Do You Want to Watch a Movie?

Conceptualizing Video in Qualitative Research as

an Imaginative Invitation

Sara Scott Shields¹

Florida State University

skshields@fsu.edu

Leslie Rech Penn

University of Georgia

krech@uga.edu

Abstract

This paper is positioned as a reflective exploration of the question: How might we use video

representation as an imaginative invitation? We begin with a brief introduction, contextually

situating ourselves within the world of image and arts-based practices. Then explore theoretical

literature surrounding representation and our own understanding of what representation is and is

not. Following this we ask, how might we use video representation as an imaginative invitation?

Here we explore the potential for video to capture the movements of research and challenge how

this might shift our ontological understanding of what it means to present research findings, by

conceptualizing representation as an invitation to participate. Finally, as an analytic exercise, we

invite you to watch a video with us, offering our discussion of the video as an attempt to

demonstrate how a viewer might respond to a video invitation. In closing, we challenge you to

explore the potential for video to become an imaginative invitation in your own work.

Keywords: video research; representation; imaginative invitation

Biographical statements: Sara Scott Shields, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Art Education at Florida

State University in Tallahassee, FL. Sara currently serves as the editor of The Journal of Art for Life and as

the director of the MS in Art Education program at FSU. She received her BFA in Ceramics and Art

Education and her MaED in Art Education from East Carolina University, later receiving her PhD in Art

Education from The University of Georgia. Before working as an Assistant Professor, she worked for six

years as a high school art teacher in Wilmington, NC. All of her research endeavors explore the question:

How are the arts uniquely positioned to address the development of pedagogical and scholarly identities?

Leslie Rech Penn holds a tenured faculty position at South Carolina State University. She received a

Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1995 and a Master of Fine

Arts in Studio Art from the University of South Carolina in 1998. Her artwork has been featured on the cover

of CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women and she has been awarded fellowship grants from the

Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York and the Fundacion Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain. She is

currently completing her doctoral work in Early Childhood Education at the University of Georgia. The

majority of her work over the last twenty years has addressed the relationships between text and image.

Do You Want to Watch a Movie? Conceptualizing Qualitative Research as Imaginative Invitation

In the early 1970s and into the 90s² philosophical and ethnographic

worlds encountered a “crisis of representation” (Lincoln & Denzin, 1994, p. 9;

Marcus & Fischer, 1986, p. 7). During this time, the world of qualitative research

opened up to include a deep and meaningful exploration of the guiding

epistemological, ontological and axiological values inherent in inquiry (Flaherty,

Denzin, Manning, & Snow, 2002). Scholars began exploring the how and why of

representation in the context of qualitative research. This paper is positioned as

a revisiting of that line of inquiry. In the following pages, we investigate the role

of representation in arts based research and postulate the medium of video as a

means for opening up new ontological possibilities for how we represent and

understand research findings. We explore the idea of video as an imaginative

invitation for the viewer/audience to collaborate and engage in inquiry with

researchers. In our inquiry, two questions push at the boundaries of possibilities

for qualitative research:

What is representation?

How might we use video representation as an imaginative invitation?

We begin with a brief introduction, contextually situating ourselves within the

world of image and arts-based practices. Then, we engage in an exploration of

the first question, exploring theoretical literature surrounding representation and

our own understanding of what representation is and is not. Following this we

ask, how might we use video representation as an imaginative invitation? Here

we explore the potential for video to capture the movements of research and

challenge how this might shift our ontological understanding of what it means to

present research findings, by conceptualizing representation as an invitation to

participate. Finally, as an analytic exercise, we invite you to watch a video with

us, offering our discussion of the video as an attempt to demonstrate how a

viewer might respond to a video invitation. In closing, we challenge you to

explore the potential for video to become an imaginative invitation in your own

work.

Who We Are

Neither my self nor my narrative can have, therefore, a single strand. I stand at

the crossing point of too many social and cultural forces; and, in any case, I am

forever on my way. My identity has to be perceived as multiple.

(Greene, 1995, p. 1)

Before beginning to dissect the role of representation and video in

designing imaginative research invitations, we felt it important to share a bit

about how we came to video representation in the first place. What follows is a

² Some might argue this crisis of representation is still occurring (Flaherty et al., 2002), although

scholars like Rabinow (1986) and Van Maanen (1995) disagreed.

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal/Volume 1, Issue 1

brief exploration of who we are and how we see the world, because we feel the

answers to these questions are the most important strands in our identities as

researchers interested in video methodology.

