Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality,
and to see the links to virtual rooms.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Meri Kytö
(University of Turku)
Nina Grønlykke Mollerup (University of Copenhagen)
Niamh Ní Bhroin (University of Oslo)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Main Site Tower (MST), 01/003
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The aim of this panel is to bring the subfields of media anthropology and sensory anthropology into dialogue, facilitating an introductory discussion of media and the sensory.
Long Abstract:
The past decades have seen an increased mediatization of societies, which has engendered growing research interest in media and new methodological opportunities. Over this period, media anthropology has been established as a significant sub-field within anthropology. Simultaneously, there has been a move towards the sensory in disciplines across humanities and social sciences, leading to increasing attention being given to the visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory, in short, embodied experiences in the world. An anthropology of the senses has long been well established, yet it is only within the last two decades that a sensory anthropology has developed - as 'a "re-thought" anthropology, informed by theories of sensory perception, rather than a sub-discipline exclusively or empirically about the senses' (Pink 2010). While media anthropology is closely related to sensory anthropology, there is a lack of research on media as 'immersive, environmental, or bodily-somatic' and on 'the consequences of how such media operate on the body and the senses' (Salter 2018).
As a result, there have been calls for focusing more attention on media that de-centres media and meaning-making practices in order to engage with sensuous, practical and bodily knowledge related to engagements with media. The aim of this panel is to bring the subfields of media anthropology and sensory anthropology into dialogue, facilitating an introductory discussion of media and the sensory. A network of scholars working on media and the senses is being established during 2022-2023 to promote further interest in the topic.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 July, 2022, -Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim
Paper short abstract:
This paper concerns the growing significance of hands in media use with a Japanese example of keitai shôsetsu (mobile novel) and discusses the tactility as a new approach for mobile practices. It suggests that the tactile dimension plays as a hidden and critical ground for mobile creativity.
Paper long abstract:
This paper concerns the growing significance of hands in digital media use with a Japanese example, and discusses the tactility as a new approach for mobile creativity. Hands increasingly play a practical role for engaging interfaces and user experiences (UX) of mobile media and are of critical importance to the usability of these devices. This paper looks into a Japanese phenomenon of keitai shôsetsu (‘mobile novel’), a particular genre of online fictions once prevailed among Japanese young females in the mid-2000s. Having emerged from the unique social backdrop of Japan before the rise of smartphone, it was characterized as an interactive literature preferably being written and read exclusively on mobile phones. Combining interview results with its heavy users (both authors and readers) and social discourse analysis regarding the phenomenon, the paper delves on how the tactile engagement involved media experiences for writing and reading keitai shôsetsu, and how eventually it affected the creativity of this peculiar genre. Finally, the paper argues the mobile creativity as a tactile event, suggesting that the tactile dimension plays as a hidden and critical base for the creation and consumption of mobile creativity. A reflection will be offered on how the focus on the tactility will contribute to describe the totality of the media experience.
Francesco Bachis (University of Cagliari)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing from ethnographic research on the self-representation of young migrants in Italy on TikTok, the paper aim to reflect on how participant observation in a social network can produce embarrassment due to the mismatch between the ethnographer's status and “fieldwork” activity.
Paper long abstract:
Sensory and Media Anthropology seems to share a common destiny. Despite an increased mediatization of the whole range of human activity, and while Media Anthropology is a significant and established sub-field of the discipline, new methodologies are struggling to expand as common practice for all anthropological fields. Likewise, regardless the Michael Hertzfeld’s provocation (2001: 242), sensory ethnography seems confined to an “anthropology of-”.
Drawing from ethnographic research on the self-representation of young migrants in Italy, the paper aims to reflect on the meaning of doing participant observation on the social network TikTok. Hence, the contribution reflects on how the embodiment of this practice may urge embarrassment in the researcher. Indeed, doing participant observation in social media requires spending time watching videos from your smartphone, during daily life (e.g., travels on public transport). Alongside, it is important to actively interact with TikTokers, that is to produce and comment on videos on daily basis. Thus, considering the predominance of adolescents and young women in TikTok, an effective ethnographic approach may lead to unease situations. The physical proximity of subjects who see the researcher watching TikTok videos within these spaces can produce embarrassment towards fellow colleagues, people who are next to them during daily life, and within the researcher himself. By showing that unease relates to the mismatch between the ethnographer's status (age, gender, social position, etc ) and “fieldwork” activity, the paper aims to reflect on how this research practice put the anthropologist “out of place” and produce embarrassment.
