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Audiovisual Culture Lecture Notes
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Lecture notes of 24 pages for the course Audio Visual Culture at RuG (-)
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Audio-Visual cultureCollege 1, forum
Week 1
(20 min te laat, binnengekomen bij life of pie evaluatie)
When it comes to analyzing a particular clip, we do not isolate these clips from one another.
We especially look at how all these different elements sit together with each other to give
meaning.
What is audiovisual culture?
Audiovisual culture encompasses the multitude of audiovisual texts- made up of sounds and
moving images- which represent the world around us and which shape our understanding
about the world
Audio visual texts are embedded within practices of production, consumption and
spectatorship as well as the technologies underpinning the process through which audio-
visual texts are recorded, communicated and distributed
Parts of audiovisual culture are:
Processes of representation and meaning making (textual approaches to AV culture)
Practices of production (forming the focus of production studies)
Practices of consumption and modes of spectatorship (forming the focus of an
audience)
Representation has typically been defined as referring to signs, symbols, images, portrayals,
depictions, likeness and substitutions we have to tended to think of representation as the
primary function that performs. Representation, therefore, conjured up notions of one thing
standing in for something else, and we are typically of one thing standing in for something
else, and we typically contrast this representation to reality, believing, for example, that
electronic image of a man on the tv screen is a portrayal, substitute or a reproduction of a
flesh and blood man out there in the world of empirical reality
Our focus will be on audiovisual texts as products of cultures and societies, which actively
construct the word around us. audio visual texts refer to films, tv programmes, and any
types of sounds and images from which we derive meaning and which lend themselves to
the process of interpretation.
As texts, audiovisual content relies on language, which consists of a system of representation
that is based on the organization of sounds and images in space and time
Audiovisual texts are discursive practices, which means that through their language or
system of representation they construct and circulate a coherent set of meanings about
different topics in our society
,According to bell hooks (1992:3) the ‘field of representation remains a place of struggle’,
wherein people and experiences that fall outside the status quo of ‘white supremacist
capitalist patriarchal values’ are positioned and subjected to dominant regimes of
representation.
As Stuart Hall argues, there is a connection between representation and domination
Building upon the premise that audiovisual media play a central role in processes of identity
formation, the course will offer students the tools to understand and critique the ways in
which audiovisual media perform ideological work by shaping dominant identities in our
societies or marginalizing specific social groups.
Thematically the course will focus on politics of identity and difference, which involve
“questioning how identities are produced and taken up through practices of representation”
Throughout the course we will argue against essentialist notions of identity. We will
approach identity as constituted not outside, but within representation.
Thus, audiovisual texts will not be considered as mirrors that reflect back what already
exists, but as forms of representation that constitute the subjects they represent.
The understanding of identity is as:
A social construction, pointing to the fact that identity is not innate, fixed, static, and
stable, but is rather a matter of becoming as well as being
Performative
Relational and defined by multiplicity and differences
Intersectional
Taking on board these approaches to understanding identity, in this course we will
encourage polysemic interpretations of audiovisual texts that aim to critique the role of
audiovisual media in process of identity formation.
When we read and interpret an AV text, we make an educated and systematic assessment of
the most likely interpretations that might be made of text:
Interpreting AV texts gives us insights into:
How people in specific cultures at particular times make sense of the world around
them
The variety of ways in which it is possible to interpret reality
Out positionality and the biases inherent to practices of meaning-making within a
culture
Textual analysis: method based on a close reading and critical examination of texts
performed with the aim to interpret and seek meaning
Basic components of audio visual texts:
Images
, Sounds
Time (editing)
Space (Framing)
Basic codes of audio visual texts:
Camera work
Lighting
Editing
Sound/music
Graphics
Mise-en-scene
Casting
Setting and costume
Make-up
Action
Dialogue
Ideological codes
Meaning in AV texts is constructed at three different levels:
1. Social reality codes
2. Representational codes
3. Ideological codes (norms and values that form an interpretative framework for the
social and representational codes)
Social codes:
Appearance
Dress
Make-up
Environment
Behavior
Speech
Gesture
Expression
Sound
Representational codes:
Camerawork
Lighting
Editing
Sound
Casting
Setting
Representational codes (also called technical codes)
Shape the narrative , character, conflict, action
Set of conventions that serve as representations of the real world
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