In most traditional research programs graduate students are asked to

engage in a series of courses focused on developing a set of research skills. For

us, those skills were of the qualitative variety. Within philosophies ranging from

pre-Socratic to postmodern, qualitative methodology courses at our university

focused on the skills to acquire, manage, engage, explore, and present our data

to readers³. While these tools were invaluable for us as burgeoning researchers,

they also bumped up against our shared histories as artists. Throughout our

studies, we continued to ask: What do the tools of qualitative work do for our

nuanced and individual interpretations of the world? Are there other tools,

methods, or practices that could work as well, or better?

In searching for answers to these questions we discovered arts based

research (Barone, & Eisner, 1997; Irwin, Kind, & Springgay, 2005; Knowles,

2007; Leavy, 2015; McNiff, 1998; Rolling, 2013). Because of our shared

backgrounds as artists, this ontological, epistemological, and methodological

approach allowed us to better conceptualize not just our role as

artist/researchers, but also the role of the viewer/audience. Inherent in the

practice of making art is an awareness that the medium often carries a message

(McLuhan, & Fiore, 1967). The stroke of a paintbrush dipped in watercolor and

swept across surfaces sends a different message than the audible crunch of a

dry brush as it scrapes and scratches paper. Even without artistic training this

rings familiar; think for a minute of the emotive quality of Jackson Pollock’s

famous spatters across the canvas of Number 11, juxtaposed with Monet’s

renowned paint strokes in Waterlilies. Both of these paintings done on canvas,

both in oils, yet the paint conveys something completely different in each

painting. This ability for media to manifest in different ways for different artists,

and again for different viewers, is what makes art such an interesting vehicle for

examining the complex concept of representation.

In the artistic sense, representation is often the manifestation of

experience in tangible or sensory forms. Further, there is an implicit

understanding that the artist’s representation and interpretation are but one of

many. While we may never know the artists exact interpretation, we can

construct our own through viewing the final representation of what may have

begun with a conceptual idea.

The power of the arts as a tool for inquiry opens up new possibilities for

representing and interpreting the world around us. As Eisner suggests, “We

seek out the arts in order to take a ride on the winds that art forms

provide...secured largely through our sensory response[s]” (2008, p. 3-4). This

³ It is important to note that our graduate education occurred in a university steeped in the belief

that theory and practice are inextricably linked.

Do You Want to Watch a Movie? Conceptualizing Qualitative Research as Imaginative Invitation

interest in the affective qualities of the arts is crucial to our thinking. We

acknowledge and embrace the arts’ ability to provide venues for new ways of

knowing and new forms of knowledge. Not all knowledge is rooted in the

concrete or tangible; in fact, most of the world around us is experienced, sensed,

and felt. These are the phenomena the arts are suited to explore. We do not

argue that arts based research or image based practice are the only ways of

knowing our world, but rather, they are additional ways of experiencing, inquiring,

representing and interpreting it (Eisner, 2008). With an understanding of who we

are and the kinds of research practices we are interested in, we now shift the

discussion back to the issue of representation.

What is Representation?

Within the global community, it is no longer possible to describe others as being

part of a scientific endeavor without addressing what is commonly referred to as

the crisis of representation - the dilemma we face when we try to represent

others and ourselves as we crisscross boundaries of gender, race, identity,

culture, time and location.

(Goldman, 2007, p. 4)

For years, positivist views of research assumed there was a universal way

of representing the world around us. Building on this assumption, was a belief

that within representations there lie a single, indisputable truth. Truth was

understood to be a thing, an idea coinciding with and explaining reality. As time

passed, interest shifted toward the role of language in our formation of

understanding and thus knowledge. This shifted attentiveness from single

version truths, to multifaceted forms of knowing (Flaherty et al., 2002; Greene,

1994). With increased consideration of the role of language in the formation of

understanding, came a reciprocal interest in how representations are informed by

the language systems inherent in them (Bakhtin, 1982). This gap between the

positivist and post-positivist concepts of knowledge makes it difficult to establish

the nature of representation (Goldman, 2007). Key questions addressed by

theorists (Eisner, 1997; Fish, 1980; Flaherty et al., 2002; Greene, 1994; Pink,

2001; Rabinow, 1986; van Maanen, 1995) across disciplines are: 1) Is

representation the manifestation of truth or is it merely one of the varied vantage

points present at any given time? 2) Do we represent absolute ideas or are our

representations immersed in context and story?

Representation might be simply defined as “stand[ing] for something else”

(Goldman, 2007, p. 17). Through interpretation, representations (as symbols)

and what they refer to, become inextricably linked. With this understanding then,

“representations are not things, but rather processes” (Goldman, 2007, p. 18).

