Hammer Channel: an open source bring-your-own-DAMS video archive

Tuesday, April 4th: 9:30am - 11:00am

Presenters:

Philip Leers

Project Manager, Digital Initiatives @ Hammer Museum

Louise Cole

Production Director @ Cogapp

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Paper Abstract

Hammer Channel presents over 1,000 recordings of programs, performances, and artist interviews from the last decade, and is a repository for more than 100 videos produced each year by the museum. The website presents the videos with features that encourage engagement with the content, such as full, searchable transcripts for every video, and a clipping tool that allows users to create and share their favorite moments.

Most videos in the archive are recordings of public programs held at the Hammer since 2005. They comprise a broad range of lectures and conversations featuring renowned artists, authors, musicians, scholars, and experts from a variety of fields. Compiling this wide-ranging collection together for the first time, the website offers primary resources germane to modern and contemporary art history, politics, social justice, architecture, ecology, economics, and the cultural history of Los Angeles. The conversations and topics recorded capture the zeitgeist of their moment, serving as a document of their time to future viewers.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Hammer Channel proves a new model for museums that want to organize, catalogue, and provide public access to large bodies of video content. The Hammer worked with digital agency, Cogapp, to architect an open-source solution. The project gives other institutions the opportunity to adopt a ‘bring-your-own DAMS’ solution to build their own video archive. 

We\’ll describe how the project was conceived and delivered, with particular focus on the features available and the opportunity for institutions to create their own video archive. 

Key questions we will address with our audience: 

Why a video archive? 
What is the mission of the archive?
How does it work? 
How was the design developed? 
What features are included? 
How can I use the open-source code to make a video archive for my institution? 

The archive preserves valuable content from the past in a public

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