Video Communication via Space Bridges
Source
A long text on the history of 'Space Bridges', by Franz Nahrada, a transcription from Episode 15 of his podcast series
Text
Franz Nahrada:
"In today's episode we will discuss the role of video communication in this context. This is by no means a trivial matter but rather its own language, with grammar that we must learn. While personal video communication has indeed experienced a leap forward in recent years - primarily driven by the push from the pandemic - with a platform like Zoom having around 300 million users in April 2020 and becoming a key player, it remains somewhat foreign and draining for many people. I would therefore like to focus today on what has fascinated me over time and tell a few stories to underscore the sensory-aesthetic and emotional components of video communication.
This broadcast is titled "From the Video Bridge to the Village University" and I want to point out that the Village University was previously a topic in one of our episodes. In the 15th episode it was about the vision of a new educational system, in which communities and local groups can find the right impulses from global offerings to expand local options. We spoke extensively back then about educational spaces and educational teams, and about the interrelationships between local innovation and local educational networking. The grammar and aesthetics of video communication must therefore also relate to the real space around the media, to the spatial and social setting. It's not about passive consumption, but about interactions. It's about bridging not just spatial but also cultural distances. Time and again my friends and I have experimented with formats and ideas, and it has become clear that what happens on the screen and projection is just as important as what surrounds it. We even started writing a pattern language for video communication. But I don't want to start at this systematic level, rather with some concrete stories that triggered all of this for me.
Video Stories
Where do I begin?
Perhaps with the story or even legend of Joseph Goldin? I tell this somewhat tragicomic story because it belongs so much to the early myths of video communication and very well combined exaggerated and illusory expectations and hopes for the technology, but ultimately had considerable impact...
So this Joseph Goldin was one of those glamorous figures of the Gorbachev era in the Soviet Union, where you never knew where idealism ended and entrepreneuring began. It was the mid-1980s, when the first signs of a thaw emerged with Gorbachev's election and the summit meeting with Reagan in Geneva, arousing hopes for an end to the Cold War between East and West. A visible sign of this was that Live Aid's synchronized concert took place not only in London's Wembley Stadium and in Philadelphia as well as in Sydney, but also in Moscow. There were not only live acts at these locations, but probably one of the biggest - if not the biggest - public viewings in history, a television program that likely reached almost 2 billion people back then, an enormously large number at the time. This was preceded by 3 years of experiments, and on the Soviet side Joseph Goldin was prominently involved from the start. He was fascinated by Mitsubishi's huge color screens and actually succeeded in having them replicated in the Soviet Union. There were regular events titled "Telemost" or "Space Bridge," but Goldin began focusing more on mass interaction. In April 1986 he convinced the Moscow city administration to allow passersby to speak live with two Soviet cosmonauts via video link to mark the anniversary of Gagarin's first flight into space. In an interview with Robert Gilman from the "In Context Magazine," he recounts that the idea of a Global Town Hall Meeting emerged on that day. It's a long quote, but I always found it fascinating and challenging:
<begin quote>
"Space Bridges over the last four years have been reduced to the exchange of a select few, with scripts prepared in advance, videos recorded, edited and later shown without any chance for spontaneity. That's not my story - it's someone else's story. Misunderstandings between the Soviet Union and the United States can only be cleared up through direct and spontaneous contacts between large groups of Russians and Americans. As long as communication does not take place spontaneously and between large groups, that's not my story."
"Gigantic video screens that could be used for bilateral communication between thousands of people could become a traditional element of the environment in every city and village, just like the public squares of the Greek city-states or the forums of the Roman Empire. The new feeling of 'distant proximity' experienced by millions of people around the world would create a new awareness and inevitably lead to a radical change in the way we deal with global problems."
"Imagine a small town connected to the Space Bridge terminal network. This would enable us to create a 'town as classroom' model for lifelong learning. The entire population of the town could participate in multilateral communication with other cities around the world. Truly creative scientists and artists would immediately be tempted to pool their resources to help ordinary residents transform themselves into world citizens. If a hundred Americans took on the role of Russians to master the Russian language within three weeks (or vice versa), that too would be an opportunity to evaluate the perceptions and misperceptions of one nation about itself and other nations. Or if several thousand people were involved in a live theatrical event staged by progressive directors, designers and actors - that would not just be routine entertainment, but an introduction of ordinary people to the zone of expanded awareness."
