Book Chapters by Tessa Dwyer
The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation, 2019
Sometimes considered marginal to Audiovisual Translation (AVT) 'proper', fan AVT is fast becoming... more Sometimes considered marginal to Audiovisual Translation (AVT) 'proper', fan AVT is fast becoming a major area of interest as online technologies dramatically alter the audiovisual mediascape, affecting modes of access and availability, redirecting flows and challenging copyright and intellectual property discourse. Focusing on fan subtitling (fansubbing) yet also touching upon fandubbing and game hacking, this chapter considers fan AVT origins, discursive frameworks such as 'participatory culture', and the ethics of crowdsourcing. it develops a case study of the Viki Global TV platform and proposes that fandom is at the centre of current AVT developments.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Seeing into Screens: Eye Tracking and the Moving Image, 2018
‘Slow cinema’ is a movement and term used to describe a type of filmmaking and film culture that ... more ‘Slow cinema’ is a movement and term used to describe a type of filmmaking and film culture that distinguishes itself from other cinemas or filmmaking on the basis of its relationship to time and duration. In other words, slow cinema takes its time. It also takes up other people’s time, while thematizing time as a central narrative, aesthetic and/or political preoccupation. Additionally, or alternatively, slow cinema can involve a different type of watching altogether, structured according to a slow, stretched-out rhythm or pace. Stylistically, slow cinema is often characterized by static camerawork, minimal editing and scarce or slow movement within the frame. As we will proceed to outline, diverse rationales underpin these varied approaches to slowness, yet in this chapter, our primary aim is to consider whether or not slowness engenders a distinctive form of seeing–whether taking one’s time and experiencing the phenomenon of ‘dead time’ might facilitate an embodied, subjective mode of viewing. To do so, we utilise eye-tracking technology, seeking to pinpoint exactly where and how viewers look when confronted with scenes of duration. Our findings extend understanding of 'attentional synchrony' and 'visual momentum' while also highlighting the role of subtitling within the production, exhibition and distribution of slow cinema.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Contemporary Publics: Shifting Boundaries in New Media, Technology and Culture, 2016
This paper focuses on the language politics of global media, examining publics that arise through... more This paper focuses on the language politics of global media, examining publics that arise through experiences of film and television in translation. Through an awareness of screen translation processes and strategies-from dubbing and subtitling to fansubbing and live interpretation-new publics arise. Globally, such publics count, accounting for a major proportion of audiences worldwide. Hence, I argue that screen translation and experiences of translated media can no longer be positioned as peripheral to either screen culture as a whole, or to its analysis. Moreover, as screen media evolves in conjunction with new technologies, trends indicate it is becoming increasingly multilingual, as Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, for instance, challenge the traditional dominance of English as a global lingua franca. To explore such changes and the key role played by translation in delimiting the accessibility of cultural products in global or transnational contexts, this paper identifies online fansubbing as an area of particular interest. Fansubbing is a growing DIY phenomenon where avid fans of foreign-language media produce their own amateur subtitles. Usually, they contravene copyright laws in order to do so, making their subs freely available to others through a range of digital and online tools. Originating within anime subculture, fansubbing is fast becoming a paradigmatic mode of media consumption, seeping well beyond the borders of anime and becoming a favoured strategy of political activists and corporate giants alike. Reflecting the growing importance of translation as a participatory mode within global media circuits, fansubbing signals the need to take seriously operations of subtitling and dubbing.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Practices, 2017
Interrogating the much overlooked language politics of the global mediascape, this chapter explor... more Interrogating the much overlooked language politics of the global mediascape, this chapter explores the role of voice and accent in Australian cult classic film Mad Max (Miller, 1979) by focusing on its dubbing into American English by US distributor American International Pictures. This instance of same-language, English-to-English dubbing exposes the entrenched cultural and language inequalities that affect global exhibition and distribution practices. The chapter argues for an expanded notion of'accented cinema'(Naficy 2001) that relates as much to intercultural reception and distribution as to processes of production.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
B is for Bad Cinema: Aesthetics, Politics and Cultural Value State, 2014
