Crossing Platforms.

Abstract

A "video paper" (also presented March 10 2008 Bournemouth University). This paper is a video presentation of my practice as research as I continue to explore a new reflective language of documentary which can serve as an academic form of expression. In this video paper I am using the newly available digital tools and platforms to reflect on a television series I produced 20 years ago for BBC2. The television series looked at the art and design associated with London Transport and other travel companies in the early 20th century. Now I have re-discovered the production files and tapes and I re-work the ideas and images of that series to produce a very different digital version of the analogue broadcast "content". Extending and refining an autoethnographic approach which I have been developing in previous "academic" videos, I consider why and how I made the television series. Taking the form of a journey through the poster art, station design and the street furniture which made London itself a form of content for reversioning on posters and teatowels, I critique the concept of un-mediated "content", considering the cultural and commercial context of city design in the 1930s in conjunction with the social, economic and cultural forms of digital media today.