Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the audiovisual methods and production used in the studies of Lithuanian cross-crafting heritage. It focuses on how studies of cross-crafting heritage constituted mostly on the audiovisual data affect the maintenance of this intangible heritage today.

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on the audiovisual methods and production used in the studies of Lithuanian cross-crafting heritage. Cross-crafting and its symbolism is included in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. As a synthesis of craftsmanship, artistry, faith and rituals this heritage is the research object of several disciplines such as ethnology, folklore, art history.

Researchers from different fields are using different audiovisual methods and production in the studies of this heritage depending on research problems and aspects. Ethnologists and folklorists focus their attention on the research of rituals, customs, and faith of the living tradition of cross-crafting while art historians explore an artistic expression of this heritage both in the past and present days. Audiovisual production serves as records of reality, as documentary evidence of the people, places, things, actions and events they depict. Their analysis is the extraction of such information. Audiovisual technology (photo, film, video) enables researchers to note down visual information in its native environment, store it for longer periods of time and reproduce it again at any time. Researchers also decipher the hidden messages of the visual material using other methods of interpretation.

It will be discussed which audiovisual methods are relevant for the ethnologists, folklorists or art historians? What direct and indirect information provided by audiovisual production is important to scholars from different fields? Moreover, how studies of cross-crafting heritage constituted mostly on the audiovisual data affect the maintenance of this intangible heritage today?