Essentially, the process of representation occurs when we link a symbol or sign

to a concept that emerged from an experience. Because of the interrelatedness

of the symbol/context/thing, our interpretation is always shifting the outcome of

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal/Volume 1, Issue 1

the representative/interpretive equation. This constant changing of vantage

points and shifting of elucidations results in multiple interpretations of the same

representation.

Within our research settings and in the writing up of our findings, we are

engaging in acts of interpretation in which representation becomes inevitable.

Data itself is both an interpretation and representation; photographs are sprinkled

with varying vantage points, transcripts are dusted with personal experience and

artifacts are dredged through symbol systems. How then might we link actual

events and our interpretations of those events with a representative counterpart

in ways that honor our individual experience and make room for other possible

interpretations? This question has been asked in various forms over the last 30

years or so. For example, Fish asked, “What makes an interpretation

acceptable?” (1980, p. 338); Flaherty, et al. asked, “What is the relationship

between observation and interpretation?” (2002, p. 481); and Greene asked,

“What happens when we can no longer trust in the mediation of language, when

the best consciousness can do is grasp the appearances of things - telling us

nothing of a representable realm beyond” (1994, p. 209). Inspired by Greene’s

question doubting the mediation of language, we were moved to attempt a

response by conceptualizing representation as an imaginative invitation asking

the viewer/audience to participate in the interpretive processes, rather than

crafting definitive representative products.

What is an Imaginative Invitation?

I also begin to seek out ways in which the arts, in particular, can release

imagination to open new perspectives, to identify alternatives. The vistas that

might open, the connections that might be made, are experiential phenomena;

our encounters with the world become newly informed. When they do, they offer

new lenses through which to look out at and interpret...

(Greene, 1995, pp. 17-18)

Because the image is what unites us as researchers and artists, we have

consciously sought out image-based invitations in our work. Image and arts

based practices in qualitative research are not a new development. On the tails

of the representative debate, the arts emerged as a viable means to challenge

what representation meant (Pink, 2001). These approaches assume knowledge

is evolving, because we continue to know through doing (Dewey, 1934).

Methodological approaches like arts based research, visual ethnography, and

visual research methods (to name a few) all surfaced as new ways for engaging

in inquiry (Knowles & Cole, 2008). These approaches embrace the ability of the

image to share nuances, evoke empathy, and allow new perspectives that

illustrate our capacity to engage with life (McNiff, 2008). It is this idea of the

image as an affective site of individual experience we are most attentive to, and it

is this idea that brought us to the writing of Maxine Greene.

Do You Want to Watch a Movie? Conceptualizing Qualitative Research as Imaginative Invitation

Maxine Greene (1995, 2001, 2005) was a clear voice advocating for the

inclusion of the arts in educative experiences. Her work seamlessly wove

scholarly theorizing with examples from the fine and literary arts, forcing the

reader to embody the words on the page by imagining the works of art she

referenced, essentially inviting the reader into her writing. While we are not

relegating the importance of the arts to the field of education, we do see strong

parallels between the world of education and the world of research. These two

worlds feed into one another. As an interest in quantitative, numeric and

defendable outcomes became the focus of research, including educational

research, for instance, schools began to quantify student experiences through

standardized testing, merit pay and national report cards (Greene, 1995). This

interest in the quantifiable nature of experience brings us back to the rupture

started by social scientists during the crisis of representation, and to the

question:

How do we represent experiences that are by nature ever changing and

varied?

It is this question we feel Greene’s writing on imagination begins to

address; we see her work in both educational research and debate on

representation as extending an imaginative invitation to engage in teaching and

scholarship aimed at re-imagining outcomes. We are drawn to the concept of the

imaginative invitation, the open request to engage in the action of forming new

ideas. More importantly though, we draw inspiration from her natural ability to

invite the reader into her work, to encourage the reader to question and seek out

their own understandings. The work of the imagination is centered on the

opportunity to look at the world as if it might be different than it is, and within this

imaginative action, there is an acknowledgement of the contingency of the view,

essentially the role of personal context. Greene states, “To tap into imagination

is to become able to break with what is supposedly fixed and finished, objectively

and independently real” (1995, p. 19). This is where the concept of the

imaginative invitation collides with representation. If we can conceive of our

research as an imaginative invitation, we might open our work up to multiple

interpretations and representations. We might trust our audience to contribute to

our work. These alternative interpretive spaces become sites of resistance,

where we find ourselves resisting the hegemony of the written word (Greene,

1991; hooks, 1990). While we acknowledge the importance of writing in the

scholarly process, words (in didactic form) do not always accomplish what the

arts do⁴. The arts invite the audience to participate, to move from the center to

the margins in hopes that “they may recognize some of the ways in which

consciousnesses touch and refract and engage with one another” (Greene, 1991,

p. 29).

