Tài liệu Introduction to Audiovisual Archives pptx

The development of methods, tools and conceptual frameworks or models for the concrete analysis of audiovisual texts or corpora is one of the most importantissues for multimedia audiovis

Introduction to

Audiovisual Archives

Edited by Peter Stockinger

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Introduction xi

Peter STOCKINGER Chapter 1 Context and Issues 1

Peter STOCKINGER, Elisabeth DE PABLOand Francis LEMAITRE 1.1 The ARA program – a brief historical overview 1

1.2 The scientific and cultural heritage of the ARA program 4

1.3 The working process 8

1.4 Knowledge engineering in the service of the ARA program 14

1.4.1 Some questions 14

1.4.2 Recourse to the semiotics of the audiovisual text 15

1.4.3 Metalanguage of description, models and scenarios 16

1.4.4 Models and scenarios of collection/prodution of audiovisual corpora 18

1.4.5 Models and scenarios for publishing/republishing 19

1.5 The digital environment and the working process 21

1.6 Analyzing an audiovisual corpus using ASW Studio 26

P ART 1: T HE S EGMENTATION AND D ESCRIPTION W ORKSHOPS FOR A UDIOVISUAL C ORPORA 31

Chapter 2 The Segmentation Workshop for Audiovisual Resources 33

ElisabethDEPABLO 2.1 Introduction 33

2.2 Segmentation of audiovisual corpora – a general presentation 34

2.2.1 Example of segmentation of a scientific interview 36

2.2.2 Example of the segmentation of a conference 38

2.2.3 Exemplication of the segmentation of an amateur video 39

2.2.4 Example of the segmentation of an

audiovisual report 40

2.2.5 Other possible segmentations 41

2.3 Appropriation of the segmentation workshop 42

2.4 Some additional thoughts about segmentation 46

2.5 Perspectives relating to the segmentation workshop 46

Chapter 3 Description Workshop for Audiovisual Corpora 49

Muriel CHEMOUNY 3.1 A general overview 49

3.2 The “metadescription” part of an audiovisual analysis in ASW Studio: the mark of the editor’s choice 51

3.2.1 General overview 53

3.2.2 Focus on the “general” sub-section of metadescription 58

3.3 The “identifying information of an audiovisual resource” part in the ASW description workshop 62

Chapter 4 Analysis of Audiovisual Expression 67

ElisabethDEPABLOand Jirasri DESLIS 4.1 Introduction 67

4.2 Analysis of the visual shot 68

4.2.1 General overview 68

4.2.2 General description of the visual shot and analysis procedures 69

4.2.3 Examples of describing the visual shot of an audiovisual text 72

4.2.4 Some specific uses of the analyzed visual shots 77

4.3 Analysis of the sound shot 77

4.3.1 General description of the sound shot and analysis procedures 77

4.3.2 Example of analysis of a video described using the sound shot 81

4.3.3 Some uses for sound clips 83

Chapter 5 Analysis of the Audiovisual Content 87

Peter STOCKINGER 5.1 Thematic analysis 87

5.2 A concrete example of the description of a topic 90

5.3 The model of thematic description 98

5.4 The objects of thematic analysis 102

5.5 Procedures of analysis 107

5.6 The different components of a model

of thematic description 116

5.7 Libraries of models for the description of subjects 121

Chapter 6 Uses of an Audiovisual Resource 127

Muriel CHEMOUNYand Primsuda SAKUNTHABAI 6.1 The “Uses” part of the ASW description workshop 127

6.1.1 The “genres” of uses of an audiovisual text 128

6.1.2 The target audience of an audiovisual text 134

6.2 Producing a linguistic adaptation of an audiovisual resource 135

Chapter 7 Model of an Audiovisual Publication in the form of a Web Portal 143

Jirasri DESLIS 7.1 Introduction 143

7.2 The ArkWork homepage 144

7.3 Thematic access to audiovisual resources 146

7.4 Direct accesses to the audiovisual resources 151

7.5 Access to the audiovisual resources by thesaurus 156

7.6 Contextualization of the video 158

P ART 2: T ECHNOLOGICAL E NVIRONMENT , D EVELOPMENT AND N EW P ERSPECTIVES 169

Chapter 8 The ASW Digital Environment 171

Francis LEMAITRE 8.1 Introduction 171

8.2 General presentation 175

8.2.1 Management of roles and rights 175

8.2.2 The technologies 177

8.2.3 The working process in the ASW environment 179

8.3 SemioscapeLibrary 181

8.3.1 The abstraction layers 181

8.3.2 The objects layer 182

8.3.3 The data access layer 191

8.3.4 The data processing layer 192

8.4 Semioscape 194

8.4.1 The database 194

8.4.2 The Web services 200

8.5 Conclusion 201

Chapter 9 The ASW Studio 203

Francis LEMAITRE 9.1 Introduction 203

9.2 The common libraries 204

9.2.1 SemioscapeResources 204

9.2.2 SemioscapeUserControls 204

9.3 SemioscapeData 207

9.3.1 Ontology of work configuration 207

9.3.2 Static ontology 207

9.3.3 Metalexicon of conceptual terms 208

9.3.4 Domain ontologies 208

9.3.5 Listings of the ontologies 209

9.4 ESCoM Update 209

9.5 ESCoM ffCoder 210

9.6 ESCoM OntoEditor 211

9.7 ESCoM-INA Interview 212

9.8 ESCoM SemioscapeAdmin 214

9.9 The ESCoM suite 2011 installer 214

9.10 Semiosphere 216

9.10.1 SemiosphereLibrary 218

9.10.2 Customization 218

9.10.3 Multilingualism 219

9.10.4 Site maps 219

9.11 Conclusion 220

Chapter 10 The Technical Development of the “Web Portal” Publishing Model 225

Richard GUÉRINET 10.1 The notion of “publishing module” 225

10.2 RIAs 228

10.3 The “Menu” publishing module 233

10.4 The “Video player” publishing module 235

10.5 The “contextualization of a video” publishing module 236

10.6 The “temporal location” publishing module 238

10.7 The “geographical location” publishing module 239

10.7.1 The geographical location 240

10.8 Conclusion 242

Glossary of Specialized Terms 243

Peter STOCKINGER

Glossary of Acronyms and Names 263

Peter STOCKINGER

Bibliography 281 List of Authors 285 Index 287

This collective work deals with the analysis of audiovisual numerical texts or

corpora, which may e.g form part of an audiovisual library or archive

The development of methods, tools and conceptual frameworks (or models) for

the concrete analysis of audiovisual texts or corpora is one of the most importantissues for multimedia (audiovisual) digital libraries, archives, collections, etc andalso for any project or program to compile and disseminate knowledge heritage(e.g cultural, scientific etc.)

Analyzing audiovisual recordings, shoots, sound recordings, film or complexmultimodal documents etc obviously constitutes an essential step for any

classification of the (digital) collection of an archive or library.

Above all, however, it is the most important activity by which an actor (anindividual, group of individuals, institution, etc.) obtains and exploits numericalaudiovisual data to transform them – depending on their own skills, expectations andrequirements, but also within the limitations imposed by the tools, methods and

models available – into genuine cognitive resources which they regard as “useful”,

“pleasant”, “interesting” or simply relevant, i.e which have a value for them.