This chapter investigates the 'badfilm' or paracinema celebration of translational errors in sub-... more This chapter investigates the 'badfilm' or paracinema celebration of translational errors in sub-standard subtitling, a practice that Abe Mark Nornes (2007) traces back to "to the silent era when early film critics ridiculed sloppy intertitles,” before discussing its resurgence within international Hong Kong cinema fandom circa the 1970s and 80s. While such B-grade subtitling sits easily within a 'badfilm' frame, I argue that inept subtitles or 'flubtitles' as they are sometimes called, do not simply delineate another genre of badfilm production or appreciation. More tellingly, they testify to the significance of the intercultural within badfilm movements, which they also necessarily destabilize by potentially transforming any film into bad film. With reference to Derridean deconstruction and Lawrence Venuti's The Translator's Invisibility (1995), I outline how B-grade subtitles might provide a means of reconceptualizing badness itself.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Politics, Policy and Power in Translation History, 2016
This paper examines the role dubbing has played in shaping modes of practice across the film indu... more This paper examines the role dubbing has played in shaping modes of practice across the film industry. Focusing on the transition from silent cinema to talkies, it sketches a cultural context for dubbing by detailing the production conditions, textual thematics and reception of two Louise Brooks' films, The Canary Murder Case and Prix de beauté. In doing so, it connects same-language revoicing or 'voice doubling' to foreign-language dubbing, seeking to identify how language pragmatics and issues of interlingual translation are formative, not anomalous, to screen media dynamics. Introducing the concept of 'to-be-dubbed-ness', it argues that post-synchronised revoicing can impact upon filmmaking at all stages of production and reception, and that it needs to be acknowledged as more than an afterthought. Finally, it traces dubbing's deconstructive edge and its relation to modernist efforts to denature and demystify filmic illusion. Despite being primarily remembered as a silent star, the ups and downs of Louise Brooks' tumultuous career demand to be read foremost in relation to her voice. Curiously, although she starred in two early talkies-Paramount's The Canary Murder Case (St. Clair, 1929) and Prix de beauté (Genina, 1930) made at SOFAR, Paris-her voice is heard in neither. In both, she is dubbed. This technical production detail is often glossed over in histories of Brooks and critical analyses of her work warranting only brief, parenthetical discussion and some disparagement. Below, I proceed to revisit Brooks' vocal machinations in both these films, in order to explore dubbing's varied contours in different national and industrial contexts and to propose that this operation of vocal substitution is of the upmost significance, not just for Brooks but also for the light it sheds on the transition era as a whole and its emerging practices and politics of sound filmmaking still in effect today. In The Canary Murder Case and Prix de beauté, dubbing is deployed to very different ends-one intralingual and the other interlingual, one domestic, the other foreign. Additionally, it was Brooks herself and not the studio or production team behind The Canary Murder Case that engineered her vocal substitution as the Canary, whereas the multiple-language dubbing of Prix de beauté was planned in pre-production while Réne Clair was still tabled to direct. Hence, one film had dubbing thrust upon it, while the other pro-actively took hold of it, seizing upon its cross-border, translational possibilities. In the following discussion, I consider the connection between these two quite different films and their distinct revoicing strategies, asking how early foreign-language dubbing relates to other concurrent practices of doubling, ghosting and post-synchronisation. This project engages with the language politics specific to cinema as an early global, mass media form, exploring its transnational, translational pull. In isolating issues of dubbing in The Canary Murder Case and Prix de beauté, distinctions quickly disintegrate between pre-and post-production, text and context, performance and persona, while novel connections emerge, demonstrating the profitability of viewing these films in tandem. [A] Refusing to Speak
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
American-Australian Cinema: Transnational Connections , 2018
When the original Mad Max (1979) first hit Australian movie screens, film producer and soon-to-be... more When the original Mad Max (1979) first hit Australian movie screens, film producer and soon-to-be Chairman of the Australian Film Commission Phillip Adams deemed it morally bankrupt, formulaic and culturally inauthentic, dismissing it as 'unequivocally an off-shore American movie'. When the North American rights were bought by AIP however, any alleged American influence was soon overshadowed by the film's demonstrable, obdurate Australianness. AIP's Sam Arkoff judged its Australian accents unacceptably thick and off-putting, and it was consequently revoiced by American actors at Titra Sound Studios in New York. In this chapter, I deploy this example of same-language English-to-English dubbing as a springboard for reflecting upon the significance of the Mad Max series' evolving relationship to Hollywood and American audiences.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Reassessing Dubbing: Historical Approaches and Current Trends, 2019
