Pixel Art

Yesterday, during a discussion with my colleagues (university researchers) about digital interactive storytelling, one of my colleagues said that eventually we, the viewers of YouTube, will get tired of the pixely video clips and the whole trend will collapse. One other colleague and I were the only people in the room that did not believe this to be a realistic threat.

I tried, rather unsuccessfully, to point out that the whole (r)evolution of creating online content has just begun. And, the potential of YouTube isn’t about uploading pixely videos of dubious nature; it has to do with expression, identification, historical documentation, socialisation. In the end, I left the discussion feeling rather frustrated, only to trip over this wonderful example this morning about how YouTube can be used well.

Tyler Cowen of the Marginal Revolution blog wrote a post today nominating his favourite YouTube guitar clip. His nomination was:

Bola Sete (here), 4:13 min

He asked his readers to nominate their acoustic guitar favourites. Within a day, many brilliant and entertaining suggestions were submitted. The result is an selection of clips, old and new, written by a group of enthusiastic. What more could Tyler Cowen want as a response to his post? And, the readers of his blog also profit from this communication.

For all of you music lovers, here is a selection of the links submitted so far (be warned there are not only acoustic guitars but various “deviants” as well):

Stephane Wrembel (here), 9:08 min.
Andrés Segovia (here), 2:09 min
Andrés Segovia (here), 3:32 min
Andrés Segovia (here), 3:32 min
Paco Peña (here), 6:30 min
California Guitar Trio (here), 5:43 min
Norman Blake (here), 4:33 min
Steve Kaufman and Company (here), 3:59 min
Duruttin Column (here), 6:34 min
Stochelo Rosenberg (here), 2:57 min
Andy Mckee (here), 3:18 min
Freddy King (here), 2:46 min
Bireli Lagrene (here), 2:07 min
Joe Pass (here), 5:00 min
Johnny A (here), 2:57 min
Django Reinhardt (here), 3:51 min
George Van Eps (here), 5:29 min
Kaki King (here), 2:57 min
Jake Shimabukuro (here), 4:32 min
Justin King (here), 1:24 min
Justin King (here), 2:10 min
Carlos Paredes (here), 1:38 min
Mike Marshall and Sam Bush (here), 6:07 min
Christopher Wilke (here), 1:13 min
Eric Clapton (here), 5:05 min