puppet and puppeteer

Alone in bed, her black hair untied across her pillow, she laments the white snow piling up in it. The open-faced puppeteer moves with her, their gestures double, her loneliness is his loneliness.

In many forms of puppetry, the puppeteer isn’t visible. In Bunraku, a famous Japanese style of puppetry, three puppeteers visible on stage operate one puppet. Kuruma ningyo, a less well-known Japanese style, has only one puppeteer operating the puppet. The puppeteer sits on a cart and uses his legs to move the puppets legs, his left hand to control the puppet’s left hand, and his right hand to control the puppet’s right hand and head. The visible puppeteers are clothed in black, and often they were black masks. So, even when the puppeteer is visible, he or she is effaced as a person.

Nishikawa Koryu V, Hachioji kuruma ningy, Kurokami

Nishikawa Koryu V performed puppetry for the song Kurokami (Black Hair) using Hachioji kuruma ningyo at the Freer Gallery yesterday. His face was exposed as he controlled the puppet and moved with the puppet. The doubling of the puppet and the puppeteer was a beautiful aspect of the performance.

bleeding leads mass media

Shaw, Tomlinson, and Smith, executed in 1834

Crime and punishment has featured prominently in the rise of mass media. The first book published in Boston was A Wicked Man’s Portion (1675), a sermon that Increase Mather preached at the execution of two men for murder. About this time in England, the Ordinary (minister) of Newgate Prison began publishing accounts of prisoners who were executed. Printed execution sermons in early New England and the Ordinary’s Accounts in England became immensely popular news publications.

Broadsides — single page, highly current news reports — took news circulation to unprecedented heights. In England in 1849, the hangings of James Bloomfield Rush and of Maria and Frederick Manning each were reported in 2.5 million broadsheets rapidly distributed around the country.[1] That number amounts to about one broadsheet for every four persons ages 15 years old and older in England and Wales about that time.

In England about 1850, a news distributor, an industry veteran with more than twenty years of experience, explained how the business works:

There’s nothing beats a stunning good murder, after all. Why there was Rush [James Bloomfield Rush, executed in 1849 for two murders] — I lived on him for a month or more. When I commenced with Rush, I was 14 s. in debt for rent, and in less than fourteen days I astonished the wise men in the east by paying my landlord all I owed him. Since Dan’el Good [executed in 1842 for murdering his lover] there had been little or nothing doing in the murder line — no one could cap him — till Rush turned up a regular trump for us. Why I went down to Norwich expressly to work the execution. I worked my way down there with ‘a sorrowful lamentation’ of his own composing, which I’d got written by the blind man expressly for the occasion. On the morning of the execution we beat all the regular newspapers out of the field ; for we had the full, true, and particular account down, you see, by our own express [printing shop], and that can beat anything that ever they can publish; for we gets it printed several days afore it comes off [before the execution]; and [I] goes and stands with it right under the drop [the gallows]; and many’s the penny I’ve turned away when I’ve been asked for an account of the whole business before it happened. So you see, for herly [early] and correct hinformation [information], we can beat the Sun [a London newspaper] — aye, or the moon either, for the matter of that.[2]

Selling news to a mass market has long been a highly competitive business. Focusing on crime and punishment and having a pre-established story have been important competitive tactics. As this news distributor indicates, journalistic integrity has also been an important part of the business. The story should not be sold before the event happens.

The Newseum has recently re-opened. The news organizations that designed and funded the Newseum relocated it from Rosslyn, Virginia (about 4 miles from the U.S. Capitol) to a new, $450 million-dollar building about a half-mile from the U.S. Capitol. Being extremely close to the physical seat of the U.S. government apparently is crucial to news organizations’ representation of the history of the news.

The Newseum contains neither a gallows, gibbet, stocks, nor pillory. While the Newseum’s theater gives visitors a chance to Be a TV Reporter, it doesn’t put them in front of a bleeding body (Maddy and Tess, when you grow up may you never have to spread news by reading from a teleprompter!) The Newseum fails to report well the importance of crime and punishment in the history of the news.

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Read more:

Notes:

[1] Mayhew, Henry (1851), London Labour and the London Poor (London), vol. I, p. 284.

[2] Id. pp. 223-4.