Focusing on the film industry’s transition to sound in the late 1920s, canonical musical Singin’ ... more Focusing on the film industry’s transition to sound in the late 1920s, canonical musical Singin’ in the Rain is, foremost, a dubbing narrative. This chapter revisits this film classic in order to bring into focus lesser-known histories relating to screen translation, and to think specifically about the importance of talk and inter-lingual translation to the development of film culture broadly. Singin’s emphasis on dubbing as domestic operation invites reconsideration of the transition era’s ‘language crisis’ and the artificial voice/body combinations integral to foreign-language dubbing. Precisely because Singin’ does not deal directly with issues of inter-lingual translation, it demonstrates how sound technologies catapult issues of language difference and transfer to the very heart of film production, prefiguring the inter-lingual in the everyday.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture, 2020
This chapter draws on research into screenwriting, feminism and the screen industry, to suggest t... more This chapter draws on research into screenwriting, feminism and the screen industry, to suggest that the unique appeal of women-in-prison series—such as Wentworth (2013–) and its antecedent, Prisoner (Cell Block H) (1979–1986) —is broader than a general fascination with life on the inside. Indeed, we contend that the prison as series “hub” serves to complicate and reiterate female representations in the mainstream and can enrich understandings of female transgression on television. In constructing this argument, we look to practices of screenwriting, script editing and serial drama development, and through the lens of historical transformation in television distribution, branding and taste cultures.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Speaking in Subtitles, 2017
This chapter focuses on the emergent, participatory practice of fansubbing (‘fan subtitling’), ex... more This chapter focuses on the emergent, participatory practice of fansubbing (‘fan subtitling’), examining its origins within anime subculture and its ongoing evolution. Fansubbing is examined as an informal translation practice that emerged as a subset of media piracy with its own ethical standards and rules of conduct. Much early anime fansubbing focused on redressing the domesticating tendencies of professional services, and in this sense highlighted the gatekeeping, controlling function of translation. Hence, this case study further demonstrates links between piracy, censorship and subversion introduced in the previous chapter. It also demonstrates how fansubbing’s intervention into screen media points to the growing significance of translation as a mode of cultural participation responsive to the intensifying multilingualism of global media and technologies. Fans are discussed as ‘lead-users’ of new technologies that trial functionality and uncover emergent uses, demands and desi...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation, 2017
This chapter presents a case study of global TV site Viki (www.viki.com), which offers amateur su... more This chapter presents a case study of global TV site Viki (www.viki.com), which offers amateur subtitling in around 200 languages for media from around the world. It focuses on the ways in which fansubbing and fan repurposing of technology has been adopted in the corporate and media industries via crowdsourcing, underscoring the commerce/community tensions that characterise ‘participatory culture’. In its aim to overcome the geopolitical constraints that limit the availability of media in many parts of the globe, Viki deploys a legal, business framework that overrides the national and linguistic biases of professional subtitling and dubbing via the ‘chaos’ of fan agency and interventionist practice. It also pinpoints the critical role played by language and multilingual publics within the evolving dynamics of convergence. Finally, this case study explores claims that fansubbing and other forms of community translation may be contributing to the ongoing marginalisation of linguistica...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
<p>Focusing on the polarising nature of sub/dub debates, this chapter provides an overview ... more <p>Focusing on the polarising nature of sub/dub debates, this chapter provides an overview of attitudes and approaches to screen translation both within and beyond screen culture. Dominating the little attention paid to translation within Anglophone Screen Studies, and shaping much research within Translation Studies, sub/dub wars encapsulate the entangled prejudices and value politics that beset the field. This chapter revisits insightful arguments posed by New York Times critic Bosley Crowther during his anti-subtitle campaign, before expanding the frame of reference for this debate by turning to Translation Studies and national screen translation preferences beyond the Anglo-American context.</p>
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Speaking in Subtitles, 2017
This chapter explores how dubbing has been deployed as a mode of deliberate, self-reflexive mistr... more This chapter explores how dubbing has been deployed as a mode of deliberate, self-reflexive mistranslation. Can Dialectics Break Bricks? flaunts translation dysfunction as a deliberate strategy of political or aesthetic intervention, challenging the authority of authorship and ‘originals’ in the process. Engaging extensively with the notion of ‘abusive translation’ developed by Derrida and updated by Abe Markus Nornes, it demonstrates how errant forms of screen translation evade theoretical containment, and indicate a path for revaluation firmly grounded by the ‘practical’. Parodic mistranslation or deconstructive dubbing, it proposes, presents an overly abusive example of screen translation that indicates how quality considerations are insufficient for engaging with improper modes of practice. It also introduces issues relating to translation censorship and media piracy foreshadowed by the parody dynamics at play in Can Dialectics Break Bricks?
