Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Analysis of an Audiovisual Resource
1.1.Introduction
This topic's goal is to present a functional approach based on the
semiotics*
of
the audiovisual
text*
[STO 03] for the analysis, i.e. the description, interpretation
and indexing of digital audiovisual corpora.
The central notion used for this approach is of the
model of description*
of an
audiovisual object, such as a video, based on a set of criteria which serve the
semiotics to process the
text object*
and will be presented in greater detail in
Chapter 3 of this topic. Primarily, it is a question of the following criteria:
- the criterion of the text as a
compositional
entity (a text can, in principle, be
broken down into “smaller” textual units, and in turn forms part of a textual
environment, of what is, metaphorically speaking, a
textscape
or
mediascape
);
- the criterion of the text as a
structural
entity possessing a set of characteristic
constituents (such as the thematic constituent, the narrative constituent, the
rhetorical and discursive constituent, the multimodal expression of content, or the
formal and physical organization of the content in the text); and finally,
- the criterion of the text as a
historical
entity (the text as a genre) and an
evolutive
entity (the text as the
product
of
savoir-faire
, in principle always
modifiable).
The hypothesis behind this topic is that any project of analysis of a textual
corpus in general and an audiovisual corpus in particular - whatever its level of
specialization - relies on representations, “visions”, or theories: 1) about the object
text
and 2) the
activity
of the
analysis*ofthetext
.