Artistic Participatory Video-Making for Science Engagement

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2023

Since the turn of the 2000s, the institution of the museum has become increasingly open and participatory, with an emphasis not only on engaging the public, but also on active involvement, community empowerment and shared knowledge creation. The resulting process, in which the museum adapts new methodologies to its toolkit, entails the introduction of participatory video. In this article, the author examines how participatory video can be used as a museum pedagogical and/or method of mediation. Through selected examples, she presents the methodology of participatory filmmaking and its adaptations in museums, analysing the project The Living Cultures: Decolonising Cultural Spaces (2020). She also presents two participatory filmmaking museum sessions in Hungary: the Participatory Filmmaking Camp of the Hungarian Jewish Museum (2015) and the MyStory pilot project of the Sopron Museum (2018).

International Journal of Film and Media Arts Vol. 5 No. 2 (2020): GEECT Special Issue: Mapping Artistic Research in Film , 2020

This article seeks to foster reflection on film pedagogy and research, encouraging academics to engage in artistic research and teaching methods. It specifically focuses on the video essay as a teaching and learning method, one that requires the willingness to take risks, but also, that can lead to a transformative experience in a still hierarchical educational system. The increasing openness to video essays in film journals shows an awareness of the way in which artistic research may contribute to decolonise academia. The practice of video essays leads to an inclusive, collaborative and polyphonic research environment, which dismantles the idea of a film canon. It contests the privileged position of the written ‘text’, when this is just understood as the written word. It also contributes to blurring the distance between the status of students and that of researchers. It invites them to assimilate work practices, curating and filmmaking, which sometimes happen simultaneously, curating through filmmaking. This article shares the example of the design of the video essay as a creative assessment method for two film modules in the MA Global Cinemas and the BA Creative Arts at SOAS, University of London. It stresses the importance of connecting research, practice and teaching, that is, the recursive study of film through film. It suggests that through making video essays class members become co-curators of the course, where learning is a multi-directional and collaborative experience.

International Journal of …, 2005

We describe the evolving learning design of a computer-based exercise called Director's Cut that challenges students to create their own video sequence from a set of clips we provide. The context is a film theory course where the community of educators have been interested in ...

Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2020

The version of record has been published and is available in Qualitative Research in Psychology, 17(2), 222-239. DOI: 10.1080/14780887.2018.1442694 In this article, we explore our experiences as researchers and participants in multimedia storytelling, an arts-informed method wherein we work with artists and aggrieved communities to speak back to dominant representations through film. In positioning ourselves as storytellers, we do research with rather than “on” or “for” participants, allowing us to connect in practical and affective ways as we co-create films. Drawing from dialogues about our workshop experiences, we outline four themes that make the storytelling space unique: reflexivity; structure and creativity; transitional space and reverberations; and fixing versus being/becoming with. We analyze our self-reflexive films on mind-body difference as “biomythographies,” as films that situate stories of ourselves in technological-temporal-spatial relations and that highlight how we make/experience change through creative research. Multimedia storytelling, we argue, allows us to enact reflexive creative praxis in a way that opens to difference rather than trying to fix it, forging an ethic we find all too rare in the neoliberal university.

2014

Making and maker communities are at the cutting edge of social and economic innovation; participatory media encompasses civic and interest driven ways to create and communicate. This session explores the different potentialities afforded by making and using digital media for young people across a range of learning contexts (formal, out of school, community based and informal). Focusing on dimensions of identity and agency, presentations will question how engaging in digitally mediated expressive and communicative practices offer ways of learning that challenge conventional school pedagogy and curriculum. It will offer analysis of different ways to support and construct learning communities and explore the significance of young peoples’ participation in a range of civic and social contexts. What Does Making and Participatory Media have to offer Learning Science Research? Whilst there has always been considerable interest in the diverse ways that young people might use forms of out of...

