Music and Image in Dialogue: Audiovisual Media as Multicultural Education

IntroductionAccording to the classical western aesthetics, senses distinguish each other and, as a consequence, visual and auditory dimensions of a phenomenon constitute discrete expressions of its perceptive occurrence. However, the outburst of audiovisual media, particularly ever since the second quarter of the 20th century, was the determining factor in transforming both the aesthetical and cultural experiences all over the western world. Audiovisual media are dominant cultural mechanisms in contemporary societies. Therefore, creatively incorporating them in all educational levels is dictated by current and continuously changing reality requirements. They do not simply affect our culture. They have become our second nature and it is really hard -with one or the other wayto avoid them. Family, school, as well as other institutes should prepare young people for their entrance in a world that is bombarded on a daily basis with numerous images, words, musics and sounds.Certainly, our interest should not only be directed towards the detection of negative consequences of media without any detailed discussion but, on the contrary, our fundamental concern must be to encourage students to build an interpretative and dialectical position towards the media without relying on any pre-constructed notion. Considering children's perception, imagination, visual memory, interpretation analysis and autonomic critical thinking, media education focuses on various informational, ethical, pragmatic, aesthetical and socio-cultural models. The existing multicultural educative environment create an ideal, sometimes an extremely motivating, space for such an enterprise. Children work together on topics that they could hardly discuss about. Simultaneously, audiovisual analysis provides extended curricular development, new teaching strategies and cine-musical applications.Theoretical DetailsMedia messages are complex constructions which are based on particular codes and reveal specific viewpoints. The political economy of media is perhaps their most recognizable feature. Another interesting thing is that different people experience the same message with a completely different way. The crucial question here is: What is the substance of the medium or, in other words, who constructs this representation, how and why? Therefore, it is obvious that there is a need for a more extensive content, text and discourse analysis of the media. Audiovisual analysis could uncover certain aspects of multiculturalism, which hardly appear but they are always present in the dialogical juxtaposition and understanding of cultures.Media surroundings of students-hsteners/viewers play a significant role. In this context there are a lot of experiences which succeed one another so quickly that there is no time for feedback. Hence, it is essential that a participative educational modus operandi should be developed. During this process, both personal experience and collective practice is encircled by other related skills, such as action, awareness, analysis and reflection (Fig.l.). Thereby, the schoolteacher can transform the one-way encountering with mass media to a relationship with bidirectional potential that contain discussion, selfevaluation and reactivation of the participating students. Music and cinema are cultural vehicles that carry numerous empirical, expressive and communicative formations. These channels are indispensable for the children's consciousness regarding individual as well as social meditation.Cinema is the medium that has radically modified realistic representation and narrative fiction during the 20th century. Having a double status as art and technique, it is one of the most typical features of the turn from modernity to post-modernity. From its early beginnings, social sciences recognize cinema as a particular cultural tool suitable for critical research. The so-called film studies is the academic branch that deals with cinematic theory and analysis. …