Ten years ago now, along with a small nucleus of permanent collaborators fromthe ESCoM (Semiotics Cognitive and New Media Team), the research center at theFondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH – House of the HumanSciences Foundation) in Paris, we set up the ARA (Audiovisual Research Archives)program One of the objectives of this program, which will be described in moredetail in the Chapter 1 of this book, is to compile and distribute scientific and

Introduction written by Peter S TOCKINGER

cultural heritage, notably through scientific events and field-work carried out inhuman and social sciences Another objective of this program is to set up researchand development projects aimed at:

a) collecting and producing audiovisual documentation (of field-work, for example);b) compiling analysis corpora and effectively analyzing these corpora;

c) creating publishable corpora and publishing them;

d) defining and setting up (metalinguistic) models and essential procedures tosuccessfully carry out the aforementioned three “tasks”

In this book, and another collective work complementing this one (see [STO 12a]),

we will present and discuss the results of our research and development relating to theanalysis, description and indexing of audiovisual corpora The question of analysis hasbeen addressed from the start with regard to the following three issues:

1) a good understanding of the activity of analysis must take account of the

internal structural organization of the audiovisual text and must have recourse to

the semiotics of the audiovisual text or discourse;

2) a true analysis (going beyond, e.g simply producing unstructured lists

of keywords) of audiovisual corpora cannot be carried out without a metalanguage (an “ontology”), i.e models of description representing the area of expertise covered

by a corpus to be analyzed;

3) of course, no analysis can take place without an appropriate working environment.

Thanks to a series of French and European R&D projects1and to the support ofthe FMSH, between 2001 and 2009, we were able to make tangible progress towardsaddressing the three issues mentioned However, in particular it was the ASW-HSS2project, financed by the French National Research Agency (Agence Nationale de laRecherche – ANR), that gave us the time and means needed to develop:

– a metalanguage for analyzing audiovisual corpora documenting a wide variety

of areas of knowledge/expertise This metalanguage is a generic ontology (called

“ASW3ontology”) which has helped us to define, use and validate a whole series of

1 For more information, see Chapter 1 of this book; see also the glossary of acronyms and project names at the end of this book.

2 See official Website of the ASW-HSS (Audiovisual Semiotic Workshop – Human and Social Sciences) project: http://www.asa-shs.fr/.

3 The acronym ASW means “Audiovisual Semiotic Workshop” and refers, of course, to the ASW-HSS project financed by the French National Research Agency (ANR).

domain ontologies4and models of description adapted to thematically limited areas

of knowledge/expertise This book will present it through a wide variety of concreteexamples [STO 12b] gives a more theoretical and more detailed account of thismetalanguage;5

– a working environment for segmenting and describing audiovisual corpora entirelybased upon the ASW metalanguage of description The name of this environment is

ASW Studio; it is made up of several specialized workshops: the Segmentation Workshop, for (virtually) segmenting an audiovisual object; the Description Workshop,

for describing an audiovisual object; the Publication Workshop, for publishing an audiovisual object; the Modeling Workshop, to model the metalinguistic resources

needed to undertake an analysis/description of an audiovisual object In this book we will

present the two following workshops in particular: the Segmentation Workshop and the

Description Workshop; the presentation of the Modeling Workshop will be the subject of

[STO 12b]; as the Publication Workshop is still partially under development, it will be

the object of a new publication in late 2012;

– an as-yet relatively simple metalanguage for defining models for

publishing/republishing audiovisual corpora in the form, e.g of themed folders,

bilingual folders, theme-limited video-glossaries, themed Websites, etc Thesemodels are indeed used for publishing/republishing audiovisual corpora but themetalanguage enabling us to define them has not yet been made explicit Clarifyingthe organization of this metalanguage and incorporating it into the ASW genericontology will, conditions beyond the authors’ control permitting, constitute the mainobject of the ESCoM’s research activities during the next few years

This book is divided into two main parts In part 1, following an introductorychapter contextualizing our R&D activities since 2001, the different approaches toanalyzing of an audiovisual corpus using ASW Studio will be presented:

– strictly textual analysis, consisting of the identifying passages which are relevant

to an analysis and to the (virtual) segmentation of an audiovisual object (Chapter 2);

– metadescription, which clarifies the content and objectives of the analysis itself

as well as the authors of the analysis, the rights associated with using the results, etc.(Chapter 3);

4 As part of the ASW-HSS projects, several experimental workshops dealing with the formation, analysis and publication of audiovisual corpora within limited areas of knowledge/expertise: literary heritage, archeology, cultural diversity, etc have been defined.

5 The research diary or blog http://asashs.hypotheses.org/ is entirely dedicated to issues relating to the ASW metalanguage of description, its evolution, its reuse and its instrumentation within the ASW Studio framework.

– paratextual description, the aim of which is to formally identify the

audiovisual object being analyzed (title, author, genre, summary of content, etc.) andthe relative rights associated with its use (Chapter 3);

– audiovisual description, which relates to analyzing visual, acoustic and

audiovisual shots (Chapter 4);

– thematic description, which deals with the content, the subjects dealt with and

developed by the audiovisual text being analyzed (Chapter 5);

– pragmatic description which clarifies the potential interest of the audiovisual text in question for a given audience/use and also looks at its possible translation-

adaptation (Chapter 6);

– publication of an audiovisual corpus in the form of a Web portal which is the

usual form of publishing the audiovisual corpora analyzed and indexed duringthe ASW-HSS project (Chapter 7)

Part 2 of this book is given over to a technical presentation and a detaileddiscussion:

– of the ASW digital environment (Chapter 8);

– of the ASW Studio dedicated to work on audiovisual corpora (Chapter 9); – of the computerized development of the publishing model called “portal with

specialized access to audiovisual corpora” – the standard model of publication of

the experiments conducted during the ASW-HSS project (Chapter 10)

Let us reiterate that this collective work is accompanied by a second collectivework [STO 12a] which deals with new practices in analyzing audiovisual corpora.That book contains in-depth presentations of highly specialized analyses whichcould not be conceived of without genuine scenarios of analysis, projects aimed atimplementing “shared” audiovisual archives using the ASW approach (i.e the ASWmetalanguage and the ASW Studio) and finally, the exploitation of the results ofanalysis of audiovisual corpora in the context of social media, Web 2.0 and mobilecommunication In [STO 12b], the reader will find a more detailed and systematicpresentation of the ASW metalanguage and of all the elements which make it up

To conclude this introduction, let us highlight once more that this book really isthe product of a collective and interdisciplinary effort combining “fundamental”research with applied research, and computing with human sciences (particularlysemiotics and linguistics) As mentioned above, the work has been carried out over

10 years by a small team of researchers and engineers who are also the authors ofthis book and of [STO 12a] The author of this introduction expresses his gratitudeand high esteem to each of them

Throughout the last 10 years of research and development, the team has benefitedfrom the support and the backing of many colleagues and friends in France andabroad Thanks go in particular to the following individuals: Patrick Courounet,Steffen Lalande, Abdelkrim Beloued, Bruno Bachimont (INA Research Dept.);Jocelyne and Marc Nanard (CNRS-Lirmm); Marie-Laure Mugnier, Michel Chein,Alain Gutierrez (CNRS-Lirmm); David Genest (University of Angers-Leria); DanailDochev, Radoslav Pavlov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences); Stavros Christodoulakis,Nektarios Moumoutzis (Technical University of Crete, Chania).

