Visual Methodologies (VM - E-Journal)
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A Third Vision: Advocating Radical Scholarship
No full textIn this paper I explore the realities of the underrepresented presence of the black academic and how scholastic and societal forces affect being a black visual anthropologist. I assert that this dual pressure evokes Du Bois’ theory of double consciousness. I advocate that to reconcile this tension within the black scholar requires a radicalization of scholarship, where applied anthropology intersects with social justice. Finally, I discuss the value of revisiting the aesthetics and politics of Third Cinema as an example of radical work and what a modern articulation of such a movement might entail
Embodied Curation: Materials, Performance and the Generation of Knowledge
Get PDFIn “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1968), Walter Benjamin proposed that technologies of mechanical reproduction destroyed the aura of a work of art. Sanctified in a museum or on chapel walls, art retained a sense of inaccessibility and mystique that conferred as well a sort of elite privilege on its consumption. With the advent of mechanical reproduction, however, art could become popularized, and also politicized – a rebirth through which art could match the leveling of classes that Benjamin and his contemporaries envisioned. How do these sentiments translate in an increasingly digital age? Through a series of dialogues between an anthropologist and film curator, this essay is an inquiry into the meanings and significances of mechanical methods of research practice and performance in an era increasingly saturated with hype of the digital. Rather than speaking out against the digital, this essay is concerned with the perspectives for scholars, curators, and artists alike that are retained when one engages with the mechanical
Editorial intentions and viewer perceptions. An audiovisual methodology for studying film editing and eye movements.
Get PDFThis article presents an audio-visual methodology, VOSMET, designed to address activities of the craft of film editing, with a focus on the use of perception, and its implications. The methodology employs 13 different visual aspects and five different audio aspects, starting with video-recording observations of an editor, and ending with the analysis of eye-tracking data from film viewers. Craft research needs methodologies that address craft activities and cognitive approaches. Design practices share a similar need for reaching deeper understanding. It is neither established how film editors achieve perceptual precision in continuity editing in practice. The VOSMET methodology simultaneously captures bodily actions, utterances, software events, and keystrokes, along with the audiovisual material under processing, and uses graphics to distinguish between what takes place. The methodology also contributes by grasping what a film editor attends to, how this attention functions, as well as how perceptual factors are handled by the film editor. Finally, the methodology can evaluate editorial intentions against film viewer perceptions
Participatory Photography in Qualitative Research: A Methodological Review
Get PDFThis paper reviews the use of participatory photography in qualitative research, drawing on papers published between 1995 and 2011. The review sought to provide an overview of photographic methods used in research. Studies using Photovoice methodology were not included. The search identified 53 reports of empirical studies in which participants were asked to take photographs as part of a research process. The review drew on systematic review methodology but its objective was not to synthesise evidence, rather to generate a narrative critique of the use of photographic methods. Whilst the benefits of using participatory photography were clearly articulated in the literature, there was a lack of detailed reporting of how the methods were used and relatively little critical discussion of the limitations of photographic methods. Hence researchers may expending significant efforts to engage with visual methods through photography, but they may not be using photographic data to its best potential
Book Review: Visual, Narrative, and Creative Research Methods
No full textA review of the Dawn Mannay's Visual, Narrative, and Creative Research Methods
Making the visual invisible: exploring creative forms of dissemination that respect anonymity but retain impact
Get PDF Contemporary society is characterised by an occularcentric culture in which the visual image permeates our everyday lives. In social science research the visual has been presented as a tool to fight familiarity, engender participatory practice and provide the basis for reflexive qualitative inquiry. However, the visual images created by participants raise a number of questions in relation to ethical dissemination where concerns such as concealed identities and preserving anonymity become methodologically challenging. A preoccupation with anonymity can act as a resistance to discourses of the ethics of visibility, where participants want to be identified in their visual images; but, once research data are placed in the public domain or re-worked in the media the impact and interpretation of visual images can become extremely difficult to control. In response, this paper explores creative ways of disseminating research, which preserve the potential of visual inquiry while retaining ethical practice. The paper explores different ways of presenting visual research findings so that the affective power of the data production remains without the associated images, enabling the capacity to engage both cognitively and emotionally with an audience. Drawing on a project that adopted techniques of visual data production in the Welsh context, the paper presents the ways in which necessity can become the mother of ethical invention in visual social science research; and why it is sometimes necessary to make the visual invisible both for research participants and non-consenting others
