Digital Technology and Human Vulnerability: Towards an Ethical Film Praxis

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Digital film technology, in its seemingly intimate and infinite capacities to stage the suffering of others for an ever wider audience, has transformed the encounter between those watching and the vulnerable other. While this 'ethical' encounter is the subject of much discussion within film theory, and media and arts debates, researchers are yet to consider fully the impact of the digital within it, and practitioners lack detailed ethical guidelines that move far beyond basic questions of consent or good practice. This research explores and reflects upon how the use of digital technologies transforms our engagement with, understanding of, and response to human vulnerability. For this pilot study, the team will work with one group of vulnerable adults, those affected by terminal illness at the John Taylor Hospice in Erdington, Birmingham, to co-create digital films. This filmmaking project, linked to and informed by Art therapy and the wellbeing team at the hospice, will provide immediate therapeutic benefits for the participants but will also have enduring impact, for all stakeholders, through the digital spaces that will be developed as part of the research-the online interactive website and the exhibition-and which will bring these films and materials to wider and new audiences. Ethical issues are at the heart of this research not simply because it involves vulnerable adults, but because it depends upon ethical discussions about the mediation of the suffering of others within film theory, educational and arts practice and global ethics debate. The multi-disciplinary team of practitioners and researchers will work together to identify, share and apply the ethical issues inherent to engaging with human vulnerability from their respective fields through an initial knowledge exchange workshop, monthly review meetings and through contributing to the development of the website and the exhibition. Through all these the research will develop a prototypical model of ethical film praxis for digital arts and media researchers and practitioners, for broader application for the third sector but also as the foundation for further research development and in particular for the larger project that this pilot study initiates.