2021

We felt-and still feel-that this is an important issue, as certain forms of knowledge and knowledge generation appear to be disadvantaged in the current text-based system for publications. To get a direct impression of the tool and how it works, please visit our website: For more than 100 years film and video have been a crucial part of research in various fields like ethnography, sport science, and behavioral sciences, and now increasingly in the field of artistic and design research. With the rise of digitalization and video platforms, they start to unfold their potential as ways to generate new knowledge, share results, and challenge traditional, text-based forms of publication. Videos are present in every step of research, from video abstracts to data collection, data analysis, interpretation, publication, and the presentation of research. How will this scenario change the way we generate new knowledge? Can a video (or an annotated video) be the sole output of an academic investigation? How will it change the way we share and challenge new knowledge with other researchers and with the public? How can we build up trustworthiness within video-based research and how can we validate it? Research in fields such as art and design might be at the beginning of a long-term transformation from text-based to enhanced, multimedia practices of publication. The interplay of audiovisual material and language/text has already generated new formats such as video essays or annotated videos and will presumably lead to more formats that will reshape our thinking. Among others they will enable new forms of looking and reflecting on performative practices like theater, dance, and performance art, fostering particular modes of understanding tacit, embodied, and performative knowledges that may help research ers arrive at fresh insights. This calls for new ways of publishing that remix video and text, possibly altering hierarchies, turning video into the primary media and text into the secondary. Our intention was not only to develop a digital tool, but also to describe the entire research process under the premise that at the end an annotated video would be published. We hypothe-Research Video This model displays the research process as a sequence of transformed data (→ fig. 01). The original event (e.g. a performance) is transformed into a document (e.g., a video), which is transformed into a corpus of enriched data. Through analysis this big corpus is transformed into a selected corpus of reduced data, which then is the basis for the last transformation into a format of publication. Looking at the research process this way allowed us to be agnostic as to specific traditions of research: no matter what kind of data the research is dealing with, the underlying process stays the same. It also allowed us to trace back the impact of the anticipated output on every step of the transformation process. There are (at least) four transformations to be made (T1, T2, T3, T4) and we identified the according practices (→ fig. 02). We later added a fifth practice as it proved to be important in the use cases. Getting access to the field can be a crucial first step of research and requires a lot of sensibility and time. This book will roughly follow this sequence of practices in the model. Chapter 3 addresses with field access, Chapter 4 describes basic practices of video capture, and Chapter 5 covers important aspects of video editing. In Chapter 6 we present and discuss the practices of analyzing and reducing data and finally in Chapters 7, 8, and 9 we take a look at practices that lead to publication. In each of these chapters, we describe our solutions as found in applying the Research Video tool in the use cases. From Reader to Viewer? How will a person consume a Research Video? Of course, they will not be in the traditional role of a reader. On the other hand, they will not simply play the video as in a film performance. In fact the misunderstanding we most often encountered with the Research Video is the idea that the additional written information would display synchronously with the video, similar to subtitles. However, the amount of information necessary for scientific depth makes this impossible in principle, in our opinion. Reading or viewing the Research Video must therefore be thought of as a constant alternation between watching the video and reading the annotations.

Discourses of (De)Legitimization. Participatory Culture in Digital Context, 2018

This contribution sets out to aid a better understanding of the types and rules of participation that, as Jenkins (2006, p. 3) states, "none of us fully understand"-yet! Focusing on the context of interactive documentary, this chapter explores the different subprojects of the Highrise series, a "multi-and transmedia collaborative documentary experiment" (Cizek, 2012) about what life in high-rise buildings is like. Before the medium of documentary series is explored in depth, a short characterization of the main parts of Highrise will be provided, the scope of this chapter will be set and some central concepts will be clarified. Namely, these include the notion of "documentary" and "participation" as used in this chapter and their role in the context of strategies and procedures in legitimiz-ing discourses-at both the content level of documentary configurations and the meta-level of documentary practices. 'The Towers of the World and the World of Towers'-The Highrise Series As artist-in-residence at the National Film Board of Canada, in her project for the Challenge for Change Programme documentary, filmmaker Katerina Cizek modifies strategies from interventionist filmmaking and combines them with the logics of the so-called Web 2.0, open-space movement and social networking-online and offline. Launched in 2009, the Highrise series comprises six major digital audiovisual subprojects from local to global in scale, playing with different forms of interaction, participation and co-creation. Apart from the six main audiovisual projects analyzed in this contribution, Highrise has generated a total of more than 20 distinct subprojects, including mobile productions, live presentations, various activities on Flickr, performances, installations, exhibitions,

