This PhD research is being undertaken at RMIT University in the Media Department, School of Applied Communication. The research on this blog forms part of my doctoral research and may be referred to in the final submission.
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Seth Keen: RMIT Media Research Portal
Research Interests
Innovative approaches towards the development of web technologies that facilitate interactive online video production and distribution. I am in candidature on a project-based PhD (Communication) at RMIT University, which examines online video practice. In my Masters research I analysed the effect the Internet is having on moving-image narratives. With a background of twelve years writing and directing television documentaries, I am interested in exploring new approaches towards the creation of documentary knowledge on the Internet. Currently, I am integrating design and media practices to develop web systems that facilitate documentary modes of communication online. I see this research into video and web technologies, as being used broadly, to develop teaching and learning methodologies for Media students and post-graduate researchers.
PhD (in candidature)
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Networked Environmental Portraiture: Developing audiovisual web systems that facilitate non-linear access to multiple perspectives on a documentary topic.
Argument: In this exegesis, I argue that the networked video projects produced explore and demonstrate that spatial composition and informal taxonomies in combination with the network provide a viable means to create multi linear and multiple perspective documentaries.
Abstract: In my documentary practice I focus on producing what I describe as a form of ‘environmental portraiture’. A term I borrow from visual arts, which is used loosely to describe the practice of documenting the relationship between people and place. In this practice, I identify over time a problem in the way that video content is used to portray multiple perspectives on a chosen topic. I detect issues around the constraints of linear narrative and discover solutions through an engagement with the affordances of the network. A practice-led inquiry that involves developing video systems that facilitate storage, indexing, access, navigation and varying modes of visual representation. Reflecting on the projects produced provides a broader theoretical perspective on the implications for documentary practice and the creation of documentary knowledge.
Research question: How can the affordances of the Internet be used to facilitate non-linear access to multiple perspectives on an environmental portrait?
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The Post Industrial Media (PIM) project that I am working on in collaboration with colleagues in the Media department at RMIT. Description from the PIM wiki:
Post industrial media is a term that we have adopted to refers to the changes in media production, use, consumption, distribution and design that are the consequence of distributed networks, digitisation, and soft social systems. The project specifically deals with media education in the tertiary sector and describes teaching and learning experiments and probes undertaken within the media program to develop appropriate curriculum content and methods for teaching graduates who intend to enter the post industrial media landscape.
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Master of Arts (by Thesis), Seth Keen
Media Arts and Production, University of Technology, Sydney (2005)
Video Chaos: Multilinear narrative structuration in New Media video practice.
Abstract: The presentation of the thesis comprises the Dissertation component (66%) along with the Practice Component and the Practice Report (33%). In this Video Chaos dissertation, through an examination of current video practices, I note an emerging trend towards disseminating audio-visual content simultaneously in the form of poly-sequential narrative structures. I argue that this is a significant development within the video medium, and that this is an effect of video new media artist-practitioners’ engagement with the relationships between art and technology. Two extensive case studies are investigated and, whilst a number of issues come to the fore in this research, exploring the issue of narrative structuration is the primary focus and exploration of this dissertation.
The written components can also be downloaded from the Australian Digital Theses Program.
