Us Now, the first release from the VODO project (www.vodo.net), looks at how 'user' participation could transform the way that countries are governed. It tells the stories of the online networks whose self-organising structures promise to change the fabric of government forever. Us Now follows the fate of Ebbsfleet United, a football club owned and run by its fans; Zopa, a bank in which everyone is the manager; and Couch Surfing, a vast online network whose members share their homes with strangers. 'Distribution of information has changed completely,' says filmmaker Ivo Gormley. 'To fight that change seems completely futile. VODO is a new way of making this type of distribution work for everyone. I like the idea that P2P is actually a bit more like what happened in the old days; telling stories around fires rather than some sort of cyber-terrorism.' US Now is released via VODO under a Creative Commons Sharealike Attribution Non-Commerical License.
Guantanamo naval base, "Gitmo", covers forty five square miles of Cuba inside an area under a controversial 'permanent lease' to the United States. Since 2002, the base has become synonymous with its detainment facilities for suspected terrorists. Although Barack Obama has given orders for the detention camp to be closed, the facilities remain open to this day.
Actual tape might be a thing of the past, but before P2P, mixtapes were the most popular way of sharing popular culture the world had known -- and once called the 'most widely practiced American art form'. We want to resuscitate the spirit of the mixtape for this VODO MIXTAPE series: compilations of our favourite shorts, the weird, the wild and the wonky, all brought together in a temporary and uncomfortable company.