⁴ We see a distinction between literary composition and scholarly writing. We do not mean to

generalize all scholarly writing at non-literary; we openly acknowledge the work of scholars

working to push language into new spaces.

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal/Volume 1, Issue 1

How Might we use Video Representation as an Imaginative

Invitation?

Building on the possibilities inherent in arts based research and the

possibilities of the imaginative invitation, we move this inquiry into exploring how

we question the boundaries of representation in our own work with video.

Because we are both artists, we are constantly pushing ourselves to discover

new ways of interpreting and representing our research endeavors. In this

search for new, artful ways of engaging the research experience, we came to

video as a form of inquiry. For us, video as a mode of inquiry assumes

representation and interpretation are process-based experiences. By thinking of

representation as an imaginative invitation and interpretation as an imaginative

act, we can begin to see the work we do, as an ontological pursuit, a way of living

and doing research. As Greene (1991) reminds us, this artful representation

would not be possible:

without the release of the imagination, the capacity to look through the

windows of the actual…imagination may be the primary means of forming

an understanding of what goes on under the heading of “reality;”

imagination may be responsible for the very texture of experience. (p. 30)

While we create different kinds of videos, our shared interest in video as a

form of representation brought us together to explore the representative

possibilities inherent in video. Our attention to the possibilities of video

encourages viewers to see them as expressive objects; much like traditional art

making, we view our videos as affective sites of knowledge production. When

opening up research representation and interpretation to this possibility, we

found “video-based research artifacts are not just external visual representations,

but can also be re-presentations, presentations, that can be reviewed, revisited,

restructured and recognized, from multiple viewpoints” (Goldman, 2007, p.16).

Video representations are different from more traditional data representations

because they give form to the research experience as it occurs, instead of days,

weeks, or months later.

Additionally, video representation makes use of multiple voices and

vantage points. This emphasis of the multi-layered nature of language allows for

the acknowledgement of multiple points-of-view. When considering research

representations, video based representation and interpretation give openings for

the consideration of viewer/maker relationships inherent in video creation,

essentially inviting both maker and viewer into the representative and interpretive

processes. Video is not a neutral medium simply capturing events as they occur,

rather the videos we create in our research encounters are filled with multiple

contexts and voices, all focused on the eventual creation of an artifact living both

outside and within our inquiry. We find the ability to provide multiple perspectives

contributes to productive, not reductive, inquiry.

Do You Want to Watch a Movie? Conceptualizing Qualitative Research as Imaginative Invitation

Researchers currently using video in their work have begun to postulate

about the ways to enact video to invite the viewer into different spaces. Kaye

Haw and Mark Hadfield (2011) conceptualize five modalities, or functions, for

video as a research tool: extractive, reflective, provocation, participation, and

voice. These five modalities have helped us envision our own video work as an

invitation to extract, reflect, provoke, participate and speak. Using Greene’s

(1995) notion of the imagination and hook’s (1990) idea of the imagination as a

site of marginal resistance, we have begun to conceptualize video representation

as an imaginative invitation to move into the margins and push up against

traditional notions of research. We theorize that through imagination, video

allows our audience to participate and collaborate in the interpretive work of

inquiry with researchers.

Video as an invitation assumes the power of the moving image to provide

a window into that which may not have been seen or heard otherwise. Whether

the voice is that of children in a classroom (Haw & Hadfield, 2011) or the

experience of making and being with art (Eisner, 2008), video holds the potential

to invite the viewer into spaces otherwise unseen. By giving voice to these

unseen experiences of research, the researcher opens up spaces of inquiry for

the viewer to create their own interpretations. This, we believe, is the sublime

power of video in research; the ability to extend an invitation to the

viewer/participant/audience to become a part of the research process. Video is

familiar to us, accessible to a broad number of participants. We see this

accessibility providing “transformations, openings and possibilities” (Greene,

1995, p. 17) that allow our audience to move beyond our research, to push the

reverberations of our inquiry into spaces with which others may engage.

In composing video, we layer images and text, data, themes, poems,

prose, and other artwork⁵ together to create an experience for the viewer. We

invite readers to experience the research encounter and begin to imagine their

own interactions with our projects. This imaginative interaction puts trust in the

reader/viewer; it takes the power of research out of the hands of researchers and

places it into the hands of the audience (Greene, 1994). We do not create

videos to convey one single, homogenized message, nor do we intend the

audience to have an isolated interpretation. We see potential for multifaceted

interpretation as the real role of video representation. We turn again to Greene’s

insights:

If realities are constructed…if meanings are created by living beings in

diverse kinds of relationships, questions arise regarding representation

that were seldom confronted before. We are not simply faced with the

⁵ This layering effect is often referred to as assemblage. The examples of art forms we note are but a few of

signifiers of the research experience.