[image] From broadsheet describing trial and execution of Charles Shaw, Richard Tomlinson, and Mary Smith, 1834. Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides. Courtesy of Special Collections Department, Harvard Law School Library.

success in online video sharing and social networking

Nico Nico Douga is a Japanese video sharing site that has rapidly gained popularity in Japan. Nico Nico Douga was launched in mid-December, 2006. A little more than a year later, in mid-January, 2008, the site had about 5 million users. As of October, 2007, the site’s Japanese users amounted to 27% of YouTube’s Japanese users, but Nico Nico Douga’s users had 43% greater video viewing time and 49% greater number of visits per month than YouTube’s Japanese users.[1] Nico Nico Douga has been astonishingly successful in rapidly acquiring a large number of relatively active users.

A signature feature of Nico Nico Douga is that users are able to add text comments within videos. Much research and analysis supports the value of integrating sensory modes of communication (but I’m still waiting for a show-and-tell mobile communicator). Other sites, however, have not been successful with this feature. Mojiti, one of several sites that has provided commenting within videos, disappeared. Hulu, an NBC-News Corp joint venture, is rumored to have purchased Mojiti, but Hulu does not currently offer commenting within videos. Part of the problem may be rights issues. Adding comments within a video might arguably be creating a derivative work, or be a violation of the creator’s moral right to the integrity of her or his video work. So perhaps the reason that Nico Nico Douga has successfully implemented in-video comments, and popular U.S. video sites have not, is that the U.S. has many more copyright lawyers than does Japan.

Nico Nico Douga’s revenue comes mainly from premium membership fees. The site, which requires users to register to view videos, offers free membership and premium membership. The number of free members granted access to the site is limited during the prime usage hours 7pm to 2am. Premium membership costs 525 yen (about 5 USD) per month. Premium membership gives the user unrestricted access time, more bandwidth, more storage, mobile services, and other additional customization options. Premium members account for only about 3% of total members. But premium membership fees account for about 67% of the site’s revenue. The remaining 33% of revenue comes roughly equally from banner ads and an affiliate program.[2] Nico Nico Douga’ business model thus contrasts sharply with video sites that emphasize video distribution and advertising.

Many video sites are currently struggling to generate ad revenue. YouTube’s U.S. (ad) revenue for 2008 was recently estimated at 90 million USD. Some estimates put total U.S. online video ad revenue for 2008 at 0.5 to 1.4 billion USD. Perhaps 50% of that ad revenue will be from display ads on video play pages, 40% from pre-roll video ads, and only 10% from in-video ads. Online video ads confront some significant challenges. Most fundamentally, unless online video ads work significantly differently from other types of traditional advertising, the size of the total ad market will be limited to perhaps 1.5% of GDP. In that scenario, online ad revenue will come only from winning tough competition for attention with traditional media.

Nico Nico Douga’s annualized revenue in January, 2008 amounted to about $25 million USD.[3] That’s not bad for a business in operation for a little over a year. Profitability for online video sharing and social networking sites is possible. But betting solely on advertising-supported business models probably isn’t a good idea.

Notes:

[1] These data are from Fumi Yamazaki’s review of Nico Nico Douga on Joi Ito’s Lab Blog. From the linked Nielsen/Netratings source (in Japanese), and other data I’ve inferred the specifications of the numbers.

[2] These figures are based on figures in Fumi Yamazaki’s review. See that review for underlying data and sources. For business model description, see Section IV of Tokyotronic’s review.

[3] Calculated by scaling up Y 101 million revenue in Nov. 07 with 86,000 premium members to 174,000 premium members in Jan. ’08.

post-modernism and real indignities of bird on Byrd

Richard Evelyn Byrd held the title Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy. He claimed the first North Pole flight in 1926. A year later, he flew non-stop across the Atlantic. He made that trans-Atlantic flight less than two months after Charles Lindbergh’s celebrated trans-Atlantic flight. Making clear that he could fly anywhere, Byrd flew over the South Pole in 1929. This Byrd subsequently received the U.S. Medal of Honor.

A statue of Byrd stands across from the main gate for Arlington National Cemetery. The base of the statue declares: “UPON THE BRIGHT GLOBE HE CARVED HIS SIGNATURE OF COURAGE.” Byrd’s head was recently despoiled with considerable bird excrement.

Richard Byrd, famous aviator and explorer
Post-modern thinkers like to think that human beings make the world with their representations. But don’t be deluded. To a bird, a statue of Byrd is just another rock.