Digital Ethnographic Techniques in Domestic Spaces: Notes on Methods and Ethics
Get PDFThis paper reflects on the opportunities provided by the use of novel digital ethnographic methods for gaining insights into the changing uses of broadband internet and digital media in everyday domestic spaces, as well as the new kinds of methodological and ethical issues that are raised by these techniques. It begins by describing the research context, rationale, and methodology for deploying mobile devices, digital ethnographic software, and visual tasks in domestic spaces, which sought to encourage and empower participants to actively produce and interpret visual data. In particular, we describe how these digital ethnographic techniques aimed to overcome some of the limitations of traditional media ethnography in domestic spaces. We go on to describe a number of ethical implications, both anticipated in the research design and emerging during the introduction and early period of household data collection within the longitudinal study. These included issues of gaining informed consent and participant burden, given the disruptive qualities of the mobile device, ethnographic software and visual tasks, and the creative and technical competence required to complete the research tasks. We conclude with a discussion of the benefits and challenges of these digital ethnographic techniques, and note how the research methods have undergone collaborative modification in response to the ethical challenges encountered by participants
Doing research together: creating spaces of collaboration with young people using visual methods
Get PDFThis paper shows how a visual method was used in a way that helped in creating spaces with participants for collaboration, participation, and engagement in the research process as well as in the construction and the embodiment of the self. This particular work is part of a wider ethnographic research project with Palestinian adolescents (ages 15-17) in their school context. The paper also highlights the journey of the researcher who positioned herself as part of the field and her interaction with the context and with participants, and the experiences, moments, and spaces that were co-constructed. The already existing school context and culture allowed for such spaces to emerge, and therefore research activities and events were embedded within and were created from within the context. Chosen moments of self and identity were mainly embodied through ‘expressive’ self-portraits using collage, but not limited to it. However, in this contribution our intention is not to focus on the visual product as a final expression of the self, but on the process of self-construction that was taking place continuously through different art processes and other moments over an extended period of time. We argue that a visual method in addition to opening up spaces of possibilities for collaboration, it also opened up spaces of possibilities for the self. We stress that the context composed of time, space, and audience are essential to what and how the self is embodied and performed
Beneficence and contemporary art: when aesthetic judgment meets ethical judgment
Get PDFThe National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007) establishes a working set of guidelines for the ethical conduct for research within Australian Universities. One of the primary principles relates to questions of “public good.” The question of public good comes under the principle of beneficence. Beneficence involves an ethical judgment about whether “the likely benefits of the research must justify any risks of harm or discomfort to the participants, to the wider community, or to both.” (National Statement, p. 13). The question of minimizing risk and discomfort becomes a key point of tension when artists become engaged in artistic research and their ‘research’ become subject to the guidelines of The National Statement. Driven by the esthetics of the sublime, the avant-garde impetus demands that art produces discomfort and brings its audience into crisis. For artists this discomfort and crisis is precisely art’s benefit, whilst for an ethics committee such discomfort may be deemed an unacceptable risk. Here-in lies a conflict between the notions of beneficence as defined by the code and those recognized by the artistic community. It raises the question: What is the value of art to a society if it becomes so comfortable that it no longer provokes artistic shock? Through an examination of the work of socially engaged artists Amy Spiers and Catherine Ryan, this paper examines how artists reconfigure the notion of beneficence as a principle that incorporates provocation and discomfort