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal/Volume 1, Issue 1

problem of deciding whether discourse functions to represent an objective

or pre-existing reality…What is designated…is a condition of conception

and perception that enables us to construct something we recognize…in

our imagination…it is in no way a single thing, evoking either fixity or

objectivity. (1994, p. 209-210)

Representation is not the result of our research endeavors; representation

is not the outcome of our inquiry; rather, representation is what we do with our

own understanding of the work - a process. Before we represent we interpret,

after we represent you interpret and then represent again. The challenge in

qualitative research is moving beyond the binaries of right and wrong, truth and

fiction, positive and negative and into a space where representation becomes an

invitation for the viewer/reader to take the researcher’s interpretation into their

own spaces, exist with it, and imagine other possibilities (Greene, 1994). So

now, with Greene’s idea of the imaginative invitation we ask: Do you want to

watch a movie?

Do you want to watch a movie?

As co-authors, we have constructed a pair of manuscripts (the paper you

are reading being one of the two) dealing with issues of representation from both

ontological and methodological perspectives. We tell you this to clarify the goal

of this section. Instead of discussing our own individual work with video, we

chose to trade video data. Because we are both exploring how video-based data

serves as an invitation to participate in the research process, we sought to

explore the act of being invited to view someone else’s inquiry. To achieve this

we felt it was important to trade videos as we wrote about these ideas⁶. We

hope this trading of video data will provide you, the reader, with insights gleaned

by someone who is not the researcher (a task we challenge you to undertake as

well).

You will find that we approach the analysis through a dialogic format.

After watching Leslie’s video, Sara explored the emergent meanings this mode of

representative analysis presented. Once Sara completed her initial discussion,

she then invited Leslie to respond to her reflections, providing additional clarity

where needed. This process was repeated until we felt we had reached the end

of our dialogue. As you read the following section we ask that you first watch the

video; stop it, start it, pause it, fast forward it, open several windows, or even only

listen to the audio. Then, scroll below the video to find a written analysis from

Sara’s perspective, another first time viewer, in tandem with Leslie’s reflections

on the process of editing, formatting and engaging in research using both video

documentation and representation.

⁶ This manuscript was written in tandem with another where Leslie is the first author and discusses,

unpacks, and analyzes Sara’s video work.

Do You Want to Watch a Movie? Conceptualizing Qualitative Research as Imaginative Invitation

https://ualberta.aviaryplatform.com/r/862b85474t

Mapping and Multiplicities, video courtesy of Leslie Rech

Question 1: What is going on here?

Leslie (on context) - I come to early childhood education from art

education, a field in which talk about the work is as vibrant and compelling as the

work itself. Exploring the tangle of visual and verbal references in children’s

drawing parallels one of my biggest challenges in making the switch from art to

research: the place of images in a discipline in which writing is traditionally

privileged. My interest in visual research methods began with an ethnographic

case study in 2012-13 looking at the relationships between children and drawing,

pop culture and identity. In this project, I worked with six 6, 7 and 8 year olds for

eight months at a private Montessori school. I chose the site for its open

curriculum and flexibility of classroom activities. During the project, the

participating children and I drew together for 30-45 minutes each week exploring

topics ranging from, bats, to battleships, to baseball.

Sara - What I find most powerful about this video is the reliance on the

viewer. As Greene (2004) discussed, “whatever happens or is to happen has to

be decoded; reader activity is necessary if meaning is to happen” (p. 213). From

the minute the video started, I began filtering through questions:

Why are these children here?

What has prompted them to draw boats?

Do they know each other?

How did they connect their visual stories through talking so effortlessly?

What happens in the fade in and out moments?

I watched this video several times, fascinated by the stories the children

made up about their drawings, in awe of how they connected their stories across

papers. The narrative continues to circle around the table, with each child adding

to the story. At the start, I found myself wanting to see more of the pictures, for

there to be a way that pictures of their work might be next to the image of them

working; then, after a soft fade I could see the children’s work, while still seeing

and hearing the dialogue. I felt like a fly, perched on the table, watching them

draw and talk. They made up their stories so easily. Their artmaking was just an

extension of the storytelling - effortless and collaborative. I cannot remember

the last time I sat down and imagined a world outside my own; even my

artmaking is grounded in reality, tinted by the colors of my day, week, or month.

