Paper short abstract:

Refocusing from still pictures to moving compositions provides new dimensions and agenda in anthropology. Recording and interpretation of movement/motion require an adequate technology and methodology as experience of the project “Mobility in the Arctic” demonstrates

Paper long abstract:

What is clear? That science should switch attention from solid forms (sometimes manufactured for scientific goals per se) to vivid moves often omitted in research due to their temporality and uncertainty. Refocusing from so called 'results', or still compositions, to motion and action (1) activates studying the 'motive-decision-action' link; (2) makes it preferable to acquire and describe any scene through a personality—protagonist's close up, rather than by common statistic or other means of impersonal observation; (3) urges to replace a habitual mental map with fixed temporal-spatial axes by transformer-type (or scenario-style) sequence merging spatial-temporal dimensions; (4) calls for figuring out various kinds of human movement including physical, mental, social ones, which mutual transition and conversion are of particular interest; (5) requires the adequate technologies for recording, studying and presenting human movement/motion.

What is uncertain? Who might be casted as an eloquent example of homo mobilis (man mobile), nomad-pastoralist, traveler, cyber-surfer, diplomat or anyone else? How rhythmic pattern of human behavior including strategies on spatial control could be recorded in spatial-temporal dimensions? Northern nomadic models studied by researchers on project "Mobility in the Arctic: ethnic traditions and technological innovations" funded by the Russian Science Foundation present an experience in recording and interpreting movement by visual and other technical means and methods