<end quote>
He continues with a vision of tapping hidden human potential in many areas such as accelerated learning methods, physical transformation through sport, meditation, spiritual healing, enhanced intuition and extrasensory perception, and more. But the potential of hidden human reserves has never been considered by strategic planners, global modelers or simple voters. Something must be done to break the vicious circle of fear and distrust, so that we can finally reorient technology from weapons to "food" and fundamentally change the entire paradigm of modern culture.
This is Joseph Goldin in his own words from 1987, the visionary Soviet promoter. In fact, Goldin was a major driving force behind projects and challenged his Western partners with experiments, with their reports already indicating that they had taken on a rather difficult person here. I see in him on the one hand almost naïve faith in the spontaneity of encounters, and on the other hand efforts by his partners to professionally moderate these encounters. Ultimately, the project detached from its initiator, as is easily understandable from the earlier interview. The video bridges were continued by professionals like Phil Donahue and Vladimir Pozner in television studios, and indeed became a factor in consciousness-raising that supported perestroika. And Goldin's story actually found a very ironic continuation: in his efforts to still prove his theory of spontaneous communication somewhere, somehow, he ended up contacting me among many others. It was John McConnell from the last broadcast who brought an AT&T videophone to Vienna in 1993, and Goldin unrelentingly called me from Los Angeles every day wanting me to redirect all the resources of the Global Village conference to his experiment. Fortunately, friends managed to transform the whole thing into a small "Global Tea Party" event on the fringe of the human rights conference, with the tiny videophone screen as the encounter space, also shielding me undisturbed to work on the first Global Village. We had mainly expanded professional applications of local networks over large distances with the resources of the telecom companies in the Prechtsaal of TU Vienna. Nevertheless, the ideas of also using the tools of visual communication for general dialogues and cultural understanding remained present in the back of my mind, so to speak - to use them in some way for universal dialogues.
Not long afterwards, in July 1993, a conference of Newcastle University titled "Telematics and Innovation" took place in Palma de Mallorca. It was probably one of the first relevant international conferences in Europe that I attended. I've already mentioned that it earned me a place on the jury of the Parc BIT competition the following year, but a presentation from this conference has always particularly stayed with me. A manager from British Telecom named Robert Broadbent presented the results of a pilot project in Inverness, Scotland for the introduction of telework. The company's double interest was on the one hand to sell "telework" as a telecom provider's product, and on the other hand to benefit itself as an employer from the new form of work. So a pilot project was conducted with their own operators from the telephone information service, who were given access to the necessary technology from home. I was already somewhat taken aback when I heard the unabashed neoliberal metaphor of the British labor world: one could regulate the utilization of labor power "like the flame on a gas stove," flexibly adjusted to the respective workload, if people had their home office. Lateness and absences would belong to the past, overhead costs for office space could be drastically reduced, even wages could decrease.
It was interesting that over the course of this project, the operators developed great dissatisfaction with the technically ISDN-based large format, so a dedicated ISDN channel was set up for internal video communication with female and male colleagues. From then on, according to the manager's claim, job satisfaction was high even if time for such gossip was contingent. I am very inclined to believe him in this, and the huge experiment in 2020 seemingly confirmed it.
I had a third key experience in November 1995 at a colloquium of the editorial office of the journal "Architecture and Behavior" at Monte Verita on the southern edge of Switzerland - about "The impact of information technology on the life and design of our cities". Nothing has convinced me more of the potentials of video communication than that evening lecture held by a speaker from the company Ascom - as we initially learned - who was mobility impaired, from his home in central Switzerland. I still vaguely remember how he had built small objects on a table in front of him, like in a miniature world, with which he skillfully built his story. This compellingness and focus would never have been possible if he had physically sat in front of us. From that moment on, I understood the importance of staging and perspective.
