you who’re into teaching have had an intense and exhausting period of giving online classes.

I am trying to gather experiences of what’s now called ‘Zoom fatigue’. Of course this is by no means limited to Zoom and extends to Microsofts Teams and Skype, Google Classrooms etc. The experience also shows up in the cultural sector, in businesses and in the busy everyday or freelancers that have to speak to clients. We all made long hours.

My question is a strategic one. Should we, in the near future, refuse to give online classes and have management meetings like this? The IT management class is already promoting the ‘blended’ model, expecting a backlash of the excessive video conferencing hours of the past months.

Do you want to send me (or post here) some sentences or paragraph how, exactly, you experienced the move to video conferencing and the fatigue?

Is there something wrong with the user interface? Is the ‘live’ aspect important or should we rather return to pre-produced videos? As you all know, the relation (or tension) between ‘streaming’ and ‘online video’ is an old one.

Some of us also made remarkably positive experiences. When the people, the content and context is right, an online conference that matters turned out really interesting. There are so many things to discuss, new connections to be made, hearing from those who have been excluded from the dialogues and discourses so far. The ‘stack of crises’ may be distressing but the resistance, worldwide, also grows. Under what circumstances it is desirable to come together like this?

This much is clear. We need to gather and organize, mobilize. How should ‘our’ Zoom look like? One that is inspiring, very likely limited in time, more focussed dialogues, perhaps even voting, facilitating both consensus AND debate?

Is there a top limit to the use of video as community tool?

Best, Geert

ps. Here at the Institute of Network Cultures we made some experiences ourselves with the MoneyLab #8 event, organized by Aksioma in Ljubljana, originally scheduled for late March 2020, that was quickly turned into an 8 part lecture series: https://vimeo.com/networkcultures.

# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
# @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
# @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: