Museums as disseminators of niche knowledge: Universality in accessibility for all

Accessibility has faced several challenges within audiovisual translation Studies and gained great opportunities for its establishment as a methodologically and theoretically well-founded discipline. Initially conceived as a set of services and practices that provides access to audiovisual media content for persons with sensory impairment, today accessibility can be viewed as a concept involving more and more universality thanks to its contribution to the dissemination of audiovisual products on the topic of marginalisation. Against this theoretical backdrop, accessibility is scrutinised from the perspective of aesthetics of migration and minorities within the field of the visual arts in museum settings. These aesthetic narrative forms act as modalities that encourage the diffusion of ‘niche’ knowledge, where processes of translation and interpretation provide access to all knowledge as counter discourse. Within this framework, the ways in which language is used can be considered the beginning of a type of local grammar in English as lingua franca for interlingual translation and subtitling, both of which ensure access to knowledge for all citizens as a human rights principle and regardless of cultural and social differences. Accessibility is thus gaining momentum as an agent for the democratisation and transparency of information against media discourse distortions and oversimplifications

Banal or extraordinary? Pedagogical dilemmas in the new audiovisual environment

The article identifies some of the pedagogical challenges that arise in relation to technological, institutional and discursive changes in the production, circulation and reception of audiovisual texts which suggest a re-negotiation in the ways in which we value, conceptualise and engage with audiovisual texts. It relates these challenges to the specific pedagogic environment of British Film Studies by considering in detail the institutional context within which they operate. It focuses on specific issues of legitimisation as they arise when the belief in the 'extraordinary' nature of the film experience is replaced by an all-engulfing technology that enables the production and enjoyment of 'banal' works. It concludes by proposing a way in which such perceived 'banality' can be creatively recuperated within Film Studies

Mental tactility: the ascendance of writing in online management education

A qualitative study of online management education and the role of writing as an indicative measure of thinking and learning. Established educational models, such as Dale\u27s Cone of Experience, are expanded and redeveloped to illustrate the central role of writing as a critical thinking process which appears to be increasing, rather than decreasing, with the advent of online multimedia technology. In an environment of increasing reliance on audiovisual stimulus in online education, the authors contend that tertiary educators may witness an ascendance or re-emergence of writing as central to the academic experience. This may be both supply and demand driven. Drawing on a study of two undergraduate units in the Bachelor of Commerce and applying hermeneutics to develop challenging insights, the authors present a case for educators to remain conversant with the art of teaching writing, and to promote writing to improve educational outcomes. <br /

Digital Storytelling and History Lines: Community Engagement in a Master-Planned Development

The introduction of new media and information and communication technology enables a greater variety of formats and content beyond conventional texts in the application and discourse of public history projects. Multimedia and personalised content requires public historians and cultural community developers to grasp new skills and methods to make representations of and contributions to a collective community memory visible. This paper explores the challenge of broadening and reinvigorating the traditional role of the public historian working with communities via the facilitation, curation and mediation of digital content in order to foster creative expression in a residential urban development. It seeks to better understand the role of locally produced and locally relevant content, such as personal and community images and narratives, in the establishment of meaningful social networks of urban residents. The paper discusses the use of digital storytelling and outlines the development of a new community engagement application we call History Lines

Videogames as digital audiovisual performance

Video games are an ideal medium for creating a live-cinema experience because of their potential for cinematic narrative and open structure. "Performing digital media' as opposed to 'performing with digital media' or using digital media in performance, means to play the media like a musical instrument as much as possible. This is to be able to control and finely nuance the audiovisual and kinetic data stream through live manipulation and interaction on stage. This is, in a sense, to grant the performance an immediacy that belies remediation. This paper looks at recent instances in which the media itself is being performed and a similar audiovisual contract to that of cinema is being entered to by an audience. Thus, the performance or live event itself becomes a product of media technologies yet is indistinctly unified with them

Handmade films and artist-run labs. The chemical sites of film’s counterculture

This article addresses handmade films and especially artist-run labs as sites of hands-on film culture that reactivate moments and materials from media history. Drawing on existing research, discourses and discussions with contemporary experimental filmmakers affiliated with labs or practicing their work in relation to film lab infrastructure, we focus on these sites of creation, preservation and circulation of technical knowledge about analog film. But instead of reinforcing the binary of analog vs. digital, we argue that the various material practices from self-made apparatuses to photochemistry and film emulsions are ways of understanding the multiple materials and layered histories that define post-digital culture of film. This focus links our discussion with some themes in media archaeology (experimental media archaeology as a practice) and to current discussions about labs as arts and humanities infrastructure for collective project and practice-based methods