Youth

If media arts is a new field, then youth media must be in its infancy. Fortunately, at NAMAC’s Taking Liberties Conference, the lines between old and new, young and … older were blurred, as cross-fertilization became the key to learning and growing.

What is evaluation worth to your organization, program, and community? The question of evaluation looms large for many youth media organizations. Increasingly, funders are asking and field practitioners want to know if youth media programs are "working." Practitioners ask, "Is our program on track and does it have a significant impact on our community?" In addition to tracking evaluation results for individual youth media programs, funders also look for bigger patterns across programs. They ask, "What are the best practices and challenges for effective program delivery for youth media organizations?" A knowledge network of youth media research and evaluation results provides guidance as the field addresses community need, professionalizes, and shapes a coherent identity.

This year, A Closer Look: Media Arts 2003 is devoted to youth media, a concept that encompasses a broad range of organizations that employ employ a dizzying array of media to serve youth for diverse purposes. This year s issue is a project of the Youth Media Initiative, a pioneering three-year project launched in 2003 by the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture to support this growing field and contribute to the growing knowledge base about youth media.

Introduction
The use of connective technology in art and community-based projects creates a new way for people to share and collaborate in projects over long distances. A number of technologies have been created for Internet media streaming. Many of these have made it possible to send video and audio cheaply, allowing people to use this technology in new ways. In this article I will briefly discuss some of the latest advancements in streaming technology. I will also discuss my own work in this technology, particularly in Internet-mediated network performance.