EuroSEAS 2018 Workshop | ‘Listen to Your Eyes’: Multimedia Web-Based Storytelling for Researchers

Books and articles are traditionally the scholar’s main product. Many scholars collect audiovisual materials but this is often considered secondary, or inferior, to the ultimate outcome of research: written texts. At the same time, academia is conservative when it comes to the form in which both texts and images are presented. For this workshop, we invite scholars in the field of Southeast Asia to experiment with the crafting of arguments through web-based multimedia storytelling and to combine various forms of media such as text, photography, film, drawings, and sound in an innovative and experimental narrative form.

Date and venue
Date: 30 May – 1 June
Venue:“Riccardo Massa” Department of Human Sciences for Education, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan

Setup
The three-day workshop will be given by Martijn van Tol, a journalist who produces interactive documentaries such as Refugee Republic (2014) and Ed (2017) and who founded Scrollytelling, a web based multimedia storytelling tool used by several newspapers and television broadcasters.

We will start on Wednesday afternoon with an introduction on how to tell compelling interactive multimedia stories for a broad online audience. We will also look at and deconstruct successful and less successful examples of interactive stories and become familiar with some basic do’s and don’ts in creating these narratives. Participants will then briefly introduce their own material and discuss the question of what storylines are most suitable for a translation into an interactive multimedia form. 

On Thursday and on Friday morning participants will create an interactive multimedia story while receiving direct feed-back from Van Tol. The goal is not to finish these projects entirely during these three days but rather to experiment with the blending of text, image and sound. Participants will be able to continue working on their projects after the workshop.

On Friday afternoon participants will present their projects to each other. Marjaana Jauhola (University of Helsinki) and Erminia Colucci (Middlesex University London) will act as discussants.

What are we going to make?
Imagine telling a story and creating an argument, on the basis of your own research, that looks like this: The Fighter. We will work with Scrollytelling software which has a particular form and a defined set of features (see the Scrollytelling website for more examples).

Who can apply?
Scholars of any discipline, and at any stage of their career, who work in the field of Southeast Asian studies, who are affiliated with a European university or research institute, and who are willing to experiment with the combination of text and audiovisual material.

How to apply
Please send us an outline of maximum 400 words in which you explain:

• Your motivation to participate in the workshop.
• A brief outline of the audiovisual and textual material you would like to work with (note: this material should be available for use).
• A brief summary of one or two storylines you would like to experiment with in the workshop.
• A 2-3 line bio.

Please send your application to: [email protected]

Deadline: 9 April 2018

For inquiries, please contact David Kloos ([email protected]) or Henk Schulte Nordholt ([email protected])

Funding
The workshop fee is covered by EuroSEAS. In addition, funding will be available for travel and accommodation up to a maximum of EUR 600 per participant. We expect home institutions of applicants to provide support as well.