[ISEA2008] Artist Talk: Daniel Peltz, Dennis Hlynsky & Chuan Khoo – Lepton and Call and Reponse: Web-based video collaboration tools and a case study in cross-cultural web-based video dialogue

Artist Statement

Call and Response, an international web-based pedagogic initiative that asks students from disparate media cultures to engage in a video dialogue.

The project currently involves media educators and students in Cameroon, Korea, France and the U.S. Call and Response is the first application of Lepton, a web-based, non-linear video editor and visualizer that opens up a space for new forms of trans-national, collaborative media production and exhibition. Lepton is being developed by Daniel Peltz and Dennis Hlynsky, Rhode Island School of Design [RISD] faculty members and media artists, in collaboration with Chuan Khoo, a Singaporean digital artist and faculty member at Nanyang Polytechnic, who is currently completing his MFA in Digital+Media at RISD.

Call and Response utilizes Lepton to extend the teaching of media making and to study and document how new networked media tools can be employed in an academic context. It explores the potential of a truly non-linear, multi-user video editor and the new forms of working, thinking and art-making this editor enables. Students are challenged to think beyond dominant, hierarchical models of video production and to consider themselves makers of meaning, operating within a dynamic, global media landscape. The project raises issues around the notions of culturally specific modes of media making, authorship and copyright, amongst other interests.

Hlynsky, Khoo and Peltz will present the Call and Response project and the development process of the Lepton video collaboration tools. All faculty partners in the Call and Response network are also design collaborators and the presenters will address the benefits and challenges of this multi-national design and development model.

  • Daniel Peltz (USA) is an artist and international educator.   danielpeltz.net
  • Dennis Hlynsky is a US-based artist and designer.   risd.edu/people/dennis-hlynsky
  • Chuan Khoo (Singapore)is an inter-disciplinary digital media artist, interaction designer and educator.