The stratification system is a way to represent dynamic data. The moving image is a description that has been produced by the representation system of the video camera. The lexical descriptions of content are also the result of a particular descriptive strategy/language game representation system. The video stream can also be process by other representation system. In his thesis, If you can see what I hear, Pincever points out that the stratification system can be used to display sounds. This in turn can be used as a key which will help identify the sound when it reappears in the future. Work in terms of face recognition and pattern matching could also be integrated as the proposed sound detection system. The initial input of these descriptions is best done by a human but the computer can detect scene changes, pans, zooms, tilts, etc.... It could also used the stratified descriptions as templates for later recognition. If the tape only has three people in it can guess via face recognition when so and so initially appears. This will eventually lead to the automatic logging of footage. But it is important not to forget that the significance of the frames is also dynamic and that by the fact that they are assembled into a sequence is important information about how those assembled chunks of video are related. There can be automation of coding content but this does not necessarily mean stagnation of image content. Stratification is a representation of video as a design space and as such it can be the object of a multitude of intentions.

Chapter 8: Conclusion

In developing the Anthropologist's Video Notebook we had to examine the role that the notebook plays in ethnographic research. The use of a notebook is central because it allow the anthropologist to inscribe observations into a text which together with the memory of the scene can be integrated into other forms of ethnographic writing. Recording a video tape have been presented as the process of creating a visual memory of an event. But when compared to the process of how memory functions in ethnographic research this analogy does not hold. The medium for ethnography requires the anthropologist to incorporate his memories - the "mind" notes into a text at later stages of writing. The anthropologist creates a ethnography in a design space where the current state of the text is evaluated and memories are reviewed and compared with other types of data. The ethnographic text emerges over time as the researchers develops his memories with the goal of communicating to other people. To date video production had be at odds with this approach to data gathering and analysis. Although the video is in some ways like a memory, the current modes of production do not allow the researcher to incorporate new interpretations of the event observed and new insights into the production -- the only material that can be used is what was initially inscribed during the shoot.

The stratification system is way to computationally support the practice of interpretive anthropology. The stratification system is a design space for video. The research presented in this thesis illustrates how the integration of text and video on digital computers can transform ethnographic research. I predict that ethnographers will not produce movies per se but will rely on the publication of video databases where lexical descriptions as well as the ordering of sequences produce thick descriptions that are thick in the domain of their design - how they have been assembled or edited thickly (what virtual contact they are employed in) together with the more textual practice of lexical description which will serve allow for the integration of new insights. A video database will serve as a new medium for video ethnography where interpretation and content will dynamically change in a way that is suitable for the development of knowledge gained through ethnographic observation.

The video that I had shot while in Mexico turned into a weave of possible uses and subject to a host of possible intentions. The main problem as I saw it was that I was now face with the problem of describing the video in such a way so that the different types of researchers could utilize my footage. I was making video fieldnotes - for a whole community. At this point it became clear, that the task was to create a computational model for an anthropologists video notebook. But in order to develop such a computational theory I had to ground it in the process and the role that note and notebooks play in the practice of anthropology. I wanted to see if I could mimic the field notebook as a way to bootstrap the development of a computational video notebook in such a way that the various researchers could analyze and interpret the footage with in the context of their own particular disciplines.

When the video is placed in the design environment of Stratification it becomes a node for diverse types of understanding and contested meanings. It becomes enmeshed in a social fabric of interpretation. Spradley (1980) defines culture as: The acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behavior. By identifying cultural knowledge as fundamental, we have merely shifted the emphasis from behavior and artifacts to their meaning. The ethnographer observes behavior but goes beyond it to inquire about the meaning of that behavior. The ethnographer sees artifacts and natural objects but goes beyond them to discover what meanings people assign to these objects (Spradley, 1980 : 7 -8).

The stratification system is a design space or in term of Spradley's definition, it is a cultural space where the meanings that people assign to moving images can be explored. With the stratification system we can begin to look at how a culture of the moving image is create and explore the relationships between the institutions and actors in the continual re-creation of the image and the symbols and meanings which are attributed to the image over time. Video is the creation of visual artifact; video ethnography is the practice of studying what meanings do people assign to these chunks of video.

Although an image is inscribed on a medium during the process of recording in no way is it something dead. The process of inscription is the birth of a precept and as such, it is alive for a host of possible interpretation and may appear in an indeterminate number of contexts. The value of an image on the stratification system can be traced and measure by its appearance in a variety of contexts. As the moving image percolates in the stratification system value is added to is as different researchers use to it to articulate their interpretations of what happened. The power of the environment lies in the relative strength of the different descriptive strategies that have been applied to the same chunks of video footage.

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