In this UN billboard, we notice the use of typography and color to communicate the message ("translating war into peace"). Even if the invisible typography clearly specifies the message, it is actually the last thing we read in the poster. In fact, we are first attracted by the A in red. Then, we notice the bird flying in white. The white and blue contrast makes us want to understand what surrounds the bird. Finally, we understand that it picked the A from "war" to place it in "peace". 

This is an excellent combination of typography and color with a strong message behind it. 

Why are visuals important for tourists when visiting a museum?

The idea of the museum has become fundamental to collecting  practices beyond the museum practices that cannot only produce knowledge about objects but also configure particular ways of knowing and perceiving. Collecting practices confirm authenticity with its esteemed cultural capital because by establishing collections institutions perform the power they have in terms of practices of accessing, obtaining, transporting, preserving, and presenting esteemed objects and artifacts.

Tourists are great at collecting, as practices of both collecting and documenting (accessing, obtaining, photographing, transporting, etc.) are constitutive to the role of the tourist. By their definition as such, tourists expect and are expected to encounter exceptional sites and sights and to attempt to “preserve the moment” by employing various technologies of documentation. Being a tourist in this regard concerns being alert to aesthetic and otherwise notable sceneries and attractions, together with the willingness to and  possibility of recollecting them at a later point. For tourists,  pictures, videos, and souvenirs of sorts provide strong evidence of authenticity and resources for convincing storytelling and reminiscing and are part and parcel of the practices  that establish the social role of the tourist and the cultural capital involved.

In the context of modern tourism it represents the production of difference: this is a scientific image and not a  tourist souvenir or an emotional commemorative display.  If tourists commonly position themselves inside the frame,  thus authenticating their presence at the site; social scientists usually do the reverse. This is why the image conveys  the larger story of bodies. It conveys the dual embodiments and available  traces of the actual presence of both the visitors—who  signed in the visitor book,  and of the researcher—who documented their inscriptions and in order to do so had  followed their path and journeyed to the site.

In our projects: Providing visuals such as a virtual tour on DVDs or replacing the book signing with digital storytelling videos will satisfy this need of collecting souvenirs. 

Source:

Noy, C. (2011). The Aesthetics of Qualitative Research Performing Ethnography at a Hetitage Museum. Qualitative Inquiry. Vol 17 no. 10, 917-929 

The example of MoMa (the Museum of Modern Art) in New York using video screenings in the gallery:

Term used to describe art that uses both the apparatus and processes of television and video. It can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast, viewed in galleries or other venues, or distributed as tapes or discs; sculptural installations, which may incorporate one or more television receivers or monitors, displaying ‘live’ or recorded images and sound; and performances in which video representations are included. Occasionally, artists have devised events to be broadcast ‘live’ by cable, terrestrial or satellite transmission.

During the 1980s video art established its own context of production, exhibition and criticism, with organizations emerging in North America and western Europe to support and promote ‘video culture’. Television producers began to buy and commission work from artists, and specialist venues, festivals, courses and workshops for video proliferated. Many artists made work addressing social, sexual and racial issues, renewing links with what survived of the ‘community video’ movement of the 1970s. By 1990 video installations had featured in several large international exhibitions and were a familiar presence in galleries and museums, assuming fresh authority through the work of such artists as Gary Hill ( ) and marie-jo Lafontaine. Artists making single-screen work exhibited increasingly on television, and the medium of video was merging with that of the computer. Video art, no longer novel nor wholly dependent on a gallery context, had become part of an increasingly elaborate network of electronic communication.

Source:

Hartney, M. (2009). Video Art. Oxford University Press

Retrieved from: http://www.moma.org/collection/theme.php?theme_id=10215

The concept of multiple texts:

There are three main types of texts that can be used in a multiple text method –spoken, written, and visual.

1. Spoken texts may include formal recorded interviews, informal conversations, and discussions with the researcher, group members, and others during the research project.

2. Written texts may include travel journals, poetry, letters, emails, books, articles, and other such texts.

3. Visual texts can include myriad different objects that are either made or collected or both by participants, or created by others. Some examples are drawings, art pieces, collected artifacts, visual objects, photographs (e.g., taken by participants, viewed in museums, on postcards), videotapes, visual media reports, and other image-based texts. 

Why is it important for our project? 

1. These types of texts are very helpful and useful when participants have difficulty recording emotions, impressions, or aspects that were difficult to put into words. Without a nonverbal means of expression, participants may be limited in how they articulate their experiences. This aspect made photography, drawing, and other visual expression an important type of text to include in this narrative method. 

2. Using a variety of narrative texts can serve both participants and researchers in gaining a richer and more complex understanding of participants’ experiences and generating new perspectives and knowledge.

3. Using multiple texts constructed through writing, speaking, and visual means opens the possibility for creating new realities of meaning and knowledge. 

4. Using multiple texts would also enrich ethnographic based research where written, spoken, and visual records of the context and cultural aspects

5. It allows to understand human experience

Vicarious witness:  when you take into account the impact of participants’ experiences as a result of feeling ‘as if’ they were taking part in the experience or feelings of another through the multiple means they used to gather information (reading, viewing evidence, images, or film, and participating in conversations, memorials, or rituals), make meaning of what they saw and heard, and take action within their communities after their experiences.

Source:

Keats, P. (2009). Multiple text analysis in narrative research: visual, written, and spoken stories of experience, Qualitative Research, vol 9no. 2, 181-195.

Please, watch this video first!

What is DST? Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling - modern thanks to our actual digital age. Kang et al. (2003), Shin and Park (2008) define “digital storytelling” as storytelling that is conducted using digital technology as the medium or method of expression, in particular using digital media in a computer-network environment.

Digital storytelling has 3 main characteristics:
Flexibility: creation of a non-linear story using digital media technology

Universality: anyone can become the producer of digital stories à Digital Citizenship

Interactivity: refers to the participation of users in the development of the stories using media characteristics that can be mutually exchanged à Communication and Collaboration.

Our topic: modernizing the Qarawiyyin mosque and university thanks to visuals to make the visit a unique touristic experience.

Tourism no longer simply focuses on transportation, accommodation and destinations, but places increased emphasis on the understanding of local cultures and the experiences of authentic local lifestyle.

As it has been studied, DST enhances the connections between places and people, bridges the past and the present, and transmits authentic cultural experiences through local memories and daily life stories in a multimedia format.

Purpose: What we want to do is to provide a video where students of the Qarawwin, local and foreign visitors share their experience and feedback. This video would be available over the internet on the Qarawwiyin’s website, social media, touristic website such as Guide du Routard, and at the site of Al Qarawiyyin itself.

Then, we will make a camera available at the Qarawiyyin to replace the classic book signing. Tourists will be able to film themselves giving their feedback about their experience and buy their CD at the end to keep their souvenir, and share it over the internet if they want to.

Sources: 

Xu, Y., Park, H., & Baek, Y. (2011). A New Approach Toward Digital Storytelling: An Activity Focused on Writing Selfefficacy in a Virtual Learning Environment. Educational Technology & Society, 14 (4), 181–191.

Qiongli, W. (2006). Commercialization of digital storytelling : An integrated approach for cultural tourism, the Beijing Olympics and wireless VAS, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9: 383

Czarnecki, K. (2009). Chapter 3: How Digital Storytelling Builds 21st Century Skills, American library association, Vol 5, 7, 15-19