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Papers by Tessa Dwyer
The Velvet Light Trap, 2009
Friday nights in Romania under the communist regime (which came to an end in December 1989), frie... more Friday nights in Romania under the communist regime (which came to an end in December 1989), friends and family would gather in front of their television sets trying to guess what they were actually watching. Telephone calls would be made, fijilm reference and theory books consulted. Such detective skills were required due to the government's censorship tactics which included screening foreign fijilms (both on television and in cinemas) with their titles altered beyond recognition, credit sequences removed, entire scenes eliminated and dialogue ideologically "cleansed" through the subtitling process. Coauthor and Romanian national Ioana Uricaru recalls that "God" was invariably translated as Cel-de-Sus or "the one above" and "church" as edifijiciu or "edifijice." Sometimes films playing in cinemas would differ dramatically at the beginning and end of their run, as elements requiring excision came to the attention of offficials. Subtitling was the translation method associated with government media channels. As such, it was considered offficial, professional, and proper-both "ideologically correct" and the industry standard. With subtitles, interference of the "original" is kept at a minimum. As lines of text superimposed onto the film image, subtitles neither erase nor noisily intrude upon the foreign soundtrack. Consequently, they are often viewed as a clean technique that respects the source material by enabling it to remain intact. However, in Romania, the identifijication of subtitling with "quality" translation was compromised by its close link to adjacent practices of content deletion and paraphrasing for the sake of ideological alteration. The role that subtitling played in making meaning palatable for the "party line" meant that this technique was, concurrently, subject to suspicion and distrust, especially by those (extremely numerous) audience members who understood foreign languages and were able to fact-check offfijcial versions. In the following discussion, we note how translation can function both in the service and subversion of censorship, and how both roles are complicated by contradictory notions of quality and authenticity. We begin by pitting Romania's official, government-sanctioned translation methods against the unofficial, amateur, and alternative practices that typify piracy operations. We then proceed to unpack and expand notions of media piracy.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, 2015
As we progress into the digital age, text is experiencing a resurgence and reshaping as blogging,... more As we progress into the digital age, text is experiencing a resurgence and reshaping as blogging, tweeting and phone messaging establish new textual forms and frameworks. At the same time, an intrusive layer of text, obviously added in post, has started to feature on mainstream screen media-from the running subtitles of TV news broadcasts to the creative portrayals of mobile phone texting on film and TV dramas. In this paper, I examine the free-floating text used in BBC series Sherlock (2010-). While commentators laud this series for the novel way it integrates text into its narrative, aesthetic and characterisation, it requires eye tracking to unpack the cognitive implications involved. Through recourse to eye tracking data on image and textual processing, I revisit distinctions between reading and viewing, attraction and distraction, while addressing a range of issues relating to eye bias, media access and multimodal redundancy effects. Link: https://refractory-journal.com/dwyer/
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Translator, 2012
Fan subtitling, or ‘fansubbing’, is a heterogeneous,
ever-growing field of amateur translation ex... more Fan subtitling, or ‘fansubbing’, is a heterogeneous,
ever-growing field of amateur translation exhibiting a number
of traits often overlooked by scholars of audiovisual
translation. Current research on fansubbing is broadened
by examining this phenomenon beyond the strictures of anime subculture alone, drawing on the counter example of Internet start-up
company ViKi and exploring the gaps in mainstream subtitling that
fansubbing both exposes and fills. The team of volunteer translators
working for ViKi re-animates notions of global diversity by
capitalizing on the affordances of new technologies and collective
intelligence to break down the national and linguistic hierarchies
that dominate contemporary media and professional audiovisual
translation. Despite a largely conservative ‘look and feel’ and
signs of increasing commercialization, ViKi’s fansubbing model
makes an important contribution to the internationalization of