In addition, special thanks go to Muriel Chemouny (FMSH-ESCoM) for havingproofread each of the contributions which make up this book, and to Elisabeth dePablo (FMSH-ESCoM) for formatting this manuscript

Our special thanks also go to ISTE/WILEY for giving us the opportunity topresent our research and development over the past decade to a non-french speakingaudience Finally, we are especially grateful to Benjamin Engel for having realizedsuch an excellent translation in such a short time

Context and Issues

1.1 The ARA program – a brief historical overview

This book presents the results of a 10-year collective research effort on theissue of analysis of audiovisual corpora forming part, e.g of a digital library.The advantages and issues involved in analyzing an audiovisual corpus aremany and often very different from each other In any case, they far exceed the

“standard” framework of library and/or documentary sciences and techniques Onthe other hand, they are reminiscent of the issue of monitoring expertise andconcrete exploitation of information or knowledge in the different economic sectors.For all contributions in this book, the reference context for addressing thequestion – as complex as it is exciting – of analyzing audiovisual texts or corpora isthe ARA (Audiovisual Research Archives – in French: Archives Audiovisuelles de

la Recherche1or AAR) program The ARA program is a research and developmentproject of the Cognitive Semiotics and New Media Team (Equipe SémiotiqueCognitive et Nouveaux Médias – ESCoM) of the Fondation Maison des Sciences del’Homme (FMSH – House of Human Sciences Foundation) put in place in 2001following several years of research on the conceptual analysis of digital data and theissues surrounding digital libraries for research, education and culture (see [DFS 97;VHF 97a; VHF 97b; AKV 99]) The ARA program is especially dedicated to the

issue of compiling, processing and analyzing audiovisual corpora, as well as

publishing (and republishing) them online.

Chapter written by Peter S TOCKINGER , Elisabeth DE P ABLO and Francis L EMAITRE

1 See http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/EN.

In 2000, by means of a French research project entitled OPALES (“Outils pourdes Portails Audiovisuels Educatifs et Scientifiques” – literally, Tools forEducational and Scientific Audiovisual Portals)2and following an initial assessment

of the needs of the scientific community regarding the exploitation of audiovisualcontents via the Internet [DPL 01], a prototype was specified and developed for an

“online video library”-type generic tool aimed at promoting scientific andeducational events.3The classification of the audiovisual collection of this very firstvideo library, the predecessor of the ARA, was made based on an early andrudimentary metalanguage for describing audiovisual content (i.e based on a

domain ontology).

The “Opales” video library prototype, as well as the very first metalanguagefor audiovisual content description, then formed the basis for the definition andimplementation of a far more ambitious program of digitization and dissemination

of scientific and cultural documented heritage in the form of corpora of all sorts

of audiovisual texts, i.e from almost raw recordings with no notable postproduction

to documentaries, reports and other “real world” and “direct” shoots, althoughnot (hitherto) including fictional productions After some hesitation, this

ambitious project was called – in French – Programme Archives Audiovisuelles de

la Recherche (AAR), translatable as Audiovisual Research Archives Program (ARA).

The implementation and general running of the ARA program and its differentactivities was preceded by a considerable amount of previous work, aimed at

defining as explicit a strategic framework as possible, and a guiding scheme for

specifying the identity, the particular place of the aforementioned program in thecontext of the research on digital libraries and their concrete exploitation Thus,

when defining the general objectives of the ARA program, we focused on the fact that they should definitely not be reduced to a “simple” program of recording events

2 The OPALES Project (2000–2002) financed as part of the French PRIAMM program with the National Audiovisual Institute (in French: Institut National Audiovisuel) as a co-ordinating partner, as well as France 2, La Cinquième (which are French television channels), La Cité des Sciences, the CNDP (Educational National Information Center), the LIRMM (Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics and Microelectronics of Montpellier) of the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) and the University of Montpellier and RENATER (French National Technology, Research and Education Network) Complete description available (in French only) at: http://www.semionet.fr/FR/recherche/projets_recher che/00_02_opales/opales.htm.

3 We recall, with a certain degree of nostalgia, that the very first scientific event recorded and published as part of this video library was the International Conference on Geometry in the 20th Century, which was organized by Dominique Flament and his team in history of mathematics and, more particularly, geometry at the FMSH in Paris The lectures given during this conference are still available at: http://semioweb.msh-paris.fr/geometrie2000/.

and “online publication” as is the case for the vast majority of video library, photolibrary and other multimedia library projects which, indeed, often contentthemselves with a very modest policy regarding the exploitation, valorization andreuse of their documentary collections.

On the other hand, the ARA program was created from the word “Go!” to fulfill the following two joint objectives:

“[…]

1) compilation and distribution of public research heritage in the form ofaudiovisual, visual, sound and text files (with digital support), of scientific eventssuch as interviews with researchers, seminars, scientific exhibitions, reports, videomontages, documentaries, etc.;

2) design and development of technologies and tools suitable for the productionand management of audiovisual and text archives, the processing of audiovisualrecords and their use in the contexts of research, education and scientific journalism.[…]” [AAR 04, p.3]

The wording of these two objectives unequivocally shows that, in the context

of the ARA program, we absolutely preclude the idea of reducing the work

of compilation and distribution/exploitation of knowledge heritage to a simpletechnical process of capture/digitization of audiovisual data, their computerizationand online distribution

On entirely the other hand, this work depends intrinsically upon more complicated procedures, as regards transforming any digital data (a photo, an audiovisual or sound recording, etc.) into a genuine cognitive resource for a specific

audience and specific uses Yet, this transformation may not be done without

suitable approaches, methodologies, conceptual resources (such as scenarios andmodels for compiling, describing, publishing/republishing and preservingaudiovisual corpora in the long-term), appropriate computer tools and, of course,skills and therefore specialized human resources Hence, naturally, the specificity ofthe ARA program, as compared to other similar initiatives and projects, relies uponthe intrinsic links between:

1 the concrete work of constituting, processing, analyzing and publishing

audiovisual corpora to document an area of knowledge;

2 The theoretical and methodological knowledge and know-how, the expertise

necessary for constituting, processing, analyzing and publishing audiovisualcorpora;

3 the concrete achievements - not only in the form of analyzed and published

audiovisual corpora but also in the form of so-called metalinguistic (see section: 1.1) and computer resources – for analyzing and publishing audiovisual corpora.

In this book, we will demonstrate through a multitude of examples, how thesethree aspects, which are essential to a project of constitution/diffusion of a body ofknowledge heritage, stand in for and reinforce one another

1.2 The scientific and cultural heritage of the ARA program

One of the most important aspects in terms of activities carried out as part of theARA program is, of course, the concrete work of collecting and diffusing knowledgegenerated in human and social sciences (HSS) by way of particular “events” such aslectures, conferences, workshops, working meetings, research seminars, highereducation classes or by structured and in-depth interviews with researchers andlecturer/researchers working in HSS

In comparison with initiatives close to the ARA program,4 one of the mainpoints of the ARA program has been to accompany and valorize, as far as possiblegiven its budgetary and logistical limitations, the particular position of the FMSH inParis5 in the French institutional field; a particular position that the historianMaurice Aymard, former administrator of the Foundation, had defined as that ofbetting not only on the internationalization of research but also, far more “radically”,

on the “de-Europeanization and inter-culturalization of the fundamental concepts

and issues of [human and] social sciences”.6 Relying, on the one hand, on theFMSH’s geographical and themed programs7and international networks, and on the

4 In 2001/2002 in France, these were, in particular, Canal U, the higher education video library (http://www.canal-u.tv, only available in French) and the program La Diffusion des Savoirs (The Diffusion of Knowledge) of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris.

