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- Convenors:
-
Mariia Erofeeva
(Université libre de Bruxelles)
David Berliner (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Nils Klowait (Paderborn University)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Face-to-face
- Sessions:
- Thursday 25 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
This panel delves into the heart of mediated experiences—video calls, social media, virtual realities, and the vast expanses of fictious online worlds. We critically examine the emergent patterns of sensorialities, interactions, identities, affects and embodiments shaped within these environments.
Long Abstract:
In a world confronting incessant emergencies—pandemics, wars, ecological crises—humankind grapples with the need to both “undo” established ways of being and “do” innovative forms of existence. Digital environments that cultivate collective experiences from afar provide a particular arrangement for the latter, a construction site for novel patterns of sociality, presence, and perception. This panel delves into the heart of mediated experiences—video calls, social media, virtual realities, and the vast expanses of fictious online worlds. We critically examine the emergent patterns of connectivities, interactions, identities, affects and embodiments shaped within these realms. Considering views that sensory perception is culturally contingent, and claims on the constructed nature of senses, we extend these debates into digital landscapes.
Integrating insights from sensorial, affect and digital anthropology, this panel seeks to forge a novel discourse on digital sensorialities and feelings. We call for an interrogation into how sensory perception, emotional dispositions and bodily presence are reconfigured in digital environments. We challenge contributors to explore the augmentation of the body within digital domains and the resultant forms of embodiment; emotional experiences and togetherness in virtual worlds; the personal attachments to virtual representations (such as avatars) and the technologies enabling them. At the crossroad of theoretical/methodological discussions and ethnographical cases, this panel aims at contributing to a richer understanding of human sensory, emotional and social experiences in an increasingly digital world thus “doing” anthropology innovatively while “undoing” its conventional constraints.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 25 July, 2024, -Lisa Messeri (Yale University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores multi-sensory virtual reality experiences of both the past and present. In building out a genealogy of what these digital sensorial engagements are meant to achieve, I draw connections between digital and pre-digital arguments about affect and understanding.
Paper long abstract:
Virtual reality promises a hyperreality, in the sense that enthusiasts argue that a VR experience can be more real than an actual experience. While it’s easy to dismiss VR as a highly mediated and ocularcentrist experience, this paper considers multi-sensory VR experiences and the epistemological and ontological claims that accompany them. How do creators of such experiences imagine sensorial feeling to translate into caring and knowing? I compare two experiments in sensorial affect, a contemporary piece about deforestation and a mid-century proto-VR contraption called “the Sensorama.” Drawing from archival research for the Sensorama and from ethnographic fieldwork and discursive analysis for the contemporary piece, I show how both of these projects propose sensory stimulation as essential to catalyzing change in people’s outlook. The conflation of sensorial feeling with emotional feeling connects these 20th and 21st century projects with post-enlightenment battles between reason, sensation, and emotion, including 18th century sentimentalism and 19th century psychophysics and aesthetic theory. This paper thus attempts to briefly situate contemporary VR in longer histories and conversations in order to spur expanded anthropological engagements with these “new” digital mediums and their senso-realities.
Martin Látal (Palacký University in Olomouc)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the idea of virtual realities (VR) as a possible bridge between people in the globalized world. It tries to find out how shared experiences with VR act towards new kinds of belongings. Could they compete with the current nation- or ethnicity-based identities?
Paper long abstract:
The current expansion of social networks, hybrid approaches to work and education, and the games industry into most aspects of everyday lives poses unexpected challenges and dilemmas to anthropologists. These changing scapes of online and offline human interaction lead us to the question of whether virtual worlds and realities could lead to the formation of new kinds of communities that occupy space in the wider social structure.
The crux of this paper is built around the idea of virtual worlds as a possible bridge between people in the globalized context. Could these technological advances offer ways of bridging or even replacing the current nation or ethnicity-based identities? The paper is based on the author's ongoing research into virtual reality technologies and digital games. It is anchored between autoethnography, remote ethnography and laboratory experiments focused on the bodily experience with VR headsets. The focus is on the shared experiences with virtual realities and the ways these experiences act towards community and identity formation.