audiovisual translation practices, bringing programs from small-language communities to diverse audiences across the globe. The
paper further considers the extent to which the legalization of ViKi’s
fansubbing activity empowers fans to bring about real change in
the media marketplace.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Participations, 2017
Drawing on interviews with Hecklevision programmers and the founder of software company MuVChat, ... more Drawing on interviews with Hecklevision programmers and the founder of software company MuVChat, this article outlines three related 'live commenting' phenomena that cross diverse cultural contexts: Hecklevision in the US; 'barrage cinema' in China and online video 'bullet screens' (danmu/danmaku) in China and Japan. By comparing and contrasting these text-on-screen modalities of engagement, I draw attention to underlying connections around 'bad' behaviour and digital disruption while also noting some of the cultural specificities and discursive frameworks at play. This intercultural analysis aims to uncover what is at stake in technology-led, interactive screen experiences when audiences take centre stage via written rather than spoken interjection. Such 'live commenting' points to the 'textual intensity' of the digital era and the culturally distinct yet interrelated ways in which diverse audiences respond.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Soundtrack, 2019
This article takes a personal journey through a home movie made by my immigrant grandfather. Cons... more This article takes a personal journey through a home movie made by my immigrant grandfather. Constituting one of my grandfather's most complex narratives, the film Confidentially Yours provides a fascinating glimpse into 1950s Melbourne. It also holds deep significance for research into language and accent on-screen. Featuring my mother as narrator, the film is at once deeply familiar, homely and utterly strange-with my mother's voice almost unrecognizable due to her affected accent that harks back to a time when Britain's cultural influence in Australia was far more marked than today, with British Received Pronunciation (RP) speech dominating screen and broadcast media. Through the strange sound of my moth-er's voice-over in Confidentially Yours, this article reflects upon the significance of screen voice and accent more broadly in order to consider how tongue and tone address the viewer, perform the self and negotiate nation. Watching an old home movie, I hear my mother speaking in tones that are strikingly unfamiliar, sounding alien and uncanny. It is my own mother talking in our shared mother tongue; her voice should be utterly mundane and homely.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Linguistica Antverpiensia New Series, 2005
Conceived from the start as a cultural form with mass, international appeal, cinema bears a fasci... more Conceived from the start as a cultural form with mass, international appeal, cinema bears a fascinating relationship to translation, both real and figurative. From the days of the silents and early talkies to contemporary new Hollywood, this paper explores the nature of this relationship through reference to Lost in Translation and the wider polyglot genre. Revelling in the comic and poetic potential of inter-cultural (mis)communication, Lost in Translation (2004) directs attention towards the messy and mundane realities of translation, thereby exposing the industry's more usual predilection to ignore or disavow the complexities of language difference. Comparing Lost in Translation to cinematic predecessors such as Le Mépris / Contempt (1963) and 1930s polyglots, this discussion seeks primarily to challenge the myth that the language of cinema is universal.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Studies in Australasian Cinema, 2018
This article examines the role that locality, cultural specificity and authentic voice play withi... more This article examines the role that locality, cultural specificity and authentic voice play within current television industry shifts and transnational developments. Focussing on Top of the Lake, I explore its thematic and aesthetic preoccupation with place, voice and nation by spotlighting issues of accent and vocal in/authenticity, detailing the controversy sparked when US star Elisabeth Moss was cast as New Zealand native, detective Robin Griffin. The adopted Antipodean accent furnished by Moss creates a highly ambivalent foregrounding and re-negotiation of the national within the particularly transnational space of post-broadcast ‘quality’ television. Presenting a ‘sonic spectacle’ (Holliday, Christopher. 2015. “The Accented American: The New Voices of British Stardom on US Television.” Journal of British Cinema and Television 12 (1): 63–82), Moss’ wobbly accent makes audiences doubly aware of the effort being expended to cue regional specificity and locale. In the following discussion, Moss’ vocal crafting in Top of the Lake is linked to the increasing importance given to authentic place and on-location shooting within post-broadcast television, as a means of fostering emotional pull and deep levels of viewer engagement. In Top of the Lake, links between place and authenticity are further interrogated via its self-aware invocation of touristic imagery and desires – made all the more nuanced due to Campion's presence as auteur and New Zealand's role as media-tourism mecca.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Book Chapters by Tessa Dwyer