5 See http://www.msh-paris.fr/.

6 On this subject, see the interview conducted by Peter Stockinger with Maurice Aymard for the ARA program in September 2002 dealing with the specificity of the (FMSH) and its missions: http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/35/.

7 Let us cite, among its many geographical and themed programs, those with which the ARA program has maintained close relations over the years: the F2DS program in History of Mathematics (Dominique Flament, also head of the Espace Charles Morazé: http://www.centre-charles-moraze.msh-paris.fr/), the ALIBI “China” and “workshop” programs dedicated to exchanges between Chinese- and French-language literature (Annie Curien), the Civilisation du pain [Civilization of bread] program (Mouette Barboff), the Programme International d’Etudes Avancées (PIEA) [International Program of Advanced Studies] headed by Jean-Luc Racine, the Entre Sciences [Inter-Science] program (Angela

other on the fact that the FMSH received (and still receives) hundreds of researchersfrom all over the world each year, the ARA program was thus able to compile(particularly between 2002 and 2005/2006) a truly exceptional and unique scientificheritage, made up of contributions from researchers in institutions not only in Francebut in some 85 countries the world over.

This was not only about “hastily” collecting the additions to scientificknowledge by researchers from a many countries in the world The stated goal of the

ARA program was to methodically collect information from colleagues working in France or abroad These methodical collections relied on explicit models and field

scenarios (see section: 1.4) and were quite deliberately implemented when

compiling audiovisual analysis corpora on certain chosen themes Therefore, from2005/2006 onwards, a number of particularly important aspects for contemporaryresearch were advantaged, among them the following three:

1 the often conflicting relationships between globalization, cultural diversity,multiculturalism and/or communitarianism and intercultural dialog;

2 the huge (social, political, economic, etc.) need for models and scenarios tounderstand and evaluate the changes of the modern world;

3 the central questions concerning the construction, the very organization ofhuman sciences, the epistemic and theoretical status of its concepts and models, the

“paradigmatic” change from disciplinary research towards inter- or rather disciplinary research on specifically identified issues as well as the relationshipsbetween HSS, natural and formal sciences and engineering

trans-In addition, since 2005/2006, the ARA program has been exploring other field tocollect, digitize and distribute knowledge heritage Hence, projects of collection,analysis, publishing and online distribution of audiovisual corpora concerning

Procoli, succeeded by François Rochet), the Tic-Migrations program (Dana Diminescu), the Programme Amérique latine [Latin-America Program] (Dominique Fournier), the Programme

de coopération Maghreb-France [Maghreb-France Cooperation Program] (Maurice Aymard), the Programme Proche et Moyen-Orient [Near- and Middle-East Program] (H Dawod), the Programme Inde et Asie du Sud [India and South Asia Program] (France Bhattacharya replaced by Max-Jean Zins), the Programme Japon [Japan Program] (Jane Cobbi), the Programme Russie et CEI [the Russia and CIS Program] (Anne Le Huérou), the association

“France Union Inde” [France India Union] (Maurice Aymard), Editions MSH (MSH Publishing) as well as the Programme directeurs d’études associés [Associated Research Directors Program] and the different Programmes de bourses de recherche et postdoctorales [Research and Postdoctoral Bursary Programs]; for more information, see the FMSH Website: http://www.msh-paris.fr/ and the corresponding event on the ARA Web portal: http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles fr/.

traditional knowledge and know-how,8 collective memory,9 geopolitical regions,10traditions and new forms of artistic expression,11 day-to-day culture,12 Europeanemigration to Latin America,13etc have been carried out The ARA program hasthus developed, over the course of its existence, an original and methodologicallysolid14approach to the compilation and online publishing of audiovisual corpora.Among the tangible results of this “policy” of producing scientific and culturalheritage using digital audiovisual technology, the ARA includes, among others:– a collection of almost 6,000 hours of online videos, made up of a series ofthematically-delimited corpora such as, for example, the “Social History” corpus(around 600 hours of online videos), the – “Cultural and Linguistic Diversity”corpus (around 450 hours of videos), the “Globalization and SustainableDevelopment” corpus (around 250 hours of videos), the “History of Mathematicsand Geometry” corpus (around 160 hours of videos), the “Religious History andStudy” corpus (around 200 hours of videos), etc.;

– an audiovisual collection whose authors form a 2,500-strong communityworking in over 900 institutions and 85 countries worldwide;

– an audiovisual collection bringing together videos in 15 different languages;

8 See e.g the online documentation on artisan bread-making in Portugal, produced in 2008 in cooperation with the ethnologist Mouette Barboff: http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/ 1895/.

9 See e.g the audiovisual documentation entitled “Ils arrivent demain … Ongles, village d’accueil des familles d’anciens harkis” (created in 2009): http://www.archivesaudio visuelles.fr/1894/.

10 See e.g the themed portal “AmSud Mediateca latinoamericana” put in place in 2007 and dedicated entirely to the history, geography, civilization, society and countries of Latin America: http://www.amsud.fr/ES/.

11 See e.g the audiovisual documentation entitled “Du griot au slameur Oralités anciennes, oralités urbaines” produced in 2009 in cooperation with the Département Musiques orales et improvisées de la Fondation Royaumont: http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/1674/.

12 See e.g the documentation on daily life in Hong Kong produced in 2007 as part of the

“China” program of the FMSH in Paris and led by Annie Curien from the CNRS http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/1108/.

13 See e.g the audiovisual documentation dedicated to French emigration in the 19th Century to the State of Veracruz in Mexico (produced 2005–2007 in cooperation with Javier Perez Siller from the BUAP - the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla: http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/1631/.

14 For more information see the online documentation on the ARA Web portal: http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/FR/about4.asp.

– an audiovisual collection distributed on the ARA Web portal and/or – a series

of other thematically- or geographically-delimited Web portals15 forming part of theARA;

– an audiovisual collection entirely published in the form of “mini-Websites”with each “mini-site” corresponding to a scientific event – a field of research,

a cultural exhibition, etc (hence, up to the end of 2010 the ARA portal containedand distributed about 650 audiovisual mini-sites including nearly 350 structured andin-depth interviews, 70 research seminars, 150 discussions, 50 reports anddocumentaries and 15 audiovisual “field” documentations);

– a collection of which some parts are re-published in the form of themed folders(in late 2010, around 85 themed folders), bilingual folders (in total, around

80 bilingual folders including French/English; French/Arabic; French/Russian;French/Chinese etc.) and themed video-lexicon (devoted e.g to world languages,intangible cultural heritage, etc.)

