Telling stories out of school: reframing scientific research through narrative: a multi-­screen direct cinema film installation of four female scientists

Abstract

This project employs the emerging art practice of participant observation ‘direct cinema’ and the emerging ‘cross-over’ discipline art/anthropology to examine and critique scientific investigative processes from the perspective of female scientists and presents its findings employing structuralist filmmaking approaches. While there have been some anthropological studies of scientists, to the best of my knowledge there have been no participant observational films of the scientific community. This thesis brings new insights into the practice of science by analysing and critiquing scientific investigative processes through participant observational filmmaking and narrative theory. It also brings new understanding to video installation practice by presenting four narrative direct cinema ‘ethnographies’ in a unique multi-screen, multi-modal gallery installation. This thesis, together with the multi-screen installation, explore a visual documentation of the site of scientific investigation, providing insights into scientific discovery processes that have to date remained under-documented. The work shows these processes include non-linear pathways, accidental and serendipitous encounters. The project reveals the process of scientific discovery is an immersive experience of high concentration across a range of cognitive modes, including the aesthetic, in a chaotic and changing environment. It reveals there is an important aesthetic dimension to the environment and discovery dependent on a material engagement with the subject matter. Although I shared the approach to my research with ethnography, this project was developed from the perspective of realist art practice. Through participant observational method of studying female scientists, I introduce an ‘outsider’ perspective which shines new light on the interpretation of scientific processes. The work presents a methodology for presenting multiple interpretations of an ‘objective world’, critiquing the notion of ‘scientific objectivity’ through reframing scientific experimentation within personal narratives. Rather than presenting the film via a single-point perspective of traditional documentaries, my project offers a way of weaving multiple views of reality into a multi-screen multi-modal installation. Its contribution to knowledge is through a narrative interpretation of scientific investigation and innovation in film installation art practice. The work also brings innovation to the body of knowledge – practice-based as well as theoretical – of ethnographic filmmaking.