Papers by Tessa Dwyer
ever-growing field of amateur translation exhibiting a number
of traits often overlooked by scholars of audiovisual
translation. Current research on fansubbing is broadened
by examining this phenomenon beyond the strictures of anime subculture alone, drawing on the counter example of Internet start-up
company ViKi and exploring the gaps in mainstream subtitling that
fansubbing both exposes and fills. The team of volunteer translators
working for ViKi re-animates notions of global diversity by
capitalizing on the affordances of new technologies and collective
intelligence to break down the national and linguistic hierarchies
that dominate contemporary media and professional audiovisual
translation. Despite a largely conservative ‘look and feel’ and
signs of increasing commercialization, ViKi’s fansubbing model
makes an important contribution to the internationalization of
audiovisual translation practices, bringing programs from small-language communities to diverse audiences across the globe. The
paper further considers the extent to which the legalization of ViKi’s
fansubbing activity empowers fans to bring about real change in
the media marketplace.
ever-growing field of amateur translation exhibiting a number
of traits often overlooked by scholars of audiovisual
translation. Current research on fansubbing is broadened
by examining this phenomenon beyond the strictures of anime subculture alone, drawing on the counter example of Internet start-up
company ViKi and exploring the gaps in mainstream subtitling that
fansubbing both exposes and fills. The team of volunteer translators
working for ViKi re-animates notions of global diversity by
capitalizing on the affordances of new technologies and collective
intelligence to break down the national and linguistic hierarchies
that dominate contemporary media and professional audiovisual
translation. Despite a largely conservative ‘look and feel’ and
signs of increasing commercialization, ViKi’s fansubbing model
makes an important contribution to the internationalization of
audiovisual translation practices, bringing programs from small-language communities to diverse audiences across the globe. The
paper further considers the extent to which the legalization of ViKi’s
fansubbing activity empowers fans to bring about real change in
the media marketplace.
A deep dive into iconic 1980s Australian women-in-prison TV drama Prisoner (aka Cell Block H), its contemporary reimagining as Wentworth, and its broader, global industry significance and influence, this book brings together a range of scholarly and industry perspectives, including an interview with actor Shareena Clanton (Wentworth’s Doreen Anderson). Its chapters draw on talks with producers, screenwriters and casting; fan voices from the Wentworth twitterverse; comparisons with Netflix’s Orange is the New Black; queer and LGBTQ approaches; and international production histories and contexts. By charting a path from Prisoner to Wentworth, the book offers a new mapping of TV shifts and transformations through the lens of female transgression, ruminating on the history, currency, industry position and cultural value of women-in-prison series.
Topics include:
Censorship
Media piracy
Amateurism
Fansubbing (fan subtitling)
Crowdsourcing
Case Studies include: The Invisible Cinema, New York (1970-74) and Viki Global TV (www.viki.com)
The editors divide their collection into the following four sections: eye tracking performance, which addresses the ways viewers respond to screen genre, actor and star, auteur, and cinematography; eye tracking aesthetics which explores the way viewers gaze upon colour, light, movement, and space; eye tracking inscription, which examines the way the viewer responds to subtitles, translation, and written information found in the screen world; and eye tracking augmentation which examines the role of simulation, mediation, and technological intervention in the way viewers engage with screen content. At a time when the nature of viewing the screen is extending and diversifying across different platforms and exhibitions, Seeing into Screens is a timely exploration of how viewers watch the screen.
