Reanimating video and sound in research practices

Abstract

This chapter examines the implications for conceptualising, composing and structuring a postqualitative research project with video and sound. To do so, the authors challenge philosophically, politically and methodologically the mainstream ideas about how video in research works. The chapter starts with a brief detour to explore how the historical entanglement between art and science might inspire ways that postqualitative research could trouble the concept of representation in research, which lies constantly beneath the surface when video and sound technology is integrated into research practices. Demonstrated through a range of examples of research practices embracing moving images and sounds differently, this chapter offers a taste of what postqualitative research with sonic and visual technology could entail. Key questions are discussed, such as what comes into focus when paying attention to the material and the nonhuman through video and sound, and what ontological shift this technology allows or promotes. The role of sound is given special attention as an example of readjusting what is heard (and valued as worth hearing) when analysing research data. The aims of the chapter, with its examples and suggested activities, is to excite and inspire researchers to reanimate and re-imagine research with video and sound.

GoPro(blem)s and possibilities: Keeping the child human of colour in play in an interview

“…Thinking-with Neimanis (2017: 65), we embrace bodies as ‘neither stagnant, nor separate, nor zipped up in some kind of impermeable sac of skin’. Identity is dispersed, diffracted and materially threaded through the self, but it does not follow that identity is erased.…”

“…The posthuman child is always already in relation, a porous, ‘unzipped’, watery body (Neimanis, 2017) consisting of more-than-(Adult)human matter, drinking, leaking, weeping, pooing and always already connected with the other’. In agential realism, these ‘nesting’ relationships are not understood as geometrical but as topological manifolds – a ‘strange topology’ (Barad, 2007: 246).…”

Skriversubjektivitet i det multimodale danskfag: En posthuman undersøgelse af affekt, krop og materialitet i skriveundervisningen

“…Dette gør jeg ved først at føre centrale indsigter fra den postkvalitative metodologi videre ind i visuel uddannelsesforskning. Dernaest undersøger jeg hvordan postkvalitativ videografi kan forstyrre humanismens vanemaessige blik (Menning et al, 2021) og overvinde vores frygt for video (MacLure et al, 2010), dvs. frygten for at kreativ brug af video kan ødelaegge adskillelsen af subjekt og objekt, sandhed og fiktion.…”

“…Afslutningsvis samler jeg det i en haptisk videografi. Mit videografiske studie placerer sig i kølvandet af et voksende antal studier og forskere (de Freitas, 2015(de Freitas, , 2016Otterstad & Waterhouse, 2016;Ivinson & Renolds, 2016;Jones et al, 2010;Giorza, 2019;Caton, 2019;MacRae, 2019;Murris & Menning, 2019;Menning et al, 2021;MacRae & MacLure, 2021) som arbejder postkvalitativt med børn og elever i visuel forskning.…”

“…Ved at levendegøre kroppe-i-relation-til-materialitet over tid tilbyder video således et haptisk engagement der forstyrrer binariteten observation/deltagelse. At konceptualisere en relationel videometodologi udfordrer filosofisk, politisk og metodologisk de dominerende forståelser af hvordan video i forskning skal foregå (Menning et al, 2021). Fremfor standardbrugen af video til at 'indsamle' data er postkvalitative forskere interesserede i hvordan videoforskning "is materially implicated in the production of new knowledge and new kinds of knowers, attending to the unique qualities of digital nature of video data for how it mobilizes new social and cultural relations" (de Freitas, 2016, p. 554).…”