I could tell many other such stories from a time when nothing was taken for granted and everything had to be realized with only comparatively large technical effort. For example, my encounter with Guiseppe Silvi from Italy, the promoter of the "Piazza Telematica" at Habitat in Istanbul in 1996. At that time, it was still assumed that it would be impossible for all people to afford adequate personal communication opportunities. But beyond that, this digital isolation, or cocooning as it was later called, would have been an extremely problematic development. "The interaction between people can and must never be fully replaced by the interaction between the individual and technological devices that can establish contact with other parts of the 'global village' but do so at the expense of local participation and interest in one's own neighborhood, urban environment, social relations with fellow citizens and thus opportunities for independence and job creation. Therefore, it is also important in the urban context that telematics as a new tool to promote social encounters and contacts with public administration contributes. " [3] - It does this by restructuring a public space that is located in the heart of a city or urban district and accommodates both the old functions of gathering and sharing resources at the local level and the new forms of interactivity from and with the distance such as teleworking, telemedicine, e-commerce, lifelong learning via video walls and the new sustainable mobility services such as bike sharing, car sharing and coworking. [4].
Especially video communication, which actually requires the highest data throughput and the greatest bandwidth, is the lowest-threshold digital technology of all: this was the postulate of Bernd Eisinger, an - in my opinion - genius Austrian developer in the field of ambient assisted living, i.e. the use of digital technologies in the field of support for older and disabled people. Incidentally, he was the son of a teacher in the parallel class of my elementary school in Jedlesee. In the context of his project "Windows Wide Open", he demanded the use of HD televisions to provide older people with the best visual support in communicating with their environment. [5] yes.... those are some highlights
Kirchbach
All of this and much much more formed the basis when my friend Franz Steinwender - who always understood how to follow my ideas realistically - told me in early 2003 that he and his friends could acquire a large building in his home village of Kirchbach: namely the former courthouse, before jurisdiction was transferred to the district capital of Feldbach. He had convinced his friends of the idea of bringing their workplaces back to the village together and using the power of proximity for mutual strengthening, to create a center for culture and business with diverse services. I was, of course, enthusiastic about this idea: once again visions could be tested against reality. I encouraged Franz to think big and also create a space for education, a "flying classroom", to be there anywhere in the world where there is something to learn. This did not have to be a flying vehicle like the one that gave the charming novel by Erich Kästner its name, but it could simply be an interactive screen providing a window to everything and everyone that interests us. Franz was enthusiastic about the idea of also bringing the university to the village and convinced his partners to include a large education room in the building. Fortunately, some of his partners were very technically skilled, such as internet provider Peter Mayer, and ventured to purchase video conferencing equipment.
But all of this was embedded in an environment that represented much more than an education facility. Hans Jörg Matzer, who unfortunately died too young, the front man of the group wrote: "With a lot of our own and borrowed money, almost without public funding (only for the construction of the elevator did we receive a subsidy from the state of Styria) and with endless personal commitment, it was possible for us to turn the formerly almost dilapidated object into a jewel for the place. According to our plans, the KB5 house was to be more than just a property where you can rent offices. For us, the KB5 house was the 'Piazza Telematica' of Kirchbach's 'Global Village'.” And so it was: A perfect interplay of the various parts of the house made it possible, among other things, to accommodate guests and reflect on and digest what was offered in the cozily designed cellar of the house. Shortly after the opening, Franz Steinwender succeeded in convincing the University of Graz and broadcasting the lectures of the "Monday Academy" not only to the technically equipped technology centers but also to the heart of a village. In Kirchbach, the Monday Academy became a kind of social event; there were more visitors here than elsewhere. And this is where the work on the quality of communication began.
More than any other location, Kirchbach had the understanding from the very beginning that telepresence requires moderation. To bring the abundance of knowledge imparted sustainably into the village, a local personality is needed who stands at an equal level with the distant impetus-givers and often also takes on the function of a translator. In Kirchbach, this was mainly Prof. Dr. Michael Narodoslawsky from the Graz University of Technology, who lives nearby in Paldau and repeatedly made himself available as a moderator, especially when it came to the key issue of sustainability. Later there was a series of "Religion on Thursday" in exclusive cooperation with the theological faculty, and we even filmed with two camera crews how the theology professor Bucher (with a soft b) interacted in Graz and Pastor Wolfgang Pucher interacted in Kirchbach. It was not only about translating specialist language into everyday language, but also about guiding attention, aligning temporal perception and much more. As charming as Goldin's vision of the spontaneity of interaction may sound: if one really undertakes to connect two (or even more) distant locations, one must build many subtle bridges. We had to painfully experience this when we set up a connection to the adult education center Brigittenau for the "Long Night of Languages" in 2008. [6] Over the course of the evening, we lost the rapport, the relationships with each other. And you really noticed that we were trying to steer against it again and again to get into a dialogue, but the urban and rural populations quite tangibly live in two different worlds, rhythms, symbols and cultures. Yes, annd in different languages too. I was deeply ashamed of the Viennese ignorance and self-referentiality back then. But I also managed a positive counterexample. From 2000 to 2015 I was director of the Karolinenhof Hotel in Vienna, and once the opportunity arose to test one of those events there that was usually held in Kirchbach, the so-called Minimed of the Medical University of Graz. Here too, it was crucial to have a bridging person, in this case our local pharmacist Martin Mähr. In this small trial arrangement in March 2010, I was able to experience with some local residents what a difference it made to have such a reference person as an anchor, and so the actually interesting topic - it was about the microbiome - also triggered a lively discussion that would otherwise never have come about.
