At this year’s OVC, pop culture hacker and video artist Jonathan McIntosh demonstrates how video remixing can be used as a critical media literacy tool for school kids.

Embedded in the 25,000 TV commercials children are subjected to every year are a set of specific social norms and values about gender roles. Behind the colorful pieces of plastic and sugar coated cereal on sale are deeply restricting attitudes about gender. Gradually, they teach kids of all genders what is expected, what is desirable and what is possible in their lives as adults.

So how can kids be empowered to not only understand their media spaces, but also talk back—responding to a hundred million dollar marketing machine in audiovisual terms? In his presentation, Jonathan will show how simple remix video tools can be used in classroom settings to deconstruct and creatively re-frame gendered TV commercials. Jonathan has been running educational remix workshops for students for several months. He’ll share how his students learned new media technology, video editing, fair-use rights and critical media literacy.

At last year’s OVC, Jonathan McIntosh premiered his video remix, Buffy vs. Edward, to a filled auditorium at NYU. Minutes after his 15 minute session finished, the remix went viral on YouTube and hasn’t let up since. It’s been viewed 3 million times, featured on NPR, Jezebel, Slate, the LA Times, Vanity Fair and the NY Post. The remix quickly reached cult status and was subtitled into 30 languages by fans from all over the world.

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the first Open Video Conference, the Webby nominated remix is being re-released in a special BitTorrent edition that includes all 30 subs, higher res video, better sound quality and deleted scenes that did not make the final cut. Here’s the torrent link and come to this year’s OVC (October 1-2) for the world-premiere of Jonathan’s next remix!

Vincent Moon is an guerrilla filmmaker from Paris whose obsessive love for music takes him around the world in pursuit of new sounds and images. He’s worked with many notable mainstream artists like Tom Jones, R.E.M. and Arcade Fire, and is best known for his Takeaway Shows—single-take field recordings of indie rock musicians for the French music community La Blogotheque. The direct and honest simplicity of these videos has since been imitated by a legion of copycats, but Moon’s style remains his own.

Moon has long been a believer in artistic freedom and sharing, and has employed Creative Commons licensing on his works for years. He’s also an expert at skipping the middle men—record labels, producers, and others who get between an artist and his art. At OVC, we’ll explore with Moon how far artists should go for “openness”—when can openness actually compromise artistic integrity? How can artists balance a respect for open technologies with a desire to present the best possible work? What challenges do filmmakers and others have in embracing open video?

Besides making music videos, Moon also makes experimental films and documentaries. He’ll share some of his work with us at the event. For a beautiful example, see Moon’s takeaway show with the Seattle folk quintet Fleet Foxes.

Join OVC this October 1-2 in New York City to engage in conversations about openness, sharing, and the connected artist.

For those in the NYC area, OVA will be hosting an informational meeting next Tuesday, August 10th from 7-8pm . We’ll share details on conference volunteer opportunities, take t-shirt sizes, and chat with NYU net scholar Gabriella Coleman. Plus, free pizza.

For more information, get in touch using our volunteer sign-up form. We’ll send exact details to everyone who signs up.

Jamie Wilkinson, internet culture researcher & software engineer, is joining the speaker lineup for this year’s Open Video Conference. While working at Rocketboom, Jamie co-created the Know Your Meme video series & Internet meme database, selected as one of TIME Magazine’s Top 50 websites of 2009. He is also a founding member of the Free Art & Technology (FAT) Lab, an open-source research & development group. In 2007 & 2008 Wilkinson taught the “Internet Famous” class in Parsons graduate design & technology program, where students’ grades depended on how much Internet traffic they can generate. His work has been featured on NBC, TIME, NYTimes, CNN, CurrentTV, MAKE, ArtNews and more.

Jamie and his friends at FAT and Graffiti Research Labs are pushing the boundaries of pop-culture and open technology with projects like Laser TAG , LED Throwies, and Grafitti Markup Language (GML). GML (“The new digital standard for tomorrow’s vandals”) is a file format for archiving motion-captured graffiti tags. In other words, a specific piece of graffiti can be captured in real time, stored as a file, and played back as a video visualization or even reproduced physically (with the help of a robot arm holding a marker). GML is an open format, so graffiti writers are invited to capture and share their own tags, and computer programmers are invited to create new applications and visualizations of the resulting data. The project aims to bring together two seemingly disparate communities that share an interest hacking systems, whether found in code or in the city.

Recent GRL projects are listed here. Check out Open Video Conference, this October 1-2, for a look into some cool new video projects.