Therefore, in 2009, the ARA program was qualified by the very official Agenced’Evaluation de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur (AERES) [Agency forthe Evaluation of Research and Higher Education] thus

“[…] The ARA are a good example of the promotion of the FMSH’s culturalheritage by the systematic use of new digital technologies based on the activity of theCognitive Semiotic and New Media Lab (ESCoM) […] The ARA are thus theproduct of this team’s activity Their objective is the formation, distribution andexploitation of public heritage of knowledge produced by HSS in the form of videorecordings, classes, seminars, interviews, etc to the benefit of research, education, andlearning Over the years since their commissioning [4 years, 2006–2009, P.S.], theARA have become a major player in this field in France […]” [AER 09, p 20].16

15 Here let us cite the following portals: AmSud – mediateca latinoamericana, a portal in Spanish dedicated to the history, culture, society and peoples of Latin America: (http://semioweb.msh-paris.fr/corpus/amsud/FR/); Azéri Buta, dedicated to Azerbaijani culture: (http://semioweb.msh-paris.fr/corpus/azeributa/FR/); Averroès – the France-Maghreb media library: (http://www.france-maghreb.fr/FR/); Diversité Linguistique et Culturelle (Linguistic and Cultural Diversity): (http://semioweb.msh-paris.fr/corpus/dlc/FR/); Mondialisation et Développement Durable (Globalization and Sustainable Development): (http://www.evolutiondurable.fr/FR/); Peuple et Cultures du Monde (People and Cultures of the World): (http://www.culturalheritage.fr/FR/) and Semiotica, Cultura e Comunicazione (Italian for “Semiotics, Culture and Communication”, jointly developed with the Faculty of Communication at the University of Rome – Sapienza: (http://www.archiviosemiotica.eu/IT/).

16 See FMSH evaluative report, online on the AERES Website: evaluation.fr/ content/download/13289/186002/file/AERES-S1-Fondation_MSH.pdf.

http://www.aeres-1.3 The working process

As has already been said, the ARA’s activities cannot be reduced to technicalprocedures for capture, digitization, processing and distribution of audiovisual data

These only constitute a particular set of activities among others.

The ARA program does however rely on close coordination between several sets

of activities which are essential to the implementation and running of a highlycomplex working process covering all stages from the production of audiovisualdata to their publication

Thus, alongside a first set of rather technical activities, a second set of activities contributes to the central task of transforming digital data into a cognitive resource.

This includes, e.g the following activities:

– definition and preparation of collections of audiovisual data;

– selection of audiovisual corpora (on the basis of collected data) for analysisand publishing;

– montage and postproduction of the selected corpus according to montagescenarios;

– analysis, description and indexing as well as (linguistic but also cognitive orcultural) adaptation-translation of the selected corpus;

– publication and/or republication of the corpus post-produced and analyzed/adapted according to a publication model and scenario

A third set of activities concerns activities whose aim is to preserve the originals,

the legally valid documents, safeguarding the heritage but also the legal deposition

of all the achievements of the ARA program

A fourth set of activities, transversal to the first three, is concerned with the R&D

activities in the true sense One of the most obvious objectives of R&D activities aspart of the ARA program is to reinforce its internal abilities in order to satisfy to itsobjectives of compiling and publishing/distributing scientific and cultural heritage.The issue of strengthening the internal capabilities of the ARA program relates

as much to the technical working environments as it does to the approaches to and methods for the collection, processing, analysis, publishing, distribution,

exploitation and preservation of audiovisual corpora To that end, what is required is

a team and various networks of researchers, engineers but also professionalsbringing together multidisciplinary skills (multidisciplinary skills which allow us to

cover computing and a wide variety of approaches and disciplines in HSS) whomethodically work according to explicit procedures, on issues which consider theexisting and/or potential needs of the ARA program The R&D activities undertaken

as part of the ARA program are primarily aimed at defining and developing twospecific types of resources:

1 computer resources suitable for effectively carrying out concrete work on an

audiovisual corpus;

2 so-called metalinguistic resources necessary either to compile corpora or to

analyze and/or process them, or even publish/republish them (in particular these aremodels and scenarios for production, analysis and publishing of audiovisual corpora;see section 1.4)

There are other activities which complement those we have just identified Let usabove all remember that it is hugely important to identify the main sets of activitiesfor a project of compilation and distribution of knowledge heritage

It is only on the basis of this identification that we may define the stages and

explicit procedures of working process according to which the tasks of producing,

analyzing and publishing audiovisual corpora documenting an area of knowledge orexpertise are organized and carried out This process is, indeed, even more complexthan is suggested by an extremely simplistic (but unfortunately still verywidespread) vision reducing it to a few technical gestures concerning “putting a

video online” which seems to essentially consist of simply uploading the file

containing the video, accompanied by a basic computer record

We were therefore led to define the said process as precisely as possible, forscientific and technical as well as practical and financial reasons:

– scientific and technical reasons: the better to be able to identify the gaps, limits

and obstacles to be overcome during the process of production/publishing so as tomake it more efficient and more easily adaptable to the expectations of the audiencesand stakeholders concerned as well as to the specificities of the corpora themselves;

– practical and financial reasons: the better to be able to define the competences

and profiles sought, achieve better management and monitoring of the process itselfand finally, also, to better calculate the costs incurred in production, processing andanalysis as well as publishing and preservation of an audiovisual corpus

In view of the experience gained during years of work compiling audiovisualcorpora documenting HSS areas (especially between 2001/2002 and 2005/2006), we

were able to define and implement, from 2004 onwards, the working process which

characterizes the ARA’s activities as far as the compilation, publication and

distribution of knowledge heritage are concerned Figure 1.1 gives an overview ofthe 5 major stages according to which the said process is organized.

1 Stage 1: Preliminary activities prior to the recording of a field in the

broader sense, i.e including recordings of genuinely scientific fields inethnology, sociology, linguistics, etc as well as those of scientific (lectures,seminars, etc.) or cultural events (concerts, performances, etc.)

2 Stage 2: Activities of field recording and of data collection with the aim of constituting a corpus of field documentation (lato sensu, see above).

3 Stage 3: Processing and analysis of the (working) corpus documenting a field (lato sensu, see above).

4 Stage 4: Pre-publication and publication/republication of previously processed and analyzed audiovisual corpora.

5 Stage 5: Activities completing the working process.

Figure 1.1 The five major stages making up the process of production, processing, analysis

and publication of an audiovisual corpus

Figure 1.2 shows a table which, for each stage, details the main activities to

be carried out Besides the fact that this table explicitly shows all the complexity

of a project or program of compilation and distribution/conservation of knowledgeheritage, it is extremely useful as a reference framework which, on the one

hand, enables us to implement genuine management of a team which is necessarily multidisciplinary, and on the other hand to calculate the relative durations of

the different activities in view of potential specificities linked to the domain,the corpus to be compiled or its use We refer the interested reader to Chapters 4

and 5 of the book Digital Audiovisual Archives,17 which describe two concreteexamples of the creation of audiovisual archives: the first example is dedicated tothe compilation of an audiovisual archive on the intangible cultural heritage of theso-called indigenous communities which live in the Andean regions of Bolivia andPeru; the second to one on a country – Azerbaijan These examples demonstratevery well all the complexity of the working process including the production,processing and analysis as well as the publication of an audiovisual corpusdocumenting a given patrimony

17 Digital Audiovisual Archives, ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

Phases Typical activities constituting a phase

Phase 1:

Preparatory activities

prior to the recording of a

field (lato sensu)

1.0) Activities of definition/specification of the field (in the context of a

new sociological, linguistic, archeological, etc field; but also as part of

the preparation for an interview with a researcher, or a conference,

lecture, etc.)

1.1) Activity of definition/specification of the video shoot(s) to be

carried out (types of recordings, place, moment/period; other

specificities; etc.) – activity necessary to any type of field lato sensu

(even for videorecording a seminar, conference, etc.)

1.2) Activity of preparation proper (analysis of the requirements –

technical, intellectual, etc.; mapping of the field, planning of recordings; initial contact and consultation with the parties and stakeholders involved; site visits; constitution of the team and equipment; watching and scientific documentation; monitoring of the legal documentation (contracts, film shooting authorizations, image rights, etc.)

