- Convenors:
-
Rossella Schillaci
(UT Austin Colab - Nova University of Lisbon, University of Texas at Austin)
Mark Westmoreland (Leiden University)
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- Start time:
- 26 March, 2021 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
How emerging technologies could expand methodological approaches for visual anthropological research? Session 2: Collaborative & Participatory Methods
Long Abstract:
Interactive documentaries have become established as a new field of practice within non-fiction storytelling (Aston, Gaudenzi, Rose, 2017). Documentary filmmakers have begun experimenting with virtual reality (VR) as a new experiential dimension that moves towards immersive forms of viewing (Rose 2018; Westmoreland 2020). These new immersive worlds substantially change the role of the audience. Viewers transform themselves into active participants or ‘users’ (Rose 2018), by wearing headsets that isolate them from the immediate world and immerse them into a 360° filmic experience, fully surrounded by image and sounds.
Furthermore, as claimed by general interactive documentary studies (Aston, Gaudenzi, Rose 2017), the team which produces a VR documentary is usually a multidisciplinary team, which link together filmmakers, digital technical professionals, community and subjects filmed. As such, the big promise with new media production of immersive and interactive docs is the potential to reconfigure the relationship between filmmakers, designers, subjects and viewers (Gaudenzi, 2017). The new relationship between the designer of user experience and viewers reconfigure the techniques that enables the viewer to be virtually immersed inside an unusual environment and thus approximate new forms of intimacy with the subjects (Stefanoff 2019).
Accordingly, this panel seeks contributors working with 360° video and computer-generated VR environments to investigate the affordances but also the constrains of immersive storytelling and thereby address possibilities to rethink the process of creation, especially with regard to the concepts of authorship, participation and agency for both the research subject and the viewer.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
How can we best understand authorship and locate agency in the context of collaborative art practices? This project explores creative process through art collaboration and co-curation of a digital art exhibition Inroads to creativity, building on the use of 360° video.
Paper long abstract:
In the Japanese context in particular, considerable importance is placed on relationships with other people and with material objects, and on the influences these have. For many contemporary artists in Japan, art events and the highly social, collaborative interactions they facilitate provide an important frame for creative production. At the same time, descriptions by artists themselves of their creative process also emphasize the importance of creating a solitary or private space, an interiority as it were, in and for the process of making. How then is authorship to be understood in the context of atmospheric creativity? My current research project engages this question through ethnographic research alongside artistic collaboration and the co-curation of a digital online exhibition using 360° video and photography. In moving beyond the conventional white-walled gallery space, 360° photography allows the artists to arrange their works in the inner and outer spaces they themselves have selected and captured. As they guide viewers through these spaces they can further distribute authorship, and share it with viewers, encouraging them to contemplate the experience of creativity itself and share the artists’ inroads to creativity.
Paper short abstract:
This paper questions the possibilities and limitations of a Rouchian 'shared anthropology' in immersive media production. Pulling from recent examples and scholarship on indigenous VR, this paper asks to what extent can ethnographers involve research participants in the production process - and why.
Paper long abstract:
As VR documentary production often requires collaboration between the makers and the contributors (Gaudenzi 2017), the Jean Rouch-inspired methods of 'shared anthropology' translate well to the medium. Much of 360 filming and VR production requires planning, staging and/or re-enacting with the contributors. While the potential to share the power in the production may create more ethical results, this paper questions to what extent (and why) subjects should be involved in the process.
I examine two recent examples of immersive co-creation: the 360 video project 'Gimme One' (2020) and my own headset-based AR installation 'Through the Wardrobe' (2019). I trace contributor involvement throughout these projects in planning, production, editing and distribution. While a Rouchian methodology of shared anthropology was at the core of both projects, the technical complexity of the hardware and software limited the involvement from participants.
Harry Silverlock, the producer of 'Gimme One', asked: 'As this is not household or accessible technology, what is the point of co-creation? We're making these pieces for white privileged audiences.' The exclusivity of the medium that limits audience and distribution appears to contradict the production ethos of 'breaking down barriers' between producers and contributors. This paper offers some solutions for the problems of distribution, especially now in a COVID-19 world.
Finally, this paper reflects on the 'indigenous media debates' of the 1990s and what we can learn for turning over the 360 camera, software and headset today. I examine recent initiatives and scholarship on 'indigenous VR' - its possibilities and its potential limitations.
Paper short abstract:
How does immersive 360-video enhance the ability to understand the Other? This paper aims to give insight into ongoing longterm research on attitudes towards refugees of war, in which participatory 360-video is used as a methodology for ethnographic enquiry with Syrians in Sweden, Turkey and Jordan.
Paper long abstract:
Over the past 5 years, 360-video left a mark on documentary festivals world and immersive technologies continue to provide new and challenging opportunities for participatory approaches. This paper describes and analyses the preliminary results of a 6-year research programme entitled 'Refugee Migration and Cities: Social Institutions, Political Governance and Integration in Jordan, Turkey and Sweden', led by Gothenburg University in collaboration with Malmö University, Sweden and Bogazici University in Turkey. The programme has implemented a participatory methodology based on the use of immersive 360-video technology for an ethnographic study on refugee lifeworlds, conducted in three different geographical locations. The study makes use of 360-video cameras to capture and document everyday life from the point of view of Syrian refugees in respectively Gothenburg, Sweden, Adana, Turkey and Irbid, Jordan. The qualitative data and ethnographic 360-video data generated from this ethnography, will inform content for a subsequent survey field experiment on immersive 360-video stories on empathy for refugees. The paper will provide the first preliminary conclusions on the ethnography carried out with Syrian refugees in Gothenburg, Sweden. The participatory 360-video work concentrates on creating 1st person perspectives, as well as 2nd and 3rd person perspectives, generated from fieldwork and participatory workshops. The output of the ethnography informs an experimental part of the programme, which asks how 360-video enhances the ability to understand the Other and reduces prejudices against refugees of war? Applying this collaborative data collection, the author reflects on various levels of agency and authorship of the research participants.