Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Jon Winet is a big fan of balloon drops. Next year, he plans on seeing two major balloon drops at national party conventions in Minneapolis and Denver. He finds the entire political process of elections — from campaigns and speeches to rallies and events, and everything else, including the voting and results — to be a highly visual and photogenic “blast.”
Winet, a professor of Intermedia in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, has followed U.S. presidential elections since the 1984 National Democratic Convention in San Francisco. He first covered events using photography to document candidates and voters, but now he captures elements of the events using digital cameras to take stills and record video to create “new media” art.
This election cycle, Winet’s canvas will include what he calls “the fourth screen.” He says the first three screens were film, television and computer. The fourth screen is distributed on mobile devices, like cell phones and iPods. It’s considered to be the next wave of the consumer cinematic experience.
Iowa Independent cameras caught him embedded in the front lines of the press corps at the Johnson County Democrats’ barbecue and then at a Rudy Giuliani speech on the University of Iowa campus. Last week, he sat down for an interview and to talk about his next project: The Electoral College.
Videos available below the fold.
Jon Winet’s “new media” art project about the democratic process can be found online at: http://www.america-the-globe.net/tec
Distribution and interactive elements of his work will be transmitted across a range of operating systems, software and video formats, and can be thought of as an ongoing and evolving journalistic diary of campaigns, elections and speeches.
The final product? It may include text and voice audio messages, mobile video or photos, web pages, gadgets, widgets, high-definition video projection and sound installation. Past work has used musical and sound-bite flourishes, bits of speeches and songs, digital and print photography, videography, interviews, a nonpartisan stance and a strong online presence.
The last presidential election was a year-long project in collaboration with Margaret Crane: America & The Globe. Visitors to that site should be sure to check out the enigmatic video clip entitled “DNC Flashback.”
Winet, who credits growing up in Europe with giving him “an insatiable appetite for American voice,” hears an “American voice” in interviews conducted with voters at political events. He said that cynics view the political process as a series of “entirely fabricated, scripted events,” but he sees “tremendous opportunities for getting a snapshot of what Americans are thinking about and what the issues are.”
As a professor, Winet has brought a “community-based practice component” to the U of Iowa’s Intermedia and time-based media program. Intermedia graduate students work on community projects such as designing a website or producing videos for nonprofit agencies.
One of his students, software developer Craig Dietrich, is also a collaborator on Winet’s new media examination of U.S. elections.
As part of the Intermedia Program’s community practicum, Dietrich designed the website for Iowa City Senior Center Television, something Winet described as a “very sophisticated video on-demand, multi-channel network.”
The ICSCTV page is packed with video choices while remaining easily navigated. Senior Center video producers Claire Shaw and Jean Lloyd Jones (pictured below with Winet) have a new media election project of their own, seen on the ICSCTV channel: “For President.”
Jon Winet, Claire Shaw and Jean Lloyd-Jones prepare for another candidate event at the University of Iowa.
Dietrich, an MFA candidate in Intermedia, said he believes that “in some sense the web browser fails as a means of being print media.” He thinks that websites should focus on navigational controls and display; that is, essentially, they should accent their abilities in four dimensions, instead of only two dimensions.
More from Dietrich can be found in Vectors, an online journal of culture and technology.
Dietrich and Winet will continue to work on The Electoral College for the next year. They’ll be finding ways to distribute photos, videos, writing and other media in new ways.
Following the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis next year, the project will be on display at the American University in Washington, D.C., starting in September 2008.
An installation element of Winet’s project is currently on display at the University of Iowa Museum of Art until Dec. 15.
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