About Audiovisual Communication

Audiovisual Communication

There is no doubt about the role currently played by audiovisual productions in cultural and values training. Neither should there be any discussion of the economic importance the audiovisual market is acquiring, especially after the processes to liberalize and deregulate the sector and the growing consolidation of audiovisual industries.

The means of communication are such a part of the social reality that it cannot be understood without them. Audiovisual communication has become the standard bearer of technological innovation. The interaction of information technologies such as cell phones, digital television, satellite communications, Internet, high definition cinema, virtual reality, etc., are transforming the world and our concept of it.

The term audiovisual communication has different connotations. It can refer to a professional activity, a university degree or to certain skills of communicative expression. That expression is also associated with concepts such as multimedia or hypermedia. Such a broad convergence of the terms we use requires that what is meant by each concept be specified.

By audiovisual communication we mean those visual and auditory signals that form multi-sensory messages and construct, within a cultural context, meaningful referents in the spectator. These messages are produced through the various procedures, materials and tools of each means. Transmitting the messages requires techniques and instruments that adapt to those means, the contents and the form of reception.

Multimedia,  understood as the integration of different audiovisual means, is a word we all associate with the new means of communication. As opposed to the one-directional and sequential narration of conventional audiovisual techniques, the interactive nature of multimedia implies non-linear narration.

We define multimedia as the use, within a single environment, of many different means joined together to produce a communicative audiovisual event. The interrelation of expressive means such as design, texts, music, images, sound, video, animations, etc., leads to the interaction of audiences with the message. In other words, the design of the message mobilizes the exploratory activities of spectators and they select from a broad set of interactive options related to their needs.

We also understand hypertext to be a system to organize and consult information that is read non-sequentially, according to the desire of the reader, and that requires a system of interactive communication.

Technically, hypertext is a set of connected links. These links can be words, images, graphs, audiovisual sequences or simple documents that might be from other hypertexts. The items are not connected linearly, like knots in a cord, but rather in a network, following a reticular model.

The potential of these many interdisciplinary contents, and of their interrelation with the evolutionary reality of the new means, lets us confront the educational, methodological, institutional and professional challenges of our programmes in audiovisual and multimedia production.