PhD Research
This PhD research is being undertaken at RMIT University in the Media Department, School of Media and 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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PhD ABSTRACT (draft)
Networked Environmental Portraiture: Designing a framework for making a multilinear documentary on people and place.
In my documentary practice, I work with video to make ‘environmental portraits’. A term I borrow from Visual Arts, which is used loosely to describe documenting the engagement people have with place.
In this practice, I detected formal constraints in a linear narrative structure. The fixed nature of this narrative structure does not allow viewers to access separate shots and sequences. There is no option to create multiple relations between those parts. Content is discarded due to a set duration. Passive viewers are not able to actively engage in the process of shaping the narrative and the construction of meaning. Looking for an infrastructure that would facilitate the development of a multilinear documentary, I shifted my documentary practice onto the Internet.
It is important as a documentary-maker to create stories that allow viewers to learn as much as possible about a topic. In order to achieve this objective, flexibility is needed to portray a topic from multiple perspectives and form a variation of relationships between story parts. The learning experience for the viewer needs to be more active and participatory. There should be the potential for viewers as users to be able to manipulate content, as part of the process of constructing meaning.
I propose that the Internet provides a platform for making multilinear documentaries on people and place. The networked structure of the Internet in combination with a database and an interface enable users to navigate, access and arrange fragments of a narrative into varying combinations. With no set duration, a multilinear documentary as a type of archive enables multiple perspectives of an environmental portrait to be stored and presented to a user.
In this practice-based research a number of video sketches and content prototypes were produced iteratively to develop an interactive system and framework for making multilinear documentaries. The experience of making these works changed my approach towards scripting, recording and editing an environmental portrait. Reflecting on the shifts occurring in my own practice, I provide broader theoretical perspectives on the implications for documentary production and the creation of audiovisual knowledge.
Research Question: How can video and the Internet be used to create an interactive system that facilitates the production of a multilinear documentary on people and place?
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PhD Research and Projects:
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