I’d love to know a bit more about the experience from your perspective.

Leslie - We are sitting at a battered picnic table outside the main

classroom. I’ve laid out sheets of paper and a pack of scented markers. Today

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal/Volume 1, Issue 1

is Zanto’s turn to choose the theme for our drawings. He’s chosen Battleships.

We talk it out as usual, tasting the words in our mouths, testing their meanings . .

. battleship, battleship board-game, actual battle ship, Leggo battleship, wedding

ship, evil alien ship. River, excited by the possibilities, begins her drawing with

the color blue . . .

Sara - I was invited into this private moment as I watched, experiencing

this video as a representative invitation, an invitation to view Leslie’s

documentation of a phenomenon (Haw & Hadfield, 2011). I watched the video

again, this time I knew what to expect. I could pause and really look at the

drawings the children were making. I opened up the video in two windows on my

computer and listened to the audio while I looked at the drawing, hoping to see

the jet boosters, the battle, or the plastic people to which the children refer in

their dialogue. I could stop and start, zoom in and turn the volume up and down;

I could manipulate the video to allow myself the opportunity to reflect on what

was happening. My invitation extended further, reflecting on the events as they

occurred, after they occurred and while time was standing still (Haw & Hadfield,

2011).

I was still not through my second viewing when I noticed Leslie at the

table. What was she doing there? What questions was she asking when the

camera faded in and out? How was her presence changing the reactions and

conversations of the children?

I was critical of her presence, I played the end a few times, rewinding to

the point in the video where the perspective changes and you can see the three

children with Leslie’s hands in the foreground. I began thinking of how I might

have engaged in the conversation, and even further to thinking of how I engage

in my own interactions with children.

She lets them talk so freely, not stepping over them with her own words.

When one talks about peacekeepers in his drawing, she asks, “Where are they

all?” The children respond: the peacekeepers cannot get on any ships. I want to

know more about these peacekeepers. Who are they? What do they do?

Where did they get the idea for them? I wonder if they mirror anything in the real

world. My adult brain is constantly trying to make sense of the interactions and

the storyline.

Leslie - I recorded each drawing activity with a small iPad-mini faced

toward them so they could see what as I recorded. After I started the camera, I

allowed it to run until the end of the activity. Over the course of the eight months

I spent with them, ideas about ways children cite popular culture in their drawing

narratives and then transform those narratives, continued to surface.

Sara - I felt provoked as I watched. I want to know more about these

children and their motivations. I was even imagining how the dialogue might

Do You Want to Watch a Movie? Conceptualizing Qualitative Research as Imaginative Invitation

continue once the camera shut off. At this point, I have watched the video six or

seven times. I think of the power of this video in isolation of any other research

artifacts or contexts. I have moved through the first three modalities Haw and

Hadfield discuss (2011), extractive, reflective, and provocative. Invitations to

participate and speak were also extended, but not just to me. The children were

invited to participate in the generation of a thirty-minute recording; they are

performers and participants. The invitation to participate and give voice seems to

occur on the other side of the camera. The children know the camera is

recording them, they have been asked to create art. They are allowing us into

their world of artmaking and storytelling. I do not have to guess at what these

kids are drawing. The researcher did not have to conduct interviews asking them

to think of what they were representing in their drawings, rather, the children

have been invited to share these insights as they occur during the research

process.

Leslie - I had intended a design that was open, flexible, and collaborative,

one focused on following data as opposed to erecting a structure for it to exist

within. For example, rather than formal interviews, I used informal drawing

activities that allowed the children in the study to plan their own drawings, to

choose their own pseudonyms, to see themselves recorded. On reflection, the

design was flawed in that the activities I designed for data collection were just

that, designed, not nomadic. A nomadic practice would have followed children in

their daily drawing activities rather than invite them to the table for that specific

purpose, but this project also allowed me to see that I had not yet considered

analysis itself as a nomadic practice.

Question 2: What are the emergent ideas from this video?

Sara - While the video in isolation of other contexts is interesting, the

research is aimed also at the emergence of new ways of thinking about or

understanding something. So my next question during this analytic unpacking is:

What is that something? My first thought revolves around the role talk plays in

children’s drawing practice. This video is filled with conversation about the

imaginary goings on of the children’s drawings. The children seem to be making

meaning not just through their drawings, but through the stories they are telling

as they draw. But would this have occurred without Leslie there? Does that

matter? I wonder what role the surrounding contexts play? There are bigger

questions begging consideration, contextual understandings that are necessary

to really grasp what is happening below the surface.

