Livestreaming experiments with The Hmm
Livestreaming experiments with The Hmm
How this livestream platform collaboration came to be
At the end of May 2020, after the first few months of the pandemic, and the increase of endless video streaming sessions for many people—whether for work or to keep in touch with loved ones—the first livestream event was held by The Hmm and Hackers & Designers.
The collaboration between The Hmm and H&D was originally planned as part of the BodyBuilding exhibition, where we wanted to do a bus tour from Amsterdam to Enschede, with presentations from eight artists, designers, and researchers taking place on the bus itself. This could not happen due to the pandemic, so instead of The Hmm being hosted on the bus, we decided to host The Hmm on the H&D livestream. For this event, we built our own livestream. The reason for this was two-fold: to figure out if there was a non-extractivist way to set up a videostream (eg. not relying on Zoom, Skype, Google Hangout, etc), as well as further re-adjusting the ways in which to make visible the BodyBuilding exhibition at Tetem, which had to be shut down early because of the pandemic restrictions.
As mentioned, for the occasion, H&D built up a custom video streaming website, leveraging existing infrastructure (MUX.com) but gaining more control on the overall video stream design and live chat. This initial ad-hoc prototype got refined more over the course of 2020 and was used for many other events since then, both by H&D and The Hmm. The code for the live stream, as well as information about how it was made, was made freely available on our H&D Github and we created a specific license for its use.
Building a more sustainable platform for The Hmm
add how it got to become the livestream for The Hmm...
Accessibility
The Hmm's livestream platform meets all web WAI-ARIA recommendations, is assistive-technology friendly, has been tested with default operating system screen-readers, and has a rigorous accessibility menu. One of the features of the livestream was that it could be experienced through 4 viewing modes that cater to different access needs and internet bandwidths: (1) varying qualities of video, (2) audio only, (3) thumbnails and a live transcript and (4) live transcript only. Participants onsite and online could all read the live captions and participate in the discussion through the online chat.
Resources
Left-over notes:
- https://live.thehmm.nl/
- usage documentation
- development documentation
- note updates that account for sustainability and accessibility