“Layered Visuals: Videophotography, AI Content, and the 360° Turn”

Since the early aughts, video production among social scientists has increased due to the ease of technology and multi-use media making. Drawing from our own experiences in these shifts, we discuss how videophotography, artificial intelligence (AI), and the 360° turn allow for what we call layered visuals . Layered visuals are those images, produced by a single shot of the human maker, that have multiple potential images within that single shot, e.g. images can be produced with perspectives beyond the human’s point of view and unexpected still frames can be produced with striking photographs when the human is shooting video. The multilinear and multitemporal images often get produced out of sight from both the maker and the human subjects on camera, and can be amplified through digital alterations, provoking ethical and methodological questions for ethnographic fieldwork. This paper will address videophotography, AI, and 360° filming as case studies with which to produce layered visuals and how they exemplify ethical and methodological possibilities in new technical realities. First, such layered visuals open up possibilities for research distribution impact as well as collaboration with interlocutors on the ground. Second, through their digital materialities, layered visuals open up theoretical possibilities for simultaneous recordings of a seemingly single situation, allowing for anthropologists to more easily generate ethnographies with multiple temporalities, nonlinear narratives, and collaborative digital variations. Third, because layered visuals give the impression that they provide a more complete observation, they need more transparency in their makings to avoid the dangerous implication of portraying singular truths.