Leslie - In research, “collecting” data, identifying, naming, defining,

interpreting, abstracting, reducing events, is akin to what Deleuze and Guattari

(2004) would call a tracing: “like a photograph or an X ray that begins by

selecting or isolating by artificial means such as colorations or other restrictive

procedures, what it intends to reproduce” (p. 13). In describing and transcribing

an event, we will always be reducing it, cutting it from its context. To address this

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal/Volume 1, Issue 1

reduction, Deleuze and Guattari (2004) suggest consideration of the concept of

mapping, rather than tracing. A tracing tends to pin or immobilize. A map follows

contours, makes connections.

In this project, mapping meant looking at children, their drawings, their

classroom and local cultural discourses, the materials in play, the space in which

all these things unfolded and the events that occurred as data. Mapping became

a strategy for analysis that informed a juxtaposition of ideas and images based

on threads of connection. These juxtapositions add to the multiple ways in which

the data can be interpreted. Video composition functions as a multiplicity, a

permeable analysis that forestalls interpretation. Specifically, video editing, the

selecting and juxtaposing of film clips or “shots,” works as a nomadic practice in

that placing images in relation to one another makes connections visible, cuts

them loose from more over-determined meanings. These juxtapositions add to

the ways in which data can be read. I see the possibilities of video composition

not as an illustration of text but as a nomadic visual/relational analysis.

Question 3: What about editing decisions?

Sara - As an invitation, the video has served its purpose by enacting

interest, drawing the viewer into the experience of being with these children.

Leslie’s video has successfully provided a glimpse of the setting and participants,

while also giving the viewer a felt, or sensory context to pull from. While these

factors are effective in inviting the viewer into the research, additional context is

necessary to deeply grasp the research project itself. Additionally, when working

with video in research practice, we make choices about how to edit reality; we

curate the viewer’s experience. It is this curation I am now interested in knowing

more about. Why did Leslie choose the slow fades in and out? Was she

influenced by the ghost images present in Celeste Snowber’s (2012) work? Why

did she use black and white imagery? I wonder why she chose to have the fades

between images of children and their artwork not last longer. Kip Jones (2011)

chooses to have stills of photographs fade in and out with narration over the

images. This might have been an effective way to show more of the children’s

art, while still allowing their stories to be heard. These are the questions I am left

with after watching the video, so these are the questions I pose to you Leslie.

Leslie - MacDougall (1998), an anthropologist and documentary

filmmaker, suggests that viewers are prone to assigning meaning quickly to

moving images. He calls this a fertile process:

. . . the images of the film interacting with the characteristics of personality,

culture, and society that define us. This means that shots may carry quite

different connotations even for people of very similar background, and

larger differences of gender, class, race, and education will produce even

greater variations. (p. 212)

Do You Want to Watch a Movie? Conceptualizing Qualitative Research as Imaginative Invitation

For this reason he advocates the long shot in film - a longer, uninterrupted

version of the shot, contextual and undiluted with either text or voiceover. This

provokes what he calls “digressive searching” in viewing, an active rather than

passive meaning making by the viewer (p. 213).

MacDougall (1998) argues that contemporary filmmakers try hard to avoid

“dead spots” or places in the film where nothing seems to be happening, places

where the viewer’s attention gets lost. He also suggests that in figure-ground

reversals, shots in which the protagonist dissolves into context, the viewer’s

focus again is allowed to wander. MacDougall argues that today, the immediacy

and fast pace of popular television commercials and music videos may actually

allow more room for associative, non-narrative editing in that there is less

reliance on the narrative. He suggests that unexplored possibilities for visual

research exist within the layering of sound and image as well as in an analytical

use of the camera.

MacDougall (1998) does bring up a concern about audience attention for

longer films constructed with lengthier shots. He suggests the concept of

segmentation: shorter films focusing on sub-groups of connections, as a strategy

for keeping the viewers attention. The dead space in a long shot to which

MacDougall refers, the spaces in watching a film where the mind begins to

wander, may work for research-oriented videos. I see a parallel here between

what MacDougall is calling segmentation, a sub-group of possible interpretations,

and the idea of nomadic analysis. I think it would be productive to allow space

for the viewer to get lost from time to time in our research. With this in mind, I

composed my video, making use of MacDougall’s preference for the long shot,

the dead spot and figure-ground reversals. In this composition, I focused less on

the arc of one analytic theme and focused more on looser, less visible

connections to allow room for the viewer (and myself) to wander.

Your question revolves around the media itself as an abstraction. Video

recordings are distillations of reality; a perspective extracted, cut from context,

and preserved - what Mohl (2011) identifies as “semantic densification” (p. 233).