Fabian Broeker (LSE)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork with dating app users in Berlin, this paper argues that courtship rituals and practices of intimacy among dating app users gravitate around transitioning away from a dating app to messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp - platforms which feel more intimate.
Paper long abstract:
Dating apps, as socialised technologies, are deeply embedded into the everyday lives of their users. Questions of identity and selfhood play out across dating apps and the broader dating culture they are embedded within. This paper argues that dating app users operate within an environment of affordances that includes various social media and communication platforms, which permeate users' everyday lived experiences. Drawing on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork with dating app users in Berlin, in this paper I argue that courtship rituals and practices of intimacy among dating app users gravitate around transitioning away from a dating app to messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp. These rituals are utilised by users to distance their intimate lives from the matchmaking algorithm at the core of dating apps, supplanting the “swipe” as a signal of mutual interest with their own courtship practices, functioning outside of the intended use of the apps.
Drawing on ethnographic data incorporating 36 semi-structured interviews and 45 chat interviews across three popular dating apps, Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid, the paper finds that users code the apps installed on their smartphones as bounded spheres of differentiating intimacy. Furthermore, a hierarchy of intimacy exists around the notification settings users implement across their device, with most choosing not to receive notifications from their installed dating apps. As such, moving to an app such as WhatsApp, where users have notifications enabled, grants potential partners greater access to one another, and creates the feeling of being further interwoven into a partner’s everyday intimate life.
Meri Kytö (University of Turku)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will look into epistemological challenges in doing ethnography with a cochlear implant user. These will be pondered in relation to current discussions on media anthropology and sensory anthropology, including aural diversity.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will look into some of the epistemological challenges I have faced in doing ethnography with a cochlear implant user. A cochlear implant is an electric hearing aid in three parts for people with severe hearing loss, one part of which is implanted behind the ear under the skin (on to the skull and inside the cochlea), second (the transmitter) sits on top of this implant with a magnet and third (speech processor) on the auricle. The device stimulates the cochlea with tiny and intricate electric impulses and thus produces a sensation of hearing. The input of the speech processor is heavily regularized with algorithms combing and rendering the sonic environment picked up by two miniscule microphones for an ”optimal result”.
The epistemological questions will be pondered in relation to current discussions on media anthropology (the networked body, infrastructuration) and sensory anthropology (non-human sensory agency, adaptation/attention). Also, the methodological challenge posed by aural diversity will be taken into account.
Rik Adriaans (University College London)
Paper short abstract:
In recent years electronic ambient musicians have increasingly embraced modular synthesizers for the creation of audiovisual social media content. This paper locates modular synthesists in a culture of digital detoxing in which immediacy is pursued through the sensory mediations of the non-digital.
Paper long abstract:
Since the early 2000s an increasing number of electronic musicians ditch their laptops and other digital devices for music creation in the Eurorack modular synthesizer format. The Eurorack modular synthesizer format allows musicians to assemble unique, customized musical instruments from a wide range of electronic circuits and generate music by distributing analogue voltages across these circuits with physical patch cables. In this paper I explore how modular synthesists relate to their instruments as vibrant, organic and energetic systems by exploring the commonly held idea that analogue synthesis is more natural than digital sound generation.
Drawing on fieldwork with ambient musicians and synthesizer circuit designers, I explore how modular synthesists experience tactile cues from patching and tweaking their instruments assembled by hand, integrate environmental and feedback sounds into their system and emulate the imperfections of traditional musical instruments though practices such as the tuning of oscillators by ear. I look at the emergence of the ‘ambient field trip’ in which modular systems and camera equipment are brought along by young synthesists on hiking and mountaineering trips to generate soothing and meditative content for YouTube and Instagram. I also look at critiques of the naturalness of the analogue by other synthesists who embrace a more artificial aesthetic and refer to overly formulaic or accessible synthesizer music on social media with the derogatory term 'houseplant ambient’. The paper situates modular synthesizer subculture in a wider culture of digital detoxing in which immediacy is pursued through the sensory mediations of the non-digital.