Conference Agenda

Summary

This Dream Teams Session will be led by Karin Hannes and Richard Siegesmund as we apply a tool, an Analytical Apparatus for Visual Imagery (AAVI), constructed from artistic models for formal visual analysis and developed in response to an increasing interest in visual research methods across disciplines in the fine arts and social sciences. Through this tool, researchers—particularly those who may lack the formal artistic skills for the deconstruction and analysis of visual images—can elicit a more robust descriptive language from participants and achieve a richer and more comprehensive analysis of visual images collected during participatory visual research such as photovoice or photowalk methods. In many projects that collect images, the role of images is often limited to either assisting participants in verbalizing their experiences or supporting a particular narrative story line evolving from the data. AAVI invites scholars to consider adding a compositional, tacit, layer of analysis to visual research based on the image's material intrinsic qualities.

For the 90-minute Dream Steams, we invite participants to bring visual images that they have collected in their research. For participants who are interested in learning about visual analysis, but do not have their own images, the session leaders will share images from their own research (Hannes & Siegesmund, 2022; Hannes & Siegesmund, 2024) showcased during the session .

Agenda for the session

0.00 – 10.00 minutes: Introductions

10.00 – 30.00 minutes: Introduction to AAVI applied to photovoice research.

30.00- 45.00 minutes: Participants attempt AAVI analysis with their own images.

45.00- 65.00 minutes: Share. Did AAVI produce new insights? How to push AAVI further.

65.00-75.00 minutes: Individual work further analyzing one’s image set. Pushing AAVI analysis deeper.

75.00-90.00 minutes: Final reflections, including possibilities for writing up insights gained for a future methodological paper

Rationale

Artistically inspired visual data, beyond photography, have been increasingly used in qualitative and creative research. This turn towards the visual image accepts that the researcher and participants are actively making the image, not simply recording an event (Riddett-Moore & Siegesmund, 2012).

This arts-based turn to the making of visual data raises two new problems in analysis. First, there is often more to the creation of an image than an illustration of predetermined semiotic or narrative meaning. Images emerge in complex and nonlinear ways (Manning, 2016). Second, many social scientists have never been formally trained in artistic creation; therefore, they do not have the proper skill set for creative analysis (Dierckx, Zaman & Hannes, 2022). Phillip Vannini (2015) argues for the need to develop non-representational methods in the social-behavioral sciences. In the case of the visual, we see this as pressing the distinction that John Dewey (1934) made between recognition and perception. Recognition is the categorization of semiotic representation. Perception is the aesthetic non-representational analysis of the felt phenomenological qualities that a visual image conjures (Siegesmund, 2012). Such interpretations require artistry.Non-representational level of data can be brought into language by researchers who are knowledgeable about visual art characteristics (Brown & Collins, 2021; Freedman & Siegesmund, 2024); Following Dewey, we argue that visual images can do more than just illustrate ideas or concepts. Images, through their relationships of tacit qualities, contain felt somatic meaning.

The Analytical Apparatus for Visual Imagery (AAVI) (Hannes and Siegesmund 2022) was developed to help social science researchers—particularly those who have not had formal training in the making of fine art images —to recognize the tacit qualities that shape the interpretation of a visual object, and bring them into the conversation with all image creators involved in a project and (where appropriate) the broader public.

References

Brown, N., & Collins, J. (2021). Systematic visuo-textual analysis. The Qualitative Report, 26(4), 1275-1290.

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. Minton Balch.

Dierckx, C., Zaman, B., & Hannes, K. (2022). Sparking the academic curriculum with creativity Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 22(1), 3-25.

Freedman, K., & Siegesmund, R. (2024). Visual methods of inquiry. Routledge.

Hannes, K., & Siegesmund, R. (2022). An analytical apparatus for visual imagery applied in a social-behavioral research. International Review of Qualitative Research, 15(2), 278–302.

Hannes, K., & Siegesmund, R. (2024). Presenting an analytical apparatus for visual imagery (AAVI) in socially engaged research practice. In H. Kara (Ed.), The Bloomsbury handbook of creative research methods (pp. 135-146). Bloomsbury.

Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Duke University Press.

Riddett-Moore, K., & Siegesmund, R. (2012). Arts-based research. In S. Klein (Ed.), Action research: Plain and simple, (pp. 105-132). Palgrave.