Returning as care: videographic parametric exercises as a model for citational practice

Description

The parametric exercise is a primary approach to videographic scholarship, involving self-imposed formal constraints as guiding principles for making work. Such exercises were firstemployed at Middlebury’s Scholarship in Sound & Image workshop, which holds that working with formal parameters can lead to new insights and discoveries. Subsequently, videographic critics have invested in designing new exercises to further queries in the field, often drawing on the published results of experiments in form. Alan O’Leary identifies Matthew Payne’s audiovisual essay Who Ever Heard…? (2020) as an example of scholarship that offers a form and structure for others to adopt, and thus repositions the parametric exercise as a form of adaptation where scholarly work is revised, reiterated and redeveloped. This audiovisual presentation seeks to explore the exercise’s recursive invitation through questions of citational practice. It builds on the 2024 ‘Parametric Summer Series’, organised by Ariel Avissar, which featured four exercises developed from existing audiovisual essays. I ask how can the process of working with and through another’s formal choices help you reflect on your own practice? If the parametric exercise offers a way of learning from and finding inspiration in each other’s works, how might we practice ethical citation and acknowledge our influences?

Period	28 Jun 2025
Event title	Screen Studies Conference 2025: Screen Returns
Event type	Conference
Location	Glasgow, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International