Revue d’Historiographie du Théâtre 4. Special Issue: Études théâtrales et humanités numériques, 2017

After a critical presentation of the state of the art in scholarly activities at the intersection of theatre and digital humanities, in Canada and elsewhere, this paper suggests how the two disciplines might work together to articulate and facilitate new modalities of knowledge production emerging in each individually. Its aim is to make explicit the values of the inventive knowledge production characteristic of design and performance, and to propose that theatre and digital humanities might best acknowledge and enable inventive knowledge by shifting their emphasis away from production-oriented prototyping and towards experimental prototyping, provotyping, and experience design. Du développement des outils au design expérimental Jusqu'à présent, les chercheurs travaillant à l'intersection des études théâtrales et des humanités numériques ont eu tendance à se lancer dans le développement d'outils électroniques, conçus pour faciliter deux grands modes de création de savoirs: à travers des recherches sur l'histoire du théâtre (y compris la numérisation et l'archivage de textes ou de traces de représentations), ou à travers l'aide à la création théâtrale (à savoir la facilitation et la documentation des processus de création). Dans les deux branches d'activité, l'accent a été mis sur le développement d'outils prêts à l'emploi, ou de prototypes prêts pour la mise en production, susceptibles d'être disséminés largement et appliqués à des contextes variés par toute sorte d'utilisateurs, avec leurs objectifs spécifiques. Dans d'autres mots, la recherche à l'intersection du théâtre et des humanités numériques a été orientée par la création de produits et de plateformes ; nous avons imité les entreprises commerciales de production de software avec notre ambition de créer des objets numériques qui puissent aider d'autres chercheurs à générer ou à transmettre des savoirs. Quoique les outils qui en ont résulté, ainsi que notre engagement critique avec leurs épistémologiques, ont été une réussite (au Canada, ils se comptent parmi les plus notables dans le champ des humanités numériques), les objectifs et les méthodes qui ont porté ce travail ont eu relativement peu d'impact sur les buts et les méthodes, établis ou émergents, soit des humanités numériques, soit des études théâtrales comme disciplines indépendantes. En me fondant sur les projets que je connais le mieux – principalement des projets canadiens dans les humanités numériques et mon propre Simulated Environment for Theatre (SET)-, je souhaite soutenir ici que les humanités numériques ont à offrir plus aux études théâtrales, et réciproquement. L'idée principale de cet article est que les réussites du projet SET, qui a su répondre aux tendances dominantes dans son domaine, sont moins intéressantes que les possibilités suggérées par ses échecs et ses à côtés, surtout dans le champ de la construction du savoir et des objets d'étude. Le théâtre et les humanités numériques pourraient aller plus loin et tirer plus de profit en mettant moins l'accent sur le prototypage orienté vers la production, et en se consacrant plus à un prototypage expérimental ou au « provotypage », pour faire plus de place, dans un champ dominé par des méthodes de recherche issues des sciences sociales ou des sciences exactes, à des méthodes plus propres aux sciences humaines et susceptibles créer, sans exclusive, des savoirs

