Visual Epidemic

Slow blogging, but much chapter writing – and that it important!

I am still working on this parkour chapter (deadline Friday). Tomorrow I will add the link analysis to the section describing the online space. But for now I will leave you with two reading suggestions and a little excerpt.

The Young and the Digital

Video Cultures: Media Technology and Everyday Creativity (esp the chapter on Self representation, identity, and visual style in a youth subculture).

and from the chapter-in-progress on value in digital remixing of parkour videos in opposition with valued aspects of parkour.

Swedish youth parkour films enact the identity of parkour runner through the skill portrayed in the run itself. Films by experienced parkour runners focus on the terminology of the tricks in the film’s description, or by enacting the tricks in a teaching/instructive capacity. Conversely, films by beginner runners often linguistically hedge the skill level in the description by labeling them ‘quickly made’ or ‘made when slippery outside’. Another marker of beginner versus more experienced parkour runners can be seen in the speed of the film. Less experienced runners, although possibly more experienced video editors, would slow down the motion of the trick and ask for commentary on the performance of the trick. One runner even entitled his video ‘What did I do wrong?’…

…Digital remixing in order to create videos which show the flow of the run, or a flow of tricks also proved to be an identifying marker of parkour runners. This is common both in amateur videos, but also in international, professionally made parkour YouTube videos. This is not to say that the Swedish youth are copying or mimicking international videos, rather that there seem to be implicit, agreed upon ways of editing together a video. Several informants in this case study termed these videos ‘flow films’, which may refer to a mediated edit of a central concept in parkour. Flow, in parkour, refers to the smoothness of transitions between moves. According to howtoparkour.net, the quality of the flow of a run is a marker of the runner’s skill. The videos, which used the term flow, were highly edited, thus it is unclear if the uploaders were referring to the flow between the edited tricks, or flow as a parkour aesthetic.

In: Uncategorized | tags: 60posts, parkour, youth, YouTube. | #