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models
of description (see also [STO 11a]). The basic scenario of activities being
that which defines the main stages of a project of production, analysis and diffusion
of a body of knowledge heritage [STO 11e], the scenario defining a project to
qualitatively transform an audiovisual text into a resource
per se
(an intellectual
asset
) for a given audience is that which defines the main activities which are part of
the analysis stage of the audiovisual text or corpus of texts (we shall come back to
this later on in this topic; see Chapter 5). The model of description in turn takes
account of the specificity both of the part of the audiovisual text which has to be
dealt with by the analyst, and of the type of results the analyst has to provide.
By way of a simple example, the identification of an audiovisual segment (that
is, a chosen moment in a video which the analyst deems pertinent for his purpose) is
a specific task which covers a set of
intellectual decisions
and
technical gestures
such as
isolating
the audiovisual segment (i.e. virtually “cutting” it) within the
audiovisual flow,
attributing a title
to the segment,
producing a textual notice
summarizing the content and/or indicating the reason why that segment was singled
out by the analyst, and so on (see also [DEP 11c]).
“Isolating an audiovisual segment”, “attributing a title to it”, “producing an
explanatory notice”, etc. are concrete activities which are carried out in a certain
order (not necessarily linear nor entirely predetermined) and which take on meaning
firstly in reference to the objective they are intended to satisfy (i.e. identify the
segment(s) which are most important in the eyes of the analyst) and secondly in
reference to the models of description which guide the work of segmentation and
which, in a manner of speaking, “force” the various activities to provide answers for
“problematic places” such as the “beginning of the segment”, the “end of the
segment”, the “title”, “subtitle”, etc.
A particular analysis (essentially made up of a series of
intellectualdecisions
and
technical gestures
guided by
models
) of an audiovisual text is based on a certain
number of
(dynamic) forms
which are material representations of the underlying
models of description and constitute the analyst's
working interface
. As Figure 2.1
shows, a
form
is a sort of
interactive text
which guides the analyst in entering the
information the computer system needs in order to carry out the qualitative
transformation the analyst desires so as to produce a knowledge resource either for
himself or for a target audience, based on an existing audiovisual text.
Figure 2.1 shows part of the form which invites the analyst wishing to describe
the subject
CivilizationsinAsia
in a video to carry out a specific set of activities. We
shall discuss these activities in detail throughout this topic.
