Exploring Amateur Media Collections at Scale Through Distant Viewing

Description

This presentation examines the potential of the Distant Viewing approach for exploring amateur media collections at scale. As a case study, it focuses on the Amateur Film Platform (2014-2023) from the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, which hosted a collection of more than eight thousand films and videos made by Dutch amateur filmmakers. This collection featured amateur footage from the early 1900s until the 2010s, recorded on different technological carriers, including 35mm, 16mm, 9.5mm, 8mm, Super 8 film, VHS, MiniDV, and other formats. Utilizing the Distant Viewing approach and toolkit for computationally analyzing large collections of audiovisual materials, the presentation highlights any formal, stylistic, and aesthetic patterns or changes over time in the Amateur Film Platform’s collection. Based on these findings, it argues for a “hybrid heuristics” approach for undertaking data-driven film historical analysis, which combines distant and close viewing with critical reflection on the hermeneutic implications of digital methods and technologies for exploring historical amateur media collections at scale.

Period	20 Jun 2025
Event title	NECS Conference 2025: Discovering/Uncovering. Navigating the Complexities of Screen Media
Event type	Conference
Location	Lisbon, PortugalShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International