Note: These three – essential – activities may be very complicated and

“time-consuming”, but they are essential for any serious project for

collection of data documenting a field work lato sensu (on this, see particularly the examples in Chapter 4 New Uses for Digital Audiovisual

Corpora.).

2.1) Preliminary work via the computer environment ESCoM-ARA

(which is in the process of being replaced by the new ASW environment):

– creation of work and publishing spaces (to date: access to the

ASW Studio, see later on, Part 1);

– access to an intranet space to prepare and manage the scientific, legal documentation, etc;

– creation and access to spaces to store the data to be collected (notably audiovisual data); and if need be;

– creation of a Web portal for distribution.

2.2) Preparation of the recording(s) on the D-day(s): transporting,

installing and testing the equipment for image/sound capture, welcoming the involved actors/ stakeholders, verifying the contracts, possible journeys, etc.

2.3) Filming: alone or in a team, with one or more video cameras, with

or without a content creation station for live event programming, permanent monitoring of the sound recording equipment, scripting/note- taking, monitoring and management of the actors involved, etc.

2.5) “Post-shooting activities”: creating the shooting script, recording

and classifying the DV video cassettes and other supports used for the recording, de-installation and recovery of technical equipment, departure of the actors/stakeholders, etc.

Phase 2:

Activities of field

recording and data

collection, with the aim

of constituting

a corpus of

documentation on the

field (lato sensu)

2.6) Archiving of the data collected: physical archiving (of the supports

used for audiovisual recordings, non-digitally supported files (if

applicable), realia, etc.); electronic archiving (digitally supported data).

Figure 1.2 The major activities defining the stages of the working process

for the constitution/publishing of a heritage of knowledge

Phases Typical activities constituting a phase

3.1) Acquisition of the rushes (i.e all shots taken during filming or

successive filming operations in the field) in a computer-usable format.

3.2) First viewing and (according to the model of definition of the

structure of the corpus) selection of the sequences from the working

corpus, based on the “rushes”.

3.3) “Basic” recording of raw files containing the selected sequences 3.4) “Technical cleanup” and (potentially) physical optimization of the

sound/image quality.

3.5) Postproduction according to a processing script (segmentation/

montage, titling, post-synchronization of image/sound, etc.).

Phase 3:

Processing and analysis

of the (working) corpus

– basic analysis (DC18 level);

– or specialized analysis (themed analysis, audiovisual analysis,

pragmatic analysis, etc.).

3.7) Compression and exportation in several “streaming” distribution

formats and verification of the technical quality of the raw and/or processed and/or described and indexed files.

3.8) (If need be) Computer processing and analysis of the other data

forming part of the corpus documenting the field and intended for publication: processing/analysis of still images, textual resources, etc Phase 4:

4.1) (By way of ESCoM/ARA publishing environment, replaced by the

new ASW environment) Work of drafting and editing:

– choice of an audiovisual publishing genre to be used for publishing

the corpus (portal, themed Website, videobook, themed folder, lexicon, etc.);

video-– production of the information and data needed for publication; – importation of “videos” to be published (together with their metadata)

as well as any other data collected during the second stage;

– technical preparation of the publication.

4.2) Pre-publication on the ARA program’s intranet:

– quality control of the publication by someone other than the author

of the publication;

– viewing of the publication by the actors involved and the various stakeholders.

Figure 1.2 (continued) The major activities defining the stages of the working process

for the constitution/publishing of a heritage of knowledge

18 DC is an acronym for Dublin Core, one of the most widely-used metadata schemes (made

up of 15 main elements) for describing digital data; see http://dublincore.org/.

Phases Typical activities constituting a phase

4.3) Publication per se: either on the ARA Web portal, or on any other

Website part of the ARA program.

4.4) Cataloging of the publication and its different parts (i.e saving it in the

different collections and/or Websites of the ARA program).

Phase 5:

Activities finalizing the

working process on the

corpus

5.1) Activities of communication around audiovisual publication:

– via the Electronic Newsletter of the ARA (distributed worldwide); via the FMSH networks;

– via social networks (Facebook, Twitter, “community” networks); – via channels broadcasting trailers on platforms for the diffusion of digital contents (YouTube, Twitter, Vimeo, etc.);

– via “content curators” such as Netvibes or Scoop.it; etc.

Note: for more information about this, see Chapters 6, 7 and 8 of New Uses of Digital Audiovisual Corpora.

5.1) Contract management (monitoring of the signatures, mailings,

archiving of the contracts of the ARA program, etc.)

5.2) Preservation of all electronic supports documenting the work

undertaken (information collection forms, technical scripts, indexing and cutting scripts, e-mails, etc.) on a dedicated documentation host (server).

5.3) Legal deposition of the published corpus in the Bibliothèque nationale de

France (BnF) – French National Library.

5.4) Regular saving of all computer files on an (automatic) backup server and

verification of “correct” safeguarding.

Figure 1.2 (continued) The major activities defining the stages of the working process

for the constitution/publishing of a heritage of knowledge

Using the table identifying the different activities which are part of the workingprocess for constituting/publishing knowledge heritage (Figure 1.2), it becomes far

easier to predict (with a certain degree of accuracy) the approximate date a corpus will be published, the duration of the work to be undertaken for it to be published,

the human resources (i.e skills) to be mobilized and finally the cost incurred by an

operation to compile and publish/distribute knowledge heritage.19

The table (Figure 1.2) representing the different activities of the process ofproducing, processing/analyzing and publishing an audiovisual corpus encourages us

to carefully distinguish between a “video-library”-type project and a project aimed atcompiling and distributing an audiovisual piece cultural and scientific heritage In thefirst case, we imitate more-or-less accurately a model which in itself is rather

conventional (i.e the unilateral distribution of content model, the paradigmatic

example of which is television) of capture/distribution of scientific, cultural or otherevents In the latter case, the capture and distribution of a scientific event is only asmall part of the work All its richness but also all its complexity relies on the fact that

it has to “solve”, or rather find satisfactory solutions to, the following issues:

– the “correct” constitution of a corpus, i.e the constitution of a relevant corpus; – the “correct” analysis of the corpus, i.e a relevant analysis and;

– the “correct” publication, a relevant publication of a corpus.

These issues lead us directly to the importance of knowledge engineering andsemiotics for the ARA program

1.4 Knowledge engineering in the service of the ARA program

1.4.1 Some questions

During the first period of collection of research testimonies in HSS (i.e 2002–2005), there gradually appeared a whole series of interrogations and issues which,

indeed, constitute the background and the main motivation of a new wave of R&D

activities since late 2006 Three of these are:

1 the quality and richness of the content of the collections forming part of theARA are somewhat overshadowed by the quantity (volume) of hours offered to theinterested community (at the end of 2006, the ARA’s collections comprised around3,500 hours of digital videos; at the end of 2009, around 5,800 hours);

2 the content conveyed by an audiovisual text (a raw recording, a montage, acorpus, etc.) has its own identity;

19 Note that in the context of the KNOSOS European project, financed 2003–2005 by the Leonardo da Vinci program, ESCoM created a series of online courses documenting the different stages of the working process as part of the ARA program Here is the URL of the Website diffusing the lessons in question: http://semioweb.msh-paris.fr/knosos/.

