Audiovisual Aesthetics in Formation
Comparative and Computational Analysis of Transatlantic Television Style, 1970–1989
The project investigates the development of audiovisual aesthetics in television during the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on Sweden and the United States. It explores how sound and image interacted to shape stylistic conventions across genres such as documentary, children’s programming, and drama. Drawing on extensive archival collections, the study integrates historical and computational perspectives to trace how cultural, institutional, and technological factors influenced the evolution of television form.- Time
- Location
- Cambridge, USA / Gothenburg, Sweden
How did the aesthetics of television come to define the way we perceive audiovisual media today? Audiovisual Aesthetics in Formation examines the history of crossmodal alignment, the interplay between sound and image, across Swedish and American television between 1970 and 1989. Combining computational methods such as variational autoencoders and signal analysis with historical interpretation, the project uncovers how stylistic conventions took shape within contrasting broadcasting environments and how these conventions continue to inform the rhythms of contemporary media culture.
By applying machine learning to audiovisual archives, the research pioneers new approaches to studying television history at scale. In collaboration with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and the Swedish National Archives, it advances comparative and data-driven perspectives on audiovisual form. Hosted by metaLAB (at Harvard), and GRIDH (Gothenburg Research Infrastructure for Digital Humanities), and funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR), the project bridges computational analysis, media history, and design-based exploration to make the visual and sonic past accessible and interpretable.