time (space) matters ediated Time (Spaces) in Video Tutorials

Abstract

This contribution focuses on video tutorials used for teaching and learning. It looks at their medial properties and probes their (media-specific) educational potential. We enquire both into some of the implicit features of such tutorials – e.g., translations and transformations between media, or moments of showing and explaining with their distinct medial properties – as well as their explicit use: specifically, the educational potential they may yield if audio-visual means of designing and creating are employed in media-sensitive fashion. Given the current developments in teaching practices (such as blended and distance learning), a more detailed investigation of the aesthetic dimension of these teaching tools seems to be indicated. Video tutorials often guarantee their users’ successful acquiring of skills, e.g. of drawing a perspective ‹correctly›; and they implicitly promise an easy grasp of the subject, practical feasibility and quick, self-determined access to learning content (e.g. by fast-forwarding, pausing or replaying content). At the same time, they promote a logic of effectiveness which may hide normative ideas that users uncritically adopt and reproduce. Looking into their means of presentation may allow for a media-sensitive critique of their representational logic. ‹Amateur› negligence may, for example, turn out to be educational – if unsettled/-ling images protect the users of such tutorials from the illusion of a mere passive ‹understanding› – and instead direct the attention to their own perception and their own position in relation to the subjects that are being presented and explained to them. As part of a transformative educational theory, such perceptual disturbances are potentially more empowering than, for example, knowledge about perspective as a symbolic form as such. They invite a critical engagement with the latter. In our contribution, we will use both conventional critical methods and more experimental artistic strategies to explore the educational potential of video tutorials.