3 the audiovisual content is almost completely monolingual (i.e the vast

majority of recordings were carried out in a single language)

The first problem is reminiscent of the issue of description, classification andindexing of audiovisual corpora The second problem relates rather to theexplanation of the content of an audiovisual text, taking account both of its specificidentity and the cultural and cognitive “profile” of the target audience The thirdproblem is traditionally associated with the translation of an (audiovisual) text, i.e.linguistic comprehension of the content and metadata explicating the content Thesethree problems constitute genuine issues, as much for better distribution of cultural

or scientific heritage on a digital “market” which is intrinsically multilingual andmulticultural, as for an appropriation which is better-adapted to the expectations andneeds of the user communities in question?

In addition, the regular statistical analyses of visits to the ARA Website, thesurveys put to the ARA audience via an online questionnaire on the Web portal20andfinally regular feedback from users (teachers, researchers, students, etc.) of the ARA’saudiovisual collection, demonstrate the obvious limits of a “simple” multimedialibrary, contenting itself with a set of more-or-less “standard” accesses to itscollections: varying degrees of difficulty in locating and selecting a relevant piece ofinformation from large audiovisual databases; temporal linearity of the audiovisualflux preventing more flexible forms of exploration, such “leafing”; absence ofcontextual help for the exploration and appropriation of collections of audiovisualresources; absence of usual terminologies which could help to better understand thestructure of a collection and consequently explore it better; too many difficulties(technical but intellectual as well) in using or reusing audiovisual resources forspecific activities in research but also in education, scientific vulgarization, etc

1.4.2 Recourse to the semiotics of the audiovisual text

These and many other problems, have brought back to the forefront of debateone of ESCoM’s main objectives in participation in the aforementioned OPALES

project; i.e to define and develop a metalanguage for describing audiovisual texts

based – in particular – on a semiotic approach to the text (see [STO 99; STO 03a;EHE 07; FRS 09; GRO 11])

Without wishing to go into too much theoretical detail here (for more

information, see [STO 03a] and [STO 12]), the semiotic structure of the audiovisual

text (and of any other type of texts) may be “approached” in an intuitive and simplemanner using the following seven standard questions:

20 See http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/FR/questionnaire.asp.

1 What are the passages, moments, in the linear flux constituting the discernible(perceptible) part of the audiovisual text which catch/may catch the attention (i.e.

what are the “information-carrying” segments for a given audience)?

2 What are these “information-carrying” segments about (i.e what are the

subjects addressed by the segments, what are the selected topics and themes)?

3 How are the subjects tackled and addressed in these segments (i.e what is the

– enunciative, discursive – specificity of the topics and themes selected in the

“information-carrying” segments)?

4 How are the selected subjects progressively developed (described, explained,

“narrated”) within a segment and also through the different segments of the

audiovisual text where they appear (i.e what is the narrative specificity of the topics

or themes selected within an “information-carrying” segment or set of segments)?

5 What is the expression, the audiovisual “staging” of a topic developed in the

segments within which they are selected (i.e what is the multimodal specificity of

the topics or themes selected in the “information-carrying” segments)?

6 What are the similarities/differences in procedures of selection, processing,

development and audiovisual expression of a subject between several audiovisualtexts forming part of a corpus, a collection or, more generally, a historically-,socially- and/or culturally-delimited field of production of audiovisual texts

(i.e what is the intertextual specificity of a topic or a theme)?

7 What are the similarities/differences between the way that a selected subject istackled, developed and staged and the expectations, needs/desires and skills of an

audience (i.e what is the pragmatic – historical, cultural, social – specificity of a

topic or theme)?

These seven questions help to “fix” and orient ideas and habits well before the production of information (i.e prior to any filming) as well as afterward (i.e during

the publication proper stages of a resource: description, indexing, etc.)

1.4.3 Metalanguage of description, models and scenarios

In reference to the issues in the seven questions formulated above, R&D activities

in the context of the ARA program are concentrated around the following four axes:

1 Implementation of models and scenarios for the analysis, description

(indexing, classification, etc.) of audiovisual corpora;

2 Implementation of models and scenarios for the publication/republication of

audiovisual corpora so as to better adapt them to the expectations (knowledge, skills,etc.) of their potential users;

3 Also implementation of models and scenarios for the collection of audiovisual

data documenting a “field” of investigation (i.e a field dedicated to theproduction/publishing of audiovisual corpora used for documenting an area ofknowledge/expertise);

4 Development of a working environment enabling the semiotic contribution to

be used during the processing of audiovisual corpora in view of their onlinepublication or republication (see section 1.5 and Chapter 7)

Let us take a closer look at the metalinguistic resources of the ARA program in

the form of models and scenarios – the working environment will be presented later

in this chapter (see section 1.5) as well as in Chapter 7 in this book

The models are metalinguistic resources which define the structure and organization of audiovisual objects and the scenarios are metalinguistic resources

which frame and guide the activities leading to the creation of these same objects.Discussing models and scenarios in terms of “metalinguistic resources”, means that

they belong to a metalanguage of description (i.e the one mainly developed in

the context of the ASW-HSS project [Audiovisual Semiotic Workshop-Social andHuman Sciences] in order to work in a well-reasoned and explicit manner with andaround audiovisual corpora), and that they therefore constitute tools, procedures

and therefore self-sufficient cognitive instruments, for any actor involved in this type

of work.21 In the context of the ARA program, they are used to collect, process,analyze and publish audiovisual data Hence, we speak of:

1 models/scenarios of collection (of production);

2 models/scenarios of postproduction (of filming, etc.);

3 models/scenarios of analysis (of description, of interpretation, of

translation-adaptation, etc.) and;

4 models/scenarios of publishing/republishing of audiovisual data

The third category, models and scenarios of analysis, forms the main subject ofthis book We will present a string of examples of these and show how to use themconcretely via a specialized working environment In [STO 12] there are moredetailed explanations relating to the ASW metalanguage of description (including

21 The elaboration of these models and scenarios is a subtle and complex process which, as has already been said, makes use of highly specialized skills in conceptual analysis of areas of knowledge or expertise to be covered by a program of digitization and diffusion of heritage as well as in audiovisual semiotics as being one of the very rare approaches which systematically deals with audiovisual texts, their structure and organization It should also be noted that the conceptual analysis and modeling of an area of knowledge/expertise are not synonymous with choosing between this-or-that scheme of metadata, and/or this-or-that standard.

the models and scenarios of analysis) Let us take a brief look at the other classes ofmodels and scenarios identified below:

1 models and scenarios of collection and production which serve either for the

constitution of a new audiovisual collection documenting an area of expertise, or forthe “reasoned” enrichment of an existing audiovisual collection

2 models and scenarios of publication which also serve for republication

(i.e reuse of an already-published video in another context by adapting it to thespecificities of the new context of publication) as well as the new forms of collectivepublishing, spread out in time and space (i.e publication of audiovisual resources by

a collective actor – a group, an institution – which may be located anywhere in theworld and may also act as an author over time)

1.4.4 Models and scenarios of collection/production of audiovisual corpora

The models and scenarios of collection (production) first and foremost guide the

preparation and creating of a shoot or of a series of shoots Collection (or production) is

a very complex task which is composed of a whole series of activities (see section 1.3).The collection may closely follow various strategies: more or less intuitive, more or lesswell circumscribed, more or less restrictive in terms of the documentation needed,subject or not to explicit procedures and norms (of quality, etc.)

