Audiovisual languages

She has been a researcher at INDIRE, since 2004. She has devoted much interest to the investigation of image and speech technologies: how they integrate, how they support learning and how they shape the relational environment. Her research activity currently focuses on video-education and visuality as a means of explication and knowledge transfer.

The course analyses the way in which cinema in its early days elaborated a true grammar of audiovisual language aimed at building an illusory space around the spectator. This grammar is still operative today, despite the hybridizations that have occurred with the digitalization of supports.

⮚ Module 1 – Genesis of Audiovisual Language
In the first module, the lecturer will provide the definition of “audiovisual” and an analysis of its defining properties.
Secondly, the genesis of audiovisual grammar will be examined, as it historically occurred in the first forty years of the 20th century, first with the prodigious laboratory of the cinema’s pioneers, then with the Fordist serialisation of the Hollywood studios system.
During the module, the following aspects will be analysed:

▪ Definition of audiovisual: watching, listening, recording.

▪ Image and word.

▪ Perspective.

▪ The invention of cinema.

▪ The cinema of the origins.

▪ Classic Hollywood cinema and the illusionary experience.

▪ Framing: its genesis and typologies.

▪ Editing styles: shot and reverse shot.

▪ The taboo of looking in the camera.

▪ Narrative continuity and the creation of the ‘space of filmic illusion’.

⮚ Module 2 – Current Developments in Audiovisual Language
The second module, on the other hand, will lead students to a reflection on the present time, which takes into account the elaborations of the past, but with remarkable innovations. On the other hand, new forms such as video games, virtual realities and immersive worlds emerge and take space on the scene of the illusionary programme, allowing not only the “visualisation” of the recording of movement, but a real “experience” (also of kinaesthetic sharing) at a distance.
During the module, the following aspects will be analysed:

▪ Poetics study: how does this text work?
▪ TV’s market and influence.
▪ Cinema: franchising, synthetic image, 3D technology.
▪ Youtube and multichannel networks.
▪ Display/screen and the user as ‘semantic node’.

The course analyses the way in which cinema in its early days elaborated a true grammar of audiovisual language aimed at building an illusory space around the spectator. This grammar is still operative today, despite the hybridizations that have occurred with the digitalization of supports.

A. Knowledge and understanding
The student will be able to give a definition of audiovisual and of the characterising elements. Furthermore, he/she will acquire a basic knowledge of the communicative characteristics of the audiovisual language and of the historical and theoretical paradigms related to written language, visual culture and immersiveness.

B. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
The student will be able to use autonomously the concepts and notions acquired in the course regarding audiovisual language and illusionary and immersive constructs.

C. Autonomy of judgement
The student will be able to apply the proposed categories of analysis to different scenarios and independently assess their implications.

D. Communication skills
The student will develop adequate skills to elaborate arguments and support them in the historical and thematic areas of the course (audiovisual language, immersiveness, written language properties and visual culture).

E. Learning ability
The student will also be able to identify independently the best resources on which to develop a personal learning pathway.

A. Knowledge of issues useful for understanding audiovisual language and more broadly the information society in its relationship between the real and the virtual world.

B. Possession of adequate skills to devise arguments, support them and solve problems in the context of issues/topics relating to audiovisual language and the relationship between reality and virtuality in the information society.

C. Ability to collect and interpret data useful for making independent judgements in relation to the course topics.

D. Ability to communicate information, ideas, problems and solutions to specialists and non-specialists.

E. Ability to undertake further studies with a high degree of autonomy

DIDACTICS PROVISION

⮚ 6 hours of video lessons (the video lessons will be divided into short modules of about 20 minutes each).
⮚ 3 synchronous video lessons to support the study.
⮚ Podcasts of all the above mentioned video lessons.

INTERACTIVE DIDACTICS

⮚ 1 orientation forum.

⮚ 2 interactive activities for the study support (1 for each module).
⮚ 1 final summary activity.

SELF-LEARNING
Teaching materials are provided for each module and may be in pdf format, teacher’s articles, open access readings, web resources, reference bibliography.

⮚ Falcinelli, R. Figures. Come funzionano le immagini dal Rinascimento a Instagram. Turin, Einaudi, 2020

Access to the final examination is subject to the completion of the 2 e-activities:
⮚ Assignment #1 – breakdown of an action into framings
⮚ Assignment #2 – reconstruction of an action in an audiovisual sequence

The assessment of learning will take place through an oral interview on the course contents. The grade (min 18, max 30 with possible honours) is determined by the level of performance for each of the following dimensions of the oral interview: mastery of contents, appropriateness of definitions and theoretical references, clarity of argument, command of specialist language.

Italian