Back to Kirchbach and 2005. Not only was the Monday Academy a highlight of the first year - I also succeeded in obtaining permission for an interactive version of the "Days of Utopia" from Götzis in Vorarlberg to be broadcast to Kirchbach. The Kirchbachers sent a film team to the Bildungshaus Sankt Arbogast with the by then already experienced filmer Ossi Weiß and Rupert Paier as cameramen. Like a professional television broadcast, the team understood how not simply to transmit a lecture with slides, but really to capture the atmosphere, with close-ups from the audience that skillfully maintained attention and tension. This was real artistic work, only possible because Ossi had brought his director's stand and could use two camera operators. I also sometimes recalled my experience from Monte Verita, how important the dynamics of the image are to hold attention. We experience this today with Zoom too, how quickly attention tires if always the same shot is used. And something else became very clear: if presenters speak not to a camera but to real listeners, to an attentive audience, the quality and liveliness of their presentation increases greatly. However, the presence of camera operators was also somewhat disruptive - which is why other solutions were later sought and found.
But all this effort was worthwhile at least in the short term: over 700 visitors stormed the KB5 for this broadcast, so that several rooms in the house had to be networked at least for public viewing purposes to accommodate this influx.
Looking at the portfolio of events today, what happened in the following ten years at KB5 is truly impressive. .....
"When looking at the portfolio of events today, what has happened in KB5 over the last ten years is truly impressive. By broadcasting the reading of the Uzbek poet Yodgor Obid from KB5 to Oregon State University in the USA and by broadcasting "Bioversity" initiated by Bio Austria from the KB5 house to over 30 external locations throughout the German-speaking world, it was signaled that villages are not only consumers of culture and knowledge. They can also be the production site for outstanding, extraordinary and authentic contents. At least science has perceived this unique experiment: a diploma thesis and a doctoral dissertation by students of BOKU (Verena Peer and Florian Heiler) dealt with the KB5 house. The Institute for Systems Science, Innovation and Sustainability Research of KFU Graz enabled a self-organized internship of environmental science students in Kirchbach, where they dealt with the concept of the learning region and the idea of the global village as an opportunity for the further developmennt of rural communities, in particular the role of networks as a breeding ground for community development."
"At least four EU projects have disseminated the experiences from Kirchbach among like-minded people. And my work has generated countless ideas. For a while we seriously considered whether a new profession, the so-called regional information and innovation coaching, could emerge from this setting. We began working on a transdisciplinary model language for video communication."
"In January 2010, my association Labor GIVE organized a one-week workshop on the topic of video communication at the Hotel Karolinenhof with 16 participants from 11 countries titled "Streaming Sharing Learning". With the help of Andrius Kulikauskas' Mini Sodas network, we created our own database of interesting stories about the use of the medium under the title "My Video Story"[7]. I began systematically using the term "video bridge", alluding to Joseph Goldin's "Spacebridge", also and specifically to distinguish the project from the usual term video conference."
"The basic patterns that later became the basis for DorfUni slowly began to crystallize. An important basic pattern is to always consider video communication as a trigger and trigger for local communication as well as enabling a bridge between local communities. We had already developed this format in Kirchbach and many others imitated us. Central is the three-part structure of the event, namely an initial impulse lecture followed by a phase of refocusing, in which the video transmission is even consciously faded out or switched off..." "
(via email, June 2024)