The Dau media forum was a prototype I made for the Dau project. It was an attempt to create a conversation space around a media archive. I wanted to make the conversations primary, but allow a fluid show-and-tell using the archive materials.

In this forum, you could create conversations and watch media side-by-side. When you began watching a video, only the conversations that mentioned that video were shown. There was also a link to copy the current video id and timestamp into the "Reply" box. When you clicked a timestamp link mentioned in a conversation, it would scroll the media section of the page to that video and begin to play it. This is only a mockup, but the prototype I made worked.

I don't think this kind of forum would work for the Dau media project because people will use any and all media to communicate, not just the ones the authors have provided. Still, I like the idea of tailor-made spaces for conversation where a community creates whatever tools they need and those are integrated into their conversations. I also like the idea of a group interpreting a work "inside" the work itself, though RMO has demonstrated this much better, I think.