Videology and Utopia

Videology and Utopia

by Alfred Willener, Guy Milliard, Alex Ganty
Released June 2013
Publisher(s): Routledge
ISBN: 9781135036416

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Book description

When this book was originally published in 1976, video represented a new instrument, a new medium, and a new field of research with largely unrealized potential. The video-taperecorder was an addition to the technology of mass communications, a handy gadget for recording synchronized images and sound on magnetic tapes for storage or simultaneous playback. But the authors of this study look at it as also mirror, relay and catalyst, offering creative possibilities of exploration and criticism, of active analysis and transformation, of self-discovery and communication. They discern a liberating potential of video an antidote to the dominance of centralized TV in consumer society and ultimately a means towards the progressive social reappropriation of the media of communication.

The authors draw on their experience working with school-children, teenagers, and a variety of cultural, political and community groups to illustrate the versatility of video in approaching diverse situations of everyday life, whether from the viewpoint of ‘cultural animation’, sociological research, or a surrealistic game. These projects, and interviews with other practitioners, present here the basis for a first typology of styles and approaches in using video, and for a ‘videology’: a language, a set of concepts, and a theory comprehending process and praxis, image and action. This is a fascinating snapshot now, looking back at these early ideas.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Original Title Page
  6. Original Copyright Page
  7. Table of Contents
  8. Preface
  9. Introduction
  10. Part one The Use of Video in Cultural Animation
    1. 1 Towards Collective Writing
      1. First approaches to video
      2. Exploratory instrument and megaphone
      3. The ethno-videography of a subculture
    2. 2 VT-TV in a Block of Flats: Maine-Montparnasse
      1. The microsociological level
      2. The macrosociological level
      3. New frontiers in education?
    3. 3 A Local Video Newsreel: Bourges
      1. Two-way communication
      2. The problem of rhythm
      3. Audio-visual x-rays
    4. 4 Regional Video: ST Cyprien
      1. Saint-Cyprien-Plage
      2. Video with children and teenagers
      3. The contradictions of mini-TV
  11. Part two Films of Utopia and Utopias of Film
    1. 5 Waiters: Migration from the Role?
      1. Observation with the unaided eye
      2. Videography in three cafés
      3. The effect of observation
      4. Time and duration
      5. The specificity of video
      6. Migration from the role?
    2. 6 Women: Political Migrations
      1. Inclusion in and exclusion from the event
      2. Four portraits: TV analysed by VT
      3. Towards a creative reading
      4. Interviews: modification by video
      5. The exercise, the image, and awareness of role
    3. 7 Schoolchildren: Immigration of the Trojan Horse
      1. The field experiment, and the programme
      2. The course of the experiment
      3. The authoritarian syndrome
      4. A new view of the pupils
      5. Backfeed
      6. The authority of communication
    4. 8 Young People: Hesitant Migrations
      1. The university: video as provocation
      2. School: a video reading of TV
      3. Out-of-school activity: a game with video
    5. 9 Marginal People: Emigration by Immersion
      1. From ‘voyeurs’ to ‘viveurs’
      2. Video and the ‘abandoning centre’: support and witness
      3. Loudspeakers in the city
      4. Veiling and unveiling
    6. 10 Televiewers: Immersion in the Flood of Images
      1. A video model
      2. The exteriorized TV phenomenon
      3. On the inside of a video phenomenon
    7. 11 Militants and TV: Censored Emergence
      1. Aborted participation
      2. On participant-observation
    8. 12 Steelworkers: Emergence of a Potential
      1. From Taylorism to the exploration of potential
      2. Utopias of an industrial video
      3. Descriptive exploration with video
      4. Video-action in training
      5. Video-action in transformation
  12. Part three Process
    1. 13 Videologists: Some other Practitioners
      1. Contacts and taping
      2. Distribution and feedback
      3. Some videologies
    2. 14 Videology
      1. From emigration to emergence
      2. Moments of the process
      3. The living process
  13. Postface
  14. Notes
  15. Bibliography
  16. Index

Product information

  • Title: Videology and Utopia
  • Author(s): Alfred Willener, Guy Milliard, Alex Ganty
  • Release date: June 2013
  • Publisher(s): Routledge
  • ISBN: 9781135036416