Garrett and Hawkins (2014) agree that video recording and editing as a method

is potentially reductive, but that creative use of video necessarily complicates

these methods (p. 145). They also argue that editing is a productive process and

see video composition less as cutting or reducing data and more as “thematic

excavation, the concentration of concepts, the intensification of ideas, and the

refinement of trajectories” (p. 156).

There is no doubt that video as a research medium is both accessible and

affective. It collides with its audience in rich, complex, and compelling ways.

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal/Volume 1, Issue 1

Conclusion

Video representation is a process. It is through camera lens and later the

editing screen that we begin to re-search and re-present. Re-search and re-

presentation are no longer things - they are process-based movements

(Goldman, 2007). When we capture movements, pair them with sound, color,

light, and multiple vantage points, we begin to grasp at the process of research

encounters. Video, as an imaginative invitation, challenges how we conceive of

research, representation, and interpretation. By documenting the movements of

our research, we allow ourselves to re-search our data for insight and create re-

presentations of these affective experiences. The videos we create in our work

re-present our data repeatedly, each time allowing for a new consideration, new

perspective, and new interpretation. This is an important step in reimagining the

role of representation in the research processes. Garrett & Hawkins (2014) and

others refer to this as “more-than-representational inquiry” (p. 145). By

envisioning the video as an imaginative invitation, we open up spaces for others

to enter into our inquiries. We create artifacts of inquiry that do more than just

represent our findings. We no longer hide the movements of our research in

locked filed cabinets; rather, we layer and juxtapose these to create an affective

experience for our reader/viewer. Jungnickel (2014) discusses this process as

opening up the thereness of experiences. By creating artifacts that speak to the

thereness of experiences, we begin to transform the nouns, research, and

representation, into verbs, re-search and re-present. We move our research into

the margins, where bell hooks (1990) invites us to engage in radical openness:

A message from that space in the margin that is a site of creativity and

power…Enter that space. Let us meet there. Enter that space. We greet

you as liberators. Spaces can be real and imagined. Spaces can tell

stories and unfold histories. Spaces can be interrupted, appropriated, and

transformed through artistic and literary practice…we are transformed,

individually, collectively, as we make radical creative space which affirms

and sustains our subjectivity, which gives us a new location from which to

articulate our sense of the world. (p. 24)

We believe in the spaces of radical openness in which we might begin to open up

dialogue that looks deeply at experiences and attempts to represent those

experiences through video methods that challenge our ontological

understandings of the world.

Like all other forms of inquiry, we believe the work of video researchers

takes practice and skill development. This is not a point and shoot methodology,

rather this is a layered and complex approach to reconfiguring our research

encounters. We have found that engaging in video production has challenged

our underlying assumptions about what it means to record and represent

research. In addition to the complexity faced in recording, cutting and editing, the

work of video researchers opens up discussions of the ethics of this methodology

Do You Want to Watch a Movie? Conceptualizing Qualitative Research as Imaginative Invitation

(Bates, 2014; Goldman, Pea, Barron, & Derry, 2014; Haw & Hadfield, 2011).

Video does not satisfy or give resolution; it does not make finite statements or tie

inquiry up in a neatly trimmed package. While video is not appropriate for all

research projects, we see it creating openings for consideration by challenging

what research looks like. Video research does not symbolize experiences;

rather, it allows the viewer to make their own experience. It invites viewers into

inquiry by opening up access, encouraging collaborations and promoting

productive, not reductive, dialogue.

We hope you, the reader, will respond to our invitation, and begin to

experiment with the video as representation in your own inquiries. In alignment

with our avoidance of singular endings or interpretations, we leave you with a

series of questions you might consider in constructing your own video invitations

to engage in inquiry:

• How might video add another layer of understanding to your work?

• How might video open up spaces for critical topics to be explored

and questioned?

• What might emotional reactions to video assemblages do for our

research projects?

• How can video provide new artful representations of research

inquiries?

• Can video successfully shift the power of knowing away from the

researcher and into the hands of the viewer/reader?

• In what ways can video push our research into spaces for new

audiences to experience it?

These are the questions we that moved us to consider the role video can play in

our own inquiries. These are the questions we invite you to consider in your own

work to change what we mean when we read research and say, “I know. I

understand”. We hope that you will embrace the messiness and refocus the

outcomes of research representations by reimagining possibilities, but most of all

we hope you will ask others, “Do you want to watch a movie?”

________________________________________________________________

Acknowledgements:

The authors would like to extend a special thank you to River, Zanto, and Moton

B. for their joyful participation, imagination and collaboration on this project.

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal/Volume 1, Issue 1

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