Chapter X: The video-cap approach: Person-in-situation in the complex sites of the museum and art gallery

Bruno Ingemann

This short descriptive article presents the original idea of the video-cap approach as a new method for collecting data on complex events such as the experiences visitors have at an exhibition in an art gallery or museum. The initial video-cap technology has since been supplemented with video glasses, other technical devices and various developments in the use of the methodology.

The issue of body and space

The impetus for this new methodology was the issue of how to get even closer to the experiences of the person-in-situation walking and talking during the exhibition than is possible via an interview performed afterwards. The challenge was how to get closer to the bodily movements and expressions of the visitors than is possible by just being an outside observer. Consequently the aim was to find some kind of technology that could address these issues and transform them into entries into what is experienced. In the beginning I determined that a list should be developed of requirements or rules researchers need to keep in mind when using the video capture (video-cap) approach. Over the years and during various projects the first two fundamental items were developed and then augmented later with three additional items. The five items are:
1+1 - The person-in-situation approach should involve a second person to walk and talk with, identical to an ordinary museum visit.
The 5 fields - In the person-in-situation approach, use recording technology, such as video, to focus on the five registration fields: speech, body, space, movement and time.
Attention and interruption - Reinforce the attention of the informants by interrupting the walking and talking by introducing some kind of reflection on what ordinarily happens in the situation.
The 3 interviews - Use the ReflectionLab process interview, product interview and reflection interview to guide the interruptions (Gjedde & Ingemann 2008:173-176)
The gaze - Who is looking at whom? Informants look at the objects and panels in the gallery, but also at the dialogue partner they are walking with. Hence the video recordings that are made represent the actual experience of the informant and the dialogue partner. Consequently, having the researcher act as the dialogue partner allows for even closer contact with what the informant experiences.

Technological development

The idea of designing equipment to record visitors at an exhibition was initially formulated in a research project application in 1992, but nearly five years passed before we found the appropriate technology and a company to combine the different parts into a functional unit that included the video-cap (fig. 1). This initial version of the video-cap was used in two projects, one about an exhibition on democracy (Gjedde & Ingemann 2008:49-68) and another about the Danish painter Ole Sporring's exhibition at an art gallery (Gjedde & Ingemann 2008:75-97). 1
Rapidly developing technology meant that by 2001 it was possible to put a tiny video camera between the eyes on a pair of glasses, thus permitting the extraordinarily precise registration of the bodily movements of informants (fig. 2 & 3). This version of the video-cap was used in a project on Nordic mythology and interaction with a complex video narrative (Gjedde & Ingemann 2008:153-172).
The first video-cap equipment was expensive, costing more than USD 10,000, which is in stark contrast to today's prices, where the latest video glasses cost just over 100 dollars.

[Fig. 1: (1997) The first version consisted of a small video camera placed on a cap. The informant had to wear a rucksack weighing 4.9 kilos that contained the controller for the camera, a microphone amplifier, a small video 8 recorder and the power supply.]

[Fig. 2: (2001, 2005) Revolutionary, the second and third versions had a tiny video camera placed between the eyes on a pair of glasses, thus allowing precision recordings of the direction of the informant's head. A small hard disk recorder eventually replaced the initial heavy rucksack.]

[Fig. 3: (2009) The fourth version, weighing a mere 50 grams, has replaced the hard disk recorder with flashcards placed on the temples.]

The reduction of data

Producing data consisting of sound and moving images has resulted in new issues to tackle, for instance, the vast amount of data that has to be considered prior to embarking on a project and the subsequent numerous hours of recorded video. Making detailed written transcripts combined with screen dumps of individual actions is possible and perhaps often necessary. Two methods can be employed to shorten the overall process of analysis: making screen dumps and doing video editing.

One difficult issue regarding video recordings of events and speech that reflect ordinary life-like situations is to find and make notes of the striking parts of the processes in time and space. The first method is simple and involves going through the video recordings and making a screen dump when the content of the picture and/or sound is noteworthy. These screen dumps can then be used to remember the content of the scene or mini-scene. As a result a single picture is much more than a picture; it works to cue the memory of the whole event. A thirty-minute video can result in more than one-hundred “memory” screen dumps.
The second analysis method is to do video editing. The first step is to reduce the video material to one-tenth its original time and never go beyond 20 minutes of edited material in total. The goal of this process is not to make a lively programme for universal viewing but to make the reduction process part of the analysis. The reduction process not only makes the content and expressions of informants and their dialogue partners clearer, but also contextualises them in the editing process.
Reduction is condensation.

The video-cap approach is expanding

The article “What is the question? Creating a learning environment in the exhibition” focuses on learning during a visit to a science centre. Using the video-cap approach, one researcher actively took on the role of the dialogue partner in order to prompt the students’ curiosity and reflection. The researcher joined each of the four students on a visit to seven exhibits (pre-selected by the authors) and recorded the students’ interactions on video (Qvistgaard & Ingemann 2010). 2
In his PhD thesis anthropologist Mads Daugbjerg used the video-cap approach at two heritage sites in Dybboel, Denmark, a battlefield location heavily burdened by loss and nationalism. Daugbjerg writes that, '... it provides me with highly detailed material concerning the actual ways in which people literally 'do' or 'see' heritage sites.' (2008:24). For this project, families were the informants and sometimes one of the children wore the video glasses. 3
Currently, there are at least three additional projects using the video-cap approach. Post-doc Anne Sophie Warberg Loessing is looking into the use of new digital media, focusing especially on young visitors at art museums and especially at the National Gallery of Denmark. PhD student Maya Rudloff is using the video-cap approach in her research on the use of a gigantic digital wall placed in the townscape of Copenhagen. In this case the new digital interactive user-generated content replaces the traditional object-driven communication of a museum. Associate professor Lisa Gjedde, Aarhus University, is in the middle of a project on four different ways of communicating about energy issues to 15-year-old schoolchildren and is using the video-cap approach to closely examine the use of an exhibition at the Experimentarium in Copenhagen, Denmark as a site of informal learning.
If you are interested in more information about our experimental research methodologies, please consult www.researching-experiences.net, which contains short video clips from some of our projects.

Literature

Gjedde, Lisa, & Ingemann, Bruno (2008): Researching Experiences: Exploring Processual and Experimental Methods in Cultural Analysis, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Qvistgaard, Nana & Ingemann, Bruno (2010): 'Hvad er spoergsmaalet. Om at skabe laeringsrum i udstillingen' [What is the question? Creating a learning environment in the exhibition] - in Nordisk Museologi, no. 2, pp. 50-63.

Daugbjerg, Mads (2008): A Site to Die for: Practices of Nationalism at a Danish Heritage Site, Aarhus: Aarhus University (PhD thesis).