Audiovisual Laboratory was established at ZRC SAZU in 1983, first as an independent section of ZRC SAZU but only to be joined with the Institute for Slovene Ethnography in 1999. Its aims are production of visual records of culture and study of visual communications and manifestations of culture.

A head of the Audiovisual Laboratory is Naško Križnar, Ph.D., an ethnologist and archaeologist.

A collection of visual docummentation of the Audiovisual Laboratory amounts to more than 650 units in different video formats. Some of them are edited and ready to be viewed by a wider audience. Others have been made exclusively in research purposes. Their subject is mostly regional ethnology.

So far the Audiovisual Laboratory has organized five conferences on the theme of visual culture and visual research, among them four international ones:

-  Visual Anthropology in 80’s - The Strategies of Visual Research/Strategije vizualnih raziskav. ICAES, Zagreb, 1988.

-  Vizualna dokumentacija in komentar. An international conference, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana 1989.

-  40 let slovenskega etnološkega filma. An international Counselling, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, 1996.

-  Znanstveni film kot komunikacija - Primer vizualne antroplogije./Scientific Film as Communication - The Case of Visual Anthropology. An international conference in the frame of the 3^rd Slovene Science Festival, Ljubljana, 1996.

-  Pomen vizualnih informacij v znanosti./The Significance of Visual Information in Science. An international conference, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, 1998.

-  Simbolni vidiki vizualne kulture./Symbolic Aspects of Visual Culture. ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, 2000.

Every year the Audiovisual Laboratory organizes a Summer School of Visual with Slovene and foreign lecturers for researchers, teachers and humanities students, in order to thus pass on its experience in the field of methodology and practice of visual research.