GOVCOMORG FOUNDATION Issue Crawler Back-end Movie

IssueCrawler at the exhibition

The Issue Crawler is Web network location and visualization software for issue professionals. Enter URLs of organizations working in an issue area, and an issue network is returned. View issue mapping projects.

The Issue Crawler Back-End Movie is a demonstration of how the Issue Crawler works. The movie is also a narrative of a research project conducted with the Issue Crawler and allied tools. The movie focuses on the implications of global civil society's 'issue drift.' As global civil society and intergovernmental organizations move from issue to issue, from place to place and from forum to forum, the question is, do they remember what is happening on the ground?

The movie goes like this:

When you meet someone for the first time, they may ask you: Where are you from? Some people have a hard time answering that question. For example, someone may say, "I'm from all over the place." To avoid awkwardness, some people now ask a new question. "Where are you based?"

Issues have a similar awkwardness. The place where an issue is from may not be the place where the issue is now based. The issue may have drifted elsewhere -- to another global forum, for example.

Showing methods and mapping results, the Issue Crawler movie addresses the places of issues - where they are from, and where they are based. The most important question is whether the new base remembers where the issue is from.*

DVD

To view the movie in a higher quality full screen mode, please request the DVD. You also may download the large .wmv file (100mb), which has a higher resolution.

For contact details, see http://www.govcom.org/about_us.html.

STREAMING

In addition, there's a downloadable movie for your iPod (m4v, 39mb)

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Richard Rogers and the Govcom.org Foundation would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Center for Arts and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe, Germany. The movie was made by Crooked Line, with contributions by Creative Industries and Anderemedia, organizations all based in Amsterdam. With Govcom.org and Anderemedia, Sonologic (The Hague) provided the software, and Noortje Marres furnished the issue as well as significant findings. Marc Tuters produced the Issue Crawler exhibition ("The Places of Issues"), where the movie was first shown: "Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy," exhibition curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, March-October 2005, http://makingthingspublic.zkm.de/.

Exhibition catalogue: Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds.), Making Things Public, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.