New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses, 2014

Web 2.0 and social media have opened a new collaborative trend in interactive documentaries. The current assumption seems to be that if people send content to a factual website than the result is a collaborative documentary. This chapter challenges the simplistic assumption that “participation” is equal to User Generated Content (UGC). It starts by questioning what UGC is, where the term comes from, and what the implications are of such forms of collaboration in the context of interactive documentary praxis. It is claimed that UGC is just one way to participate in an interactive documentary, and that a variety of other options are possible, and are being explored (for example by Katerina Cizek in Highrise and by David Harris in Global Lives). It is also argued that UGC influences the database of the documentary, but not its structural form. In the last five years, a variety of documentary projects have experimented ways of involving users in content production: The Johnny Cash Project, Mapping Main Street, 6 Billion Others, Man with a Movie Camera: Global Remake, Life in a Day, One Day on Earth etc… are all projects that ask users to participate by adding photos, audio, text or video content. What those projects do not do is to extend collaboration to levels of collective governance that could change the interactive framework that defines the project itself. The political consequence of such emphasis on UGC is the assumption that the individual has a voice but should not have control on how it is used. Using content sent by people that have no control on how such material is finally used, like in the case of One Day on Earth, is potentially antithetic to the rhetoric of openness and democratic expression behind the participative culture movement. Depending on the “type of collaboration” demanded (user-testing ideas, crowdsourcing research material and content, commenting, editing existing footage, translating subtitles etc…), “who” is invited to participate (the people being portrayed in the documentary or the audience/users) and the “phase” that is influenced by such participation (pre-production, production and/or post-production) the participative documentary acquires a different form. There is no such thing as a typical or standard, participative documentary – there are logics and levels of participation that can be used in documentary production. The chapter ends by suggesting to analyse strategies of collaborations through three main questions: Who is invited to collaborate? When is this collaboration happening? And what is the participant allowed/empowered to do?

In a well-established domain of social anthropology, observational filmmakers employ digital video cameras and audiovisual editing as a research method to investigate human experience. They embrace qualities such as the material, sensory, aesthetic and ineffable. To review this visual method for art education, this article presents film extracts from the Childhood and Modernity project led by anthropologist David MacDougall. Indian children, 10–12 years of age, shot digital video material to create new knowledge about the circumstances of their lives. This keeps qualities that are difficult or impossible to put into words at the foreground of the research. The article also discusses how MacDougall prepared children to use a video camera for observational filmmaking by teaching specific skills that facilitate close observation and analysis through audiovisual means. In this way, MacDougall's methodology and methods present a challenge and an opportunity for both art education research and classroom teaching.

Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy, 2018

This article is a reflective text by an art curator interested in exploring the boundaries between video activism, spectatorship, and pedagogy. It proposes new ways of critically understanding the terms " activist, " " participation, " and " militancy " in the context of an expanded notion of the image and the role of the spectator. Emerging from field notes, the article narrates and shares the experiences of engaging students at workshops for " Between Broadcast – a project around activist videos, " held at at fine art academies and universities in Leipzig, Düsseldorf, and Bergamo. The practical aim of the workshops was to introduce and engage students with the subject of so-called activist video clips on YouTube. The students were asked to find, select, and discuss militant videos and, subsequently, to create a montage from them. The conceptual aim of the workshop was to reflect upon video spectatorship online and what that means, the agency of the spectator, and the possibilities of their active participation in the process of viewing. The outcomes of the workshops were the development of critical thinking of the students concerning the subjects of online video, digital empathy, their engagement with videos as individual viewers and as a collective, and the power of montage as a narrative and activist tool.

Qualitative Health Research, 2020

Filmmaking is a visual method that provides a unique opportunity for generating knowledge, but few studies have applied filmmaking in public health research. In this article, we introduce Collaborative Filmmaking as a public health research method, including a description of the six steps for implementation and an illustrative example from Nepal. Collaborative Filmmaking is an embodied, participatory, and visual research method in which participants are trained to create, analyze, and screen films to answer a research question. The method is useful for exploring sensitive health topics and providing nuanced insight into practices, relationships, and spaces that are difficult to capture using existing methods; however, its use requires close attention to ethical considerations. Building upon the trajectory of other visual and community-based research methods, Collaborative Filmmaking is valuable for gathering granular details and sensory data, co-analyzing data in partnership with participants, and producing participant-generated films that serve as powerful and authentic advocacy tools.

J Reading Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography, 2013

Participatory Video (PV) is a methodological tool to collect more meaningful and relevant data through the direct engagement of people in the research process, while at the same time drawing on accessible means of visual communication to represent the voices and perspectives of those involved. In this article, I first describe the process of PV using my experiences from an ongoing EU-funded research project and how I translate these experiences to teaching PV to Geography Masters students in a two day workshop. I then reflect on how the different stages/phases of PV contribute to giving Geography students an understanding of some of the challenges and opportunities of using PV, as well as wider learning on ethics and positionality that are critical to their research career development.