Rather than directly suggesting that virtual realities and worlds will lead to societal changes, we wish to ponder the ways these changes could happen. On the other hand, the options for resisting these changes will be considered and discussed, such as efforts to censor virtual platforms by various actors.
Loeva La Ragione (University of Lausanne)
Paper short abstract:
In this contribution, I analyze the new ways of perceiving human interactions and relationships online, more specifically through multiplayer games and the concept of avatar. I will show how gamers interact, build social relations, express emotions and (re)identify themselves in virtual worlds.
Paper long abstract:
The study of virtual worlds offers new ethnographic methods and new ways of perceiving human relationships and interactions. By analyzing the field of multiplayer video games, where individuals create large communities online, we can observe the creativity of gamers in using or reappropriating game mechanics and assets to share emotions and meaningful behaviors with their fellows. Through the use or modification of tools provided by video game developers, individuals from all around the world manage to express their feelings, their affection, or even parts of their culture through computerized interactions online. It can take many shapes, such as organizing, within the virtual world, social rituals and events like marriages or even teambuilding sessions that usually take place in the physical world. Thanks to these “virtual” moments, gamers aim to strengthen emotional and community ties. In this talk, I intend to analyze these points through the key element that allows people to “be” online and to involve themselves in virtual activities: the avatar. I will introduce how gamers can interact, build relationships, and identify themselves, with the option of customizing their virtual character(s) beyond ethnic and gender limits, the possibility of using a whole list of emotes and chat systems, and a way of immersing themselves in familiar yet so different environments from our physical world. I will also demonstrate how the avatar allows individuals to discover new ways of "existing" and of building meaningful relationships, and how it can create a form of virtual attachment, affecting life and commitment online.
Ruth Dorothea Eggel (University of Bonn)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the sensorialities of gaming as a semiotic-material and embodied digital practice in their situated enactments at video game events. Darkness, light, and air become building materials for gaming environments, exemplifying their significance in contemporary digital culture.
Paper long abstract:
The situated interactions between gamer bodies, machines and the material world at video game events emphasise the semiotic-material and embodied aspects of digital practices. Gamers communicate with and know their machines through multi-sensory relations and interactions, combining vision, sound, smell and touch. Immersion into virtual worlds is achieved by including the body and expanding virtual environments beyond the screen. Navigating virtual spaces becomes a matter of body coordination, training, and incorporation of movement. This paper explores the sensorialities and affects of gaming in particular and digital practices in general by drawing from a multi-modal ethnography at 17 European gaming events as part of the PhD project “Embodying Gaming”.
Within the situated settings at gaming events, darkness, light, and air become mediums of the material world that shape the multi-sensory experiences emerging between people and machines. Contemporary digital technologies rely on various light interfaces (e.g. screens that utilise focused, colourful and filtered lights) that work best entangled with darkness. Simultaneously, darkness creates intimacy, shifting human perception and affording new ways of sensing the world beyond visual realms. Entangled with darkness and light, air becomes the medium that shapes gaming machines' re-assembling, forms and functions, allowing affordances for auditive and tactile ways of sensing machine environments. These embodied practices challenge conventional notions of digitality by emphasising the multi-sensory ways of knowing and interacting with machines and the significance of material environments for media practices, thus enriching our understanding of human sensory, emotional, and social experiences of digital and virtual practices.
Deanna Holroyd (The Ohio State University)
Paper short abstract:
Through a digital ethnographic study, this paper examines the affective dimensions of the TikTok app and ADHD TikTok content to understand the role that affect plays in the proliferation and popularity of ADHD-related social media content, and the phenomenon of self-diagnosing with the disorder.
