What is your doctoral thesis about?

Maria Olsson Foto: Niclas Björling

- My doctoral thesis focuses on what happens when children create digital films in preschool. I investigate the conditions and origins of children's experience of realities in their environment, what children see when they film and watch their films. The analysis is based on Gilles Deleuze's philosophical film theory, which is derived from transcendental empiricism. I apply the theory to enable to think about the invisible and indeterminate which is set in motion when children and I as a researcher film together.

Can you describe in a little more in depth?

- Film theory focuses to large extend on how it is possible to understand time, I examine also the definite and indefinite in time. When children create films, it is about approaching the understanding of how the virtual can become actual and real in one and the same image.
- As a part of my research, I visited a preschool to find out what children want to film with a camera. They worked in pairs and filmed something they found interesting in the preschool environment. The preschool teacher could participate if the children wanted so, otherwise not.
- It is all about what children do and what they find interesting to see, and how the invisible can become in the children's filmmaking. The thesis analyzes how the children explore vision and try to film and make it visible. The children explore what is possible to see using digital film technology.

What was the reason you chose this topic?

Maria Olsson doctoral thesis.

- Children are used to using digital media to film and document their learning and educational work and are involved in filming in their everyday life at the preschool. I found it is interesting to understand and approach how the children themselves perceive what is seen in their filming and what filmmaking does to children's perceptions of the outside world. I am interested in children's and also adults' film viewing.
- I did not have direct questions to the children, but I had their and the guardians' consent to ask what they would like to film in a preschool. I had product meetings and technical meetings together with the children to discuss their film ideas. When I asked what they wanted to film, I was surprised that it would be about the invisible. The preschool had a great educational environment and I thought they would film when they were building blocks or doing something else educational. But they weren't interested in that. They were interested in, for example, a ghost. After filming, they told other children in the group that the ghost they had seen outside the toilet is now on the film.

Can you conclude the most important findings in your research?

- Film philosophy has helped me to understand how it is possible to move back in time. We film a place to remember and package our memories with the help of a camera. This is proven in the thesis by showing how children's image vision can actualize the virtual ghost that they remember having seen in a specific place in the past. It seems that images of the ghost appear to the children when the movie camera is on. We can ask what film does to us and which images of reality are actualized and become actual?
- The children at the preschool knew they have once seen a ghost in a room at a certain time, and can go back to that moment in the film. Various images of light phenomena appear and build a ghost. The children film the phenomena and watch their film and film again. They describe the phenomena as something shining and white, a clown ghost. With each retake, images of a ghost appear and become more visible and real. The analyzes are about the image-vision and what is possible to see. The children's filmmaking visualizes different perceptions and images of realities which previously been invisible.

I had not expected the children to choose to film the invisible.

Something that surprised you during the study?

- What surprised me and which I had not expected was that the children chose to film the invisible in their preschool. The children filmed phenomena (the ghost), the virtual-vision (when the child wants to film his eye) and rhythm. In the rhythmic film, the children play rhythmic instruments and dance. At a later time, they watch their film on a screen. The children imitate their movements as they see on the screen and create new movements. The film on the screen becomes images of the past and the children's new movements become images of the present in an innovative movement towards images of the future. The beginning and the end of the empire are erased and removed from time. It is exciting that the result shows how the children's filmmaking can create these possibilities in connection with film technology and film theory.

What do you hope to contribute with your research?

- I hope that the thesis can contribute to the interaction of children and adults with film technology in preschool and in research. It is about how film technology and Deleuze's film philosophy can open up possibilities for children and adults, educators and researchers can interact and rethink the reality of the surrounding environment by using digital film. Furthermore, it is about understanding how relationships and images of life are set in motion. How images of the actual and the virtual, invisible can appear in children's filmmaking in preschool.

Finally, what do you want to do next?

- I am interested in interdisciplinary research in preschool didactics, art and film studies. Since I have studied art and have a long experience from the world of film art and also a master's degree in pedagogy and have been teaching in the preschool program since 2011, I would like to continue to investigate what happens when Deleuze's film philosophy is added to the research area of preschool didactics and also to practice in preschool. It could, for example, be about opportunities to change the practice based on how the children understand realities in their surrounding world with film.
- I am also interested in digital film, and AI and what happens to the brain when we watch a film.

Maria Olssons doctoral thesis abstract in Diva.