Patterns of Recollection
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Patterns of Recollection 1 2 Patterns of Recollection The Documentary Meets Digital Media Åke Walldius 3 ©Åke Walldius 2001 Aura Förlag, Stockholm Layout: Björn Thuresson, Åke Walldius Cover: Eva-Marie Wadman Cover illustrations: A collage of images by Charles-Joseph Minard, Étienne-Jules Marey, Humphrey Jennings, Glorianna Davenport & Cheryl Morse, Dick Idestam-Almquist, Christopher Alexander, Eva-Marie Wadman. See List of Figures for details. Spine image: Börje Walldius, Ola Svensson, and Åke Walldius, “Repeatability of a Computerized Method For Clinical Assessment of Sagittal Back Shape and Mobil- ity”, first presented at the Swedish Medical Association Annual Meeting, 1988. Printed in Sweden by Norstedts Tryckeri AB, Stockholm ISBN 91-628-5049-0 CID-142 4 Contents Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 9 Part 1: Conceptual Framework 15 User Orientation 16 User orientation as a basis for non-fiction film studies 16 Digital technologies that support instrumental user interaction 21 Contextual visualisation that support user navigation 25 Themes of exploration in documentaries on history 30 The principle of noncontradiction in media analysis 39 Patterns of Design in Built and Mediated Environments 42 Patterns as a means for conceptualisation 42 The language of design patterns 46 Design patterns in mediated reality 48 Genre as Embodiment of Design Patterns 52 A HCI perspective on the characteristics of genre 52 A Cinema studies perspective on the evolution of genres 55 Genre as manifestation of rhetorical and narrational patterns 58 Modes of representation and the concept of genre 64 Tracing the reception of generic patterns 69 Notes to Part 1 79 5 Part 2: Examples 97 Grounds for selecting examples 98 Humphrey Jennings and the British Documentary Movement 100 Context - the Griersonian community of documentary filmmakers 100 Theme and form – a surrealistic tapestry of human behaviour 105 Shared understanding of the Jennings films 108 Formal patterns in A DIARY FOR T IMOTHY and other films by Jennings 111 Design patterns as an analytical tool 114 Contemporary Documentaries on the Threshold of Digital Media 117 Personal diary, a broadcast – ERIK, A SELFWILLED LIFE 117 Biography of a scientist, a broadcast and a CD-ROM – THE DAY A FTER T RINITY 120 Archive of persuasive imagery, film on CD-ROM – OUR SECRET CENTURY 125 Chronicle of a community, a broadcast and a website – NERDS 2.0.1 128 Evolving Documentaries in the Tradition of Surrealism 133 Principles for shared creative documentation 133 Editing assistants and decentralised public service programming 134 THE A UTOMATIST STORYTELLING SYSTEM and its applications 136 Construction of thematic coherence in the AUTOMATIST system 140 Adaptability as a formal characteristic of the AUTOMATIST system 144 Thematic patterns in CONTOUR 146 Thematic patterns in A RANDOM W ALK 151 Formal patterns in A RANDOM W ALK and CONTOUR 156 6 Shared 3D Workplace Exhibitions as Sites for Community Meetings 160 Introduction 160 The problem of fragmented images of change in workplace studies 161 Workplace studies that build on participatory documentation 162 Shared 3D environments for community meetings and documentation 163 Design workshops for training and planning 165 A framework for documenting design issues 168 Issues for further research during the projects last year 174 Notes to Part 2 175 Part 3: Discussion 183 Interdisciplinary Prospects for Pattern-Informed Analysis 184 Problems of current discourses on digital media 184 Interdisciplinary requirements 187 Interdisciplinarity as overlap 191 Interdisciplinary applicability 193 Chronography as a Manifestation of the Pattern Methodology 228 Chronophotography as a movement capturing technique 229 Chronophotography as a pattern rendering technique 235 Analysis of space-time patterns in the contents of media networks 242 Future directions 250 Notes to Part 3 253 Summary 260 Appendices 261 1. Overview of Candidate Patterns 261 2. List of Links to Non-Fiction Films on the Web 278 List of Figures 280 References 282 Index 292 7 Acknowledgments In this thesis I have tried to cross the border between Cinema Studies and Compu- ter Science, in both directions. To the extent I have succeeded, I have many to thank. My supervisor Jan Olsson has encouraged my interdisciplinary efforts con- sistently by giving sensitive yet firm guidance through the wealth of directions within current Cinema Studies. My colleagues in the doctoral seminar at the De- partment of Cinema Studies have contributed with valuable comments and insights from a broad range of perspectives. Specifically, I want to thank Björn Thuresson who has shared the advantageous environment at the Centre for User Oriented IT Design (CID), supported