[PAM] the Perpetual Art Machine is a living archive of 21st century international video art featuring over 1000 videos created by more than 500 artists from 100 countries and is one of the fastest growing international community video art portals on the Internet today.

Created in December 2005 as a collaboration between the artists Lee Wells, Raphaele Shirley, Chris Borkowski and Aaron Miller.

[PAM] democratizes the once-closed curatorial process for the artist and viewerthrough an open submission policy, social tagging and touchscreen/keyword access during display.  Video artists can freely upload their own videos on the web, which are then chosen by users, thus virtually connecting the artist and viewer. 

[PAM] consists of two distinctive parts which work in tandem.

[PAM]’s online presence is established by a robust community web portal that provides free access and an assorted array of tools to post and discuss video art today. [PAM]’s collaborative tools promote the exploration in topics of video art, art-related news, cultural awareness and technological advancements in digital video and new media fields. Within fewer than 90 days, [PAM] gained over 500 Videos from over 300 registered artists from 50 countries. The website has had over 400,000 visitors and almost3, 000,000 hits so far, with an average of over 300 new visitors to our site daily and growing.

We have created a community through which artists, curators, journalists and collectors can exchange ideas, show and see work. Furthermore, the project is tapping into the latest social phenomena of tagging or *folksonomies, blogging and the integration of open source coding, which allows for almost instantaneous viral dissemination of information and video to the internet at large.

[PAM] installation

[PAM] takes the web process a step further by not only collecting low-resolution web-sized video for online review but also high resolution files from the artists. These are collected (including their keyword tagging) and integrated into an advanced computer maximized to employ a custom designed software and duel interactive touch screen system. This system allows for the display of up to 16 simultaneous high resolution video streams that are associated with a specific keywork. The viewer/user can then select from the group to view any of the views full-screen. [PAM] is also programmed with the ability to auto-curate during periods of no user interaction.

• A “folksonomy” is a collaboratively generated, open-ended labeling system that enables Internet users to categorize content such as Web pages, online photographs, video, and Web links. The freely chosen labels – called tags – help to improve search engine’s effectiveness because content is categorized using a familiar, accessible, and shared vocabulary. The labeling process is called tagging. Two widely cited examples of websites using folksonomic tagging are Flickr and del.icio.us.

[PAM] installation’s interactive element, a podium/kiosk that integrates the two touch screens, displays respectively keywords in sets of 50 and associated videos in a grid of 16. As viewers step up to the podium [PAM] reacts and invites them to participate and play with her system. This system, displaying full resolution broadcast quality video, allows the viewer to sort through unlimited amounts of video footage (currently 500 video artworks) at the touch of a finger.  The video grid is projected large format using a high powered video projector onto a facing screen. [PAM] installation recently premiered in a Beta format at the Scope New York Art Fair and was featured at the recent Scope Hamptons fair June 14-16, 2006.

To enhance the utilitarian aspects of both the web portal and the interactive installation [PAM] is technologically invested in database technologies related to content and asset management that strategically use aspects and concepts of tagging and folksonomies as a means to analyze 21st century tendencies in video art. Developed as an online research project and installation [PAM] has been collaborating with the cross referential museum research project called Steve.museum. Participating institutions include Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitain Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Denver Art Museum, Rubin Museum of Art and San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art to name a few.

[PAM] consists of several computers working in tandem. First, the website and FTP server runs ready to use open source server software where video content is submitted, displayed in a web page and tagged by the artists and visitors. The video content is then aggregated to our primary installation computer running our own proprietary application programmed in max/msp/jitter. A mysql database of tags is then transfer to our secondary computer that controls our keyword touch screen. These two computers control the [PAM] installation by running in tandem, where one computer makes selections out of the database and presents them on a touch-screen and issues further commands to the primary computer to display the video selections on a separate touch screen/projector in a running state ready for the user to explore. For a visual walk through of the process see our proof of concept video at: http://www.perpetualartmachine.com/