At any rate, this is a deliberately oriented activity, which attempts (with more or less

success) to solve the issue of obtaining the primary material (i.e audiovisual data)

which is necessary in order to create the cognitive resources for a given audience Inthat sense, the aforementioned activity of constitution of heritage is either compulsorilypreceded by the activity of description/modeling of the area to be documented and ofthe characteristics to which the documentation must conform, either framed by a sort ofguide, or even simply by a “mind map” based on which it is carried out

In other words, any constitution of a “field corpus” is carried out in reference to

an intellectual framework The implementation of an intellectual framework is part

of the activity of definition, development and monitoring of models and scenarios of

collection (of production) of audiovisual data which contribute to:

1 the definition and conceptual specification of the object (domain) of apatrimony to be digitized;

2 the definition and preparation of the type of field (type of investigation,geographical and temporal framework, social context, stakeholders, sources ofinformation, etc.), and the collection of data documenting the heritage;

3 the reasoned and controlled conduct of the act of filming (i.e of audiovisualbut also photographical, cartographic, verbal, etc recording);

4 the computerization of audiovisual data based on a field in a database or adigital archive;

5 the location (identification) of relevant rushes from the digital archive toconstitute the corpus which will serve as input for the activities of postproduction onthe one hand and analysis on the other;

6 “new” forms and dynamics of constitution of audiovisual collectionsdocumenting “fields”: “remote” (spatially and/or temporally) constitution of suchcollections, “nomadic” constitution or even concerted and negotiated constitution ofcollections by a community of actors and;

7 finally, the long term preservation of the cultural heritage in the form of

audiovisual collections which themselves are constantly evolving

On the ARA Web portal22as well as on the ASW-HSS project Web portal,23onecan find a wealth of documentation which presents models and scenarios for thepreparation of fields of collection of audiovisual data A particular effort has beenmade for the preparation and the monitoring of interviews with researchers Hence,each interview has been prepared with the people concerned (notably with theresearcher him/herself) and carried out following a plan, a scenario with the aim of

collecting relevant information relating to “problem places” (generic soundbites) defined beforehand in the interview guide For each interview, a script has been

written (either during or after the interview) The script is a kind of form according

to which we collect information, references and other data then used for recordingthe data collected as well as constituting a working corpus for the postproductionand the analysis

1.4.5 Models and scenarios for publishing/republishing

Let us again briefly consider the class of the models and scenarios of publication

In the context of the ARA program, the publication/distribution of an audiovisualcorpus which has been analyzed beforehand and/or post-produced is necessarilycarried out according to a publication model

The definition of the standard publication model relies on the notion of an event

[STO 03c] A (scientific) event such as an interview, seminar, conference or eveninquiry, excavation, concert, etc is documented by a set of audiovisual and otherresources including the collected, processed and analyzed material The advantage

of conceiving a publication thus is twofold:

22 See http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/FR/about4.asp.

23 See http://www.asa-shs.fr/– “Online documentation”.

1 the videos which are published online are immediately contextualized (withregard to the event they document) while of course leaving the possibility open toreuse them in other contexts;

2 online publishing is not a process necessarily linked to an author, or rather, to

an authorial instance, but it may be the result of a collective process distributed over

time and space

More particularly, the publication of the audiovisual resource itself – on an event’sWebsite – in the form of an “online video” (i.e a video documenting such-and-such apart of an interview, such-and-such a lecture during a conference, etc.) has firstly been

defined in a metaphorical reference to books like a sort of interactive video-book, i.e a

document made up of chapters (sequences) made available to the interested audienceeither in the form of free reading or in the form of guided reading

In 2006/2007 we started to develop and partially realize new publication

models – models such as the themed portal,24the video-lexicon 25about a topic or a

theme, the narrative path among a set of sequences which are thematically similar, the themed folder,26 the bi/multilingual folder,27 the educational folder,28etc Thediversification of the kinds of publication of course pursues the goal of betterexploiting the intrinsic richness of the audiovisual collection of a video library such

as that of the ARA We will present some uses in Chapter 10 of this book

24 See e.g the following themed portals: Diversité Linguistique et Culturelle (DLC) [Linguistic and Cultural Diversity]: http://www.languescultures.fr/, and Peuples et Cultures

du Monde (PCM): http://www.culturalheritage.fr/ [People and Culture of the World] developed between 2007 and 2009 as part of two research and development projects entitled LOGOS (this project was financed in the context of the 6th FP or Framework Program) and SAPHIR (this project was financed by the French National Research Agency).

25 See e.g the video-glossary “Languages of the world” on the Linguistic and Cultural Diversity: http://www.languescultures.fr/FR/_Encyclo_Langue.html, or even the video- glossary “People of the world” on the People and cultures of the world portal: http://www.culturalheritage.fr/FR/_Encyclo_Peuples.html.

26 See e.g the themed file on the anthropology of illness and myth in Laos and in South-East Asia, created by Muriel Chemouny from an interview with the French anthropologist Richard Pottier: http://www.culturalheritage.fr/1154_fr/.

27 Bilingual folders: French to English (and English to French); Spanish to French (and French to Spanish); French to Italian (and Italian to French); French to Chinese; French to Arabic; French to Russian; French to Turkish.

28 See e.g the reading portfolio for informal learning, dedicated to the mytho-ecological discourse in the Japanese anime Princess Mononoke (director: Hayao Myazaki) – portfolio which was conceived and created by Muriel Chemouny from a lecture on this topic given by the ethnologist Chiwaki Shinoda, lecturer at the University of Hiroshima: http://www.culturalheritage.fr/1136 shinoda_peda_informel_fr/.

1.5 The digital environment and the working process

The working process (see section 1.3) – i.e the different activities, tasks andstages necessary to constitute, process, analyze and publish/broadcast knowledge

heritage – takes place within a digital working environment possessing appropriate

technologies and tools for the collection (filming, sound recording, etc.), processing(digitization, montage, compression and transcoding, etc.) and finally analysis,description/indexing and publication of audiovisual data As shown in Figure 1.3,the environment defines and “orchestrates” three more specific processes:

1 The process of audiovisual production This process brings together all the tasks, from the definition and planning of a field (of digitization) to the distribution

of digital videos, including the filming proper, the technical acquisition of thecollected rushes in the form of computer usable files, cleanup of the files and eventheir transcoding in such-and-such a distribution format

2 The processing and basic publication of a filmed field (i.e of a scientific

event, a cultural demonstration, an inquiry, etc.) The video files forming a givenaudiovisual corpus are analyzed, cut, edited, indexed and enriched according to a set

of guidelines explicitly defined in view of their publication in the form of an “eventWebsite” on the ARA portal

3 Finally, the processing (analyses, descriptions, indexing, annotations, etc.) and

specialized (re-)publication suitable for specific uses This process may be carried out

based on pre-existing audiovisual publications which are distributed on the ARA portal

Figure 1.3 The general digital working environment of ESCoM’s ARA program

Figure 1.3 is a diagrammatic representation of ESCoM working environment.

The front office represents the working process that the users follow, divided into successive tasks that are done using specific tools The back office represents the

technological environment of ESCoM’s ARA program Finally, the third band of

Figure 1.3 shows the publications produced by the back office based on the work carried out in front office by the users.

z

Figure 1.4 The “basic” publishing environment of ESCoM’s ARA program

The second process identified in Figure 1.4, processing and “basic” publication

represents the standard process for the publishing of a video on the ARA portal

Audiovisual recordings of a field lato sensu (also including recordings of a seminar,

an interview, a conference, etc.) are published on an “event” site (see section 1.4)