my ideas-in-the-making, and given this book its graphic design. The one to thank for letting me share the creative settings of information technology design research is Yngve Sundblad who helped initiate the formation of CID, became its manager, and accepted my ongoing studies as grounds for a doctoral project at the Centre. Among the colleagues at the Centre, I specifically want to thank Sören Lenman who has pointed me to the design pattern methodol- ogy and introduced me to media environments in which handy tools for commu- nity dialogues are now emerging. Ambjörn Naeve has contributed with thought- provoking historical perspectives on geometry and patterns, Björn Eiderbäck has generously supplied technical insights in many helpful conversation and Eva-Marie Wadman has helped turn my image-ideas into real images. I also want to thank Tom Erickson for his inspiring critique and helpful hints. Decisive research grants have generously been provided by Holger and Thyra Lauritzens Minnesfond and by the Centre for User Oriented IT Design. Since my studies were started a long time ago, I also want to thank some of those who have supported individual research projects throughout the years, projects from which I have gained invaluable experience. Leif Furhammar and Jan Odhnoff got me started looking for passages between Cinema Studies and Compu- ter Science. Lena Gonäs and Ernst Hollander helped me question the gates I found. Magnus Rehn, Torbjörn Lind, Filis Sigala, Gunnar Fond, and Lena Söderlind helped me navigate the new, local media landscapes encountered. And Ted Weisberg man- aged much of the practical experimentation and interpretation of early results. Last but not least, I want to thank my wife Ylva and my son Theo for the patience they have shown this somewhat longer-than-planned project. Now is the time to make up for it. 8 Introduction When writing about documentary film, problems of definition inevitably arise. Choosing to investigate the meeting of such a diversified cultural phenomenon as documentaries together with an even more nebulous social and technological en- tity, that of digital media, accentuates the problems of linguistic and normative frameworks. However, since the beginning of the eighties the literature on non- fiction film has grown considerably, complementing ethnographic and journalistic contributions with more general theoretical and historiographical perspectives. In the turbulent world of information-technology engineering, the understanding of the dynamic properties of electronic documents is being extended through em- pirical research focused on the preconditions for communication as a means for social participation. In this growing body of research, there are fascinating parallels to be drawn between the worlds of documentary filmmaking and digital media design. The former may be seen as driven by personal pursuits of social purpose and artisan traditions while the private and public agents of the latter have a more institutionalised concern for popular demand and sustained market shares. Even if there will be many opportunities to refer to specific definitions from the two fields throughout the inquiry, my main effort will be to identify and test a conceptual framework that will focus on the parallels between documentaries and digital me- dia. Writing from the perspective of Cinema studies, one of the obvious ways to approach digital media is to investigate how concepts and theories that inform digital media practices could be applied to the theories and practices of filmmaking. If any of the many orientations within Cinema studies shall be able to demonstrate that it has substantial contributions to yield to the dynamic field of digital commu- nications, it will first have to show that it can learn and apply some important 9 Introduction lessons from that field. For practitioners of non-fiction film, there is a strong inter- est in the practical opportunities and consequences of digital technologies. In the Cinema studies literature however, the interest for the new technologies has, at least until recently, been more directed towards general theoretical aspects than towards empirical inquiries about impact, geared to answer pressing questions from the practitioners in the field. If we look at the research literature generated by the departments of Computer Science and their related departments in the social sci- ences, techniques and examples pertaining to film and television are mentioned quite frequently, but very seldom with a systematic argumentation based on film theory. The references to documentary film theory is virtually non-existent. Thus, the joint interests of filmmakers and scholars within the field of Cinema studies has not so far resulted in any shared research agenda in the established institutions of digital