Search

In this archive piece I share some of the outcomes of my research conducted at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam in 2017–2018 as scholar in residence, focussing on the institution’s acquisition and d...

Cet article étudie comment l’analyse et la visualisation de caractéristiques sensorielles de l’image en mouvement pourraient contribuer à une reconstitution des archives audiovisuelles, et comment cela affecte comment les objets qui constituent ces archives acquièrent du sens. À ce but, l’article s’inspire du projet de recherche en cours The Sensory Moving Image Archive (SEMIA). Le point de départ du projet SEMIA était l’observation que les utilisateurs étaient contraints par des pratiques courantes de description archivistique qui donnent accès aux archives d’images en mouvement numérisées. En général les catalogues institutionnels ou les systèmes de gestion de contenu ont tendance à se servir de labels soi-disant ‘sémantiques’ : des mots-clés ou des tags qui facilitent l’identification d’entités qui figurent dans ou qui sont associés aux images en mouvement (par exemple personnages, lieux, dates, genres, etc.). Ces catégories sont produites ou manuellement (avec des résultats souvent fragmentaires) ou — comme c’est le cas de plus en plus souvent — avec des outils qui permettent de créer des métadonnées de manière automatisée automatiquement ou sémi-automatisée. Pourtant, la dépendance de descripteurs sémantiques implique une logique de recherche ciblée qui présuppose que les utilisateurs savent ce dont ils cherchent ; en outre, la recherche est profondément influencée par les cadres d’interprétation qui dirigent la création de catégories et de labels. Cela risque de poser des restrictions à ce que les utilisateurs peuvent trouver ou à comment ils peuvent établir des rapports entre des objets — et finalement aussi à comment ils peuvent utiliser ou réinterpréter le contenu des archives. Le projet SEMIA se propose d’étudier si et comment l’analyse visuelle et la visualisation de rapports sensoriels entre les objets pourraient contribuer à développer une alternative qui peut offrir une forme de navigation davantage explorative.Notre article propose une réflexion sur ce que cet effort comprend en termes d’attribution de sens dans le contexte des archives d’images en mouvement. Qu’est-ce qu’implique les transformations numériques pour la compréhension des objets et les rapports entre eux ? Comment les conditions de création d’un sens changent-ils à différents points dans le processus de l’analyse computationelle et du design d’interface ? Quels sont les mérites à la fois de la transformation des images et des archives et de nouvelles significations possibles qui se présentent en termes d’accès et réutilisation ? En étudiant ces questions, nous considérons aussi le rôle prospectif de la sérendipité dans la rencontre entre les utilisateurs et les objets de bases de données et de la création de sens, tout en nous penchant sur le prototype de l’outil que l’équipe scientifique de SEMIA est en ce moment en train de développer. The article explores how the analysis and visualization of sensory features in digitized moving images contributes towards the reconstitution of audiovisual archives, and how this affects how the objects and collections that make up those archives acquire meaning. In doing so, it takes inspiration from the ongoing research project The Sensory Moving Image Archive (SEMIA). SEMIA was born out of the observation that users, in accessing repositories of digitized moving images, are constrained by current practices of archival description. Institutional catalogues and collection management systems generally make use of so-called ‘semantic’ labels: keywords or other tags that serve to positively identify entities featured in or otherwise associated with specific items (e.g. people, locations, dates, genres, etc.). Those labels are either produced manually (as a result of which they are also highly fragmentary) or, increasingly, with tools for automatic or semi-automatic metadating. However, reliance on semantic descriptors implies a logic of targeted search, which presupposes that users know what they are looking for; moreover, searching is profoundly shaped by the interpretive frameworks that govern labelling. Arguably, this poses restrictions on what users can find or how they can relate archival objects to each other—but ultimately also in terms of how they can use or reinterpret the contents of archives. The SEMIA project team sets out to explore whether, and if so how, visual analysis and visualization of the sensory relations between items can help provide an alternative, affording more exploratory forms of browsing.In this article, we reflect on what this effort entails in terms of how meaning is assigned in the context of moving image archives. What do the different digital transformations that archival objects undergo entail in terms of how they are understood, also in relation to each other? How do the conditions for meaning production get shaped, at different points in the processes of computational analysis and interface design? What are the merits, both of the transformation of images and archives and of the attendant possibilities for new meaning being opened up, in terms of archival access and reuse? In exploring these questions, we work towards a consideration of the role of serendipity in how users encounter, and draw meaning from, database objects, in relation to the tool prototype the SEMIA team is currently developing.

The article discusses the results of the research project “Data-Driven Film History: A Demonstrator of EYE's Jean Desmet Collection” (2014–15). With a team of media scholars, archivists, and software developers, we conducted data-driven research to explore the affordances and pitfalls of digital methods for mining the resources of film archives and researching (early) cinema history. Working with the collection of cinema owner and distributor Jean Desmet, preserved at the EYE Filmmuseum, we used digital tools for the specific purpose of visualizing distribution networks and color patterns in film programs in the Netherlands during silent cinema's transitional years. The article discusses the lessons we learned from the project, both as scholars and as archivists. It opens with a brief introduction to the Desmet Collection and then considers our motivations, on one hand, for exploring digital research methods and, on the other, for choosing a particular set of tools. Subsequently, it discusses the mapping tool we developed as part of the project, reflecting in particular on the metadata issues it raised. In the final part of the article, we recount our experience of experimenting with tools for color analysis, paying particular attention to how the color patterns they generate might ultimately be combined with a data mapping and what sort of research possibilities this might in turn open up. The article demonstrates, among other things, how crucial it is for researchers to understand the provenance, affordances, and limitations of the data at their disposal and to make the discrepancies between them visible and transparent for others–including archivists.

Focusing on the specific case of cinema owner and film distributor Jean Desmet’s digitised business archive, this article discusses how computational approaches may facilitate the archive’s unlocking for researchers in the Dutch national research infrastructure – CLARIAH –Media Suite. To this end, the article considers previous computational approaches to film- related sources in New Cinema History research in a historical perspective, suggesting a novel approach which combines text mining and visual classification. The article argues that such a combination is necessary to yield results which reflect the archive’s material heterogeneity and complexity, and that it offers a new direction for computational approaches in New Cinema History and their conceptualisations of film-related materials as historical sources.

2012 marked the centenary of the British Board of Film Classification, created in 1912 as The British Board of Film Censors. This was celebrated by the BBFC and the British Film Institute with the ...

This article describes a study of the affordances of a group of information systems (so-called “tools”) that make it possible to do computer-mediated film analyses. Film scholars have started using these tools to annotate and analyze digital film in various ways, yet not much is presently known about the implications of using these computational tools for film scholarship. The authors argue that it is important that scholars discover and use these tools to understand and critically discuss how the systems influence the process of analysis and its results. These systems, which are created and used by different groups of media-related professionals and scholars from different disciplines, include, among others: professional video annotation tools, and computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (QDA). This study presents: (1) an inventory of the different types of existing tools, (2) a use case, where the authors tested these tools in a small film analysis project (specifically, the authors evaluated the tools ELAN and NVivo for the analysis of an excerpt of the silent semidocumentary film People on Sunday), and (3) a preliminary evaluation of the implications of using these tools for film analysis, to better understand and critically discuss their methodological impact in film and media studies. The authors found that, at this stage, the most significant methodological impact is the option of making the analytic procedures more explicit. Consequently, the tools ask users to conceptualize more precisely the methods they employ. While this capability might be disparaged as the “scientification” of a scholarly practice, we argue that the new digital tools encourage more self-reflection about scholarly work and multiply the levels of communication possible with peers, both informally and through scholarly publication.