While eye-tracking technology provides moving image researchers with accurate visualisations of where people look, in what sequential order, and for what duration, it can tell us very little about what people are feeling, thinking, or memorialising as they watch – to do that we needed to draw on other research methods.
In this issue the convergence comes to life, with four essays that each explore and demonstrate the natural fit of the videographic format for eye tracking research. The two phenomena converge around the problem of substitution: eye tracking research works with predominantly visual data that is then translated into prose, and the video essay interferes in the ekphrastic challenge of expressing spectatorship through the written medium. When drawing, as the ETMI group does, upon the former to examine the latter, the ability of the video essay to conduct analysis on the terms of its object – i.e., moving images and sounds – is uniquely valuable (see Keathley and Mittell, 2016). Preserving the live data of audiences watching images as they move enables the dynamic illustration that eye tracking as technology and methodology requires. Further, though, the video essay showcases the uncanny nature of eye tracking research, where researchers are compelled to watch the traces of their subjects watching. By putting the audience into this vital position of spectatorship, the video essay primes its viewer to experientially consider the poetic and phenomenological pathways that eye tracking can open up.
This collection showcases these diverse ways in which eye tracking can inform and support both critical and creative screen analysis, starting with Unseen Screens: Eye Tracking, Magic and Misdirection by Tessa Dwyer and Jenny Robinson. This piece introduces some key concepts and visualisation techniques in moving-image eye tracking research including attentional synchrony, edit blindness, heat mapping, and aggregate gaze plot data. Navigating through these fixtures, Unseen Screens drills down into misdirection, foregrounding continuities between seeing and not seeing, illusion and transparency, film and magic. This piece is followed by two interconnected works that unfold around the thematic of sound: Materialisation, Emotion & Attention: Tracking Sound’s Perceptual Effects in Film by Darrin Verhagen, and The Ear that Dreams: Eye Tracking Sound in the Moving Image by Sean Redmond. With humour and insight, Verhagen explores and debunks a range of sound/image theories and principles to argue for the ability of sound design to transform attention by deepening levels of engagement. Redmond further probes the affordances of film sound – its immersive, bi-sensorial and synesthetic effects – to explore the intensities that eye tracking data cannot image but only imagine. In this way, The Ear That Dreams prepares ground for embodied eye tracking methodologies. These tandem works on sound are followed by Dead Time, a piece by Catherine Fowler, Claire Perkins, and Andrea Rassell that institutes a dramatic change of pace, dramatising and massaging the tensions and challenges inherent within ‘slow cinema’. Dead Time reverses the usual tendency in eye tracking research to examine data through a quantitative lens. Instead, Fowler, Perkins, and Rassell ‘unbundle’ eye tracking to focus on the experiential idiosyncrasies of individualised viewing patterns. The order in which these works are presented moves from exposition to abstraction, orienting viewers initially through a mapping of misdirection and screen/sound relations before leading into an exploration of emotion, engagement, and affective poetics to settle finally upon an unflinching moment of meditative self-reflexion. Together these works chart eye tracking methods, approaches and data sets, yet they also acknowledge how charts and maps are themselves representations —part fiction, part fact. In doing so, they question and broaden understandings of eye tracking and the arts/science nexus.
See: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/theme-week/2017/36/journal-videographic-film-moving-image-studies-43-2017
References
Keathley, Christian, Mittell, Jason (2016). The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound and Image. caboose.
Redmond, Sean, Batty, Craig (2015). ‘Seeing into Things: Eye Tracking the Moving Image’. Refractory 25. See: http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2015/02/06/redmond-batty/
Redmond, Sean (2016). ‘The Love Particles of Eye Tracking’. brief 54: 111-120. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/27920420/The_Love_Particles_of_Eye_Tracking