1st Edition

Videology and Utopia Explorations in a New Medium

    196 Pages
    by Routledge

    188 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    Preface  Introduction  Part 1: The Use of Video in Cultural Animation  1. Towards Collective Writing  2. VT-TV in a Block of Flats: Maine-Monteparnasse  3. A Local Video Newsreel: Bourges  4. Regional Video: St Cyprien  Part 2: Films of Utopia and Utopias of Film  5. Waiters: Migration from the Role?  6. Women: Political Migrations  7. Schoolchildren: Immigration of the Trojan Horse  8. Young People: Hesitant Migrations  9. Marginal People: Emigration by Immersion  10. Televiewers: Immersion in the Flood of Images  11. Militants and TV: Censored Emergence  12. Steelworkers: Emergence of a Potential  Part 3: Process  13. Videologists: Some Other Practitioners  14. Videology.  Postface

    Biography

    Translated from the French and Edited by DIANA BURFIELD, Authors- ALFRED WILLENER, GUY MILLIARD, ALEX GANTY