Paper long abstract:
There has been a recent, noticeable increase in TikTok content detailing the symptoms and experiences of living with ADHD, leading many users to self-diagnose with the disorder. To understand this phenomenon, I conduct a digital ethnography of ADHD TikTok content, examining the affective dimensions of: 1) the discursive, visual and memetic qualities of ADHD TikTok videos, and; 2) the technological affordances of the TikTok app. I first find that content creators use a variety of visual, discursive, and memetic storytelling techniques such as sharing personal anecdotes and recreating trending memes, to generate affects of trustworthiness and relatability and make their content especially believable. I also discover that many of the ADHD ‘symptoms’ presented in these videos (e.g. zoning out, being forgetful, struggling with time management, misplacing things, fidgeting, unable to make a decision, etc.) are actually quotidian affective experiences of living in our 21st century, neoliberal world that are being reframed by content creators as medicalized diagnostic criteria. In the second section of my analysis, I discover that the technological affordances of the TikTok app encourage user engagement habits that recreate the very same affective experiences that creators name as being symptoms of ADHD. As such, I demonstrate how TikTok creates haptic and affective responses in users that replicate ADHD symptoms, and make users particularly susceptible to believing that they have ADHD. Ultimately, I argue that the affective impacts of the TikTok app, and ADHD-related content, are creating an environment in which almost anyone can understand themselves to have ADHD.
Fabio Bertoni (Universidade de LIsboa)
Paper short abstract:
The contribution explores visually impaired creators' content on social media, emphasizing narratives from daily life to advocacy. The interplay between agency and reproduction of ableist cultures offers insights into redefining impairment within digital sensory spaces, reshaping social relations.
Paper long abstract:
This contribution aims to provide an analysis of content generated by visually-impaired or blind creators across social media platforms and live-streaming services (Instagr, TikTok, Twitch). The primary focus will be on creators from Italy and Portugal. The content spans a wide spectrum, ranging from narratives about daily life to advocacy addressing issues inclusiveness, as well as business collaborations.
These narratives may take the form of digital pathographies, or they can extend well beyond the visual impairment aspect. The use of visually-centric and aesthetics-driven social media platforms by individuals, predominantly adolescents/young adults, with visual impairments prompts contemplation on sensory ableism both within and beyond the digital realm. These spaces emerge as arenas for storytelling and agency.
By expanding the concept of agency to encompass its material and ecological dimensions, including the online space, the social media infrastructure, and the mechanisms for online community building, we observe a redefinition of social relationships and a reframing of visual impairment. The dynamic interplay between agency and the ableist social structure provides insights into the processes of (un)doing disability and impaired subjectivities. Through the reproduction, maintenance, or subversion of discourses surrounding bodies, sensory experiences, and disabled subjectivities, presented by diverse creators, we delve into nuanced aspects such as language, the performativity of the body and sensorialities, care relationships, and the politics of emotions. This exploration underscores the potential of digital sensory spaces as possibility of exceeding the constraints of the everyday conditions of impairment, as well as a reproduction of the impairing cultures and structures.
Daniel Miller (University College London (UCL))
Paper short abstract:
The experience of online communication can include elements such as humour, play/gaming, visual forms such as food, and fun interactions such as competitions. We used these observations to create an innovative health intervention called Trini Food Quiz (try downloading this on your phone).
Paper long abstract:
The overall session is focused on the more experiential and sensual aspects of the digital experience. This paper will start from that perspective but then ask how what we learn from this orientation might be employed for digital doing. In this case for creating a novel health intervention for people in Trinidad and Tobago. Working with a Trinidadian anthropologist Sheba Mohammid we started from the observation that established health information was not successful. The evidence that over half the population remains opposed to COVID-19 vaccination. Our solution was to focus on what people seem to enjoy and respond to in digital communication. This included the visual - often pictures of food, the importance of humour, competition, playing games and having an active social exchange. All things that foster the online as a form of active and enjoyable experience.
Based on this evidence we developed a completely different approach to disseminating health information. The aim was to make people aware of the relationship between diet (especially salt) and hypertension - the main co-morbidity of Covid. We first created a competition based on visual posting of health recipes on Facebook. We then created a game, most of which is a fun quiz about local food facts. You can download this on your phone as Trini Food Quiz. Already we have 16k downloads and will be surveying to see what people learnt from this approach to health information as digital experience and ultimately whether it can save lives.
Rosario Neyra (University of York)
Paper short abstract:
This study compares student-instructor interactions in online and in-person crafting workshops, analysing how recruitment and assistance practices are adapted in digital settings. It highlights shifts from embodied monitoring to verbal check-ins in online workshops.
Paper long abstract:
As the pandemic shifted classrooms online, even non-traditional settings like crafting workshops adapted. The innovation artists presented allowed them to stay in business and offered individuals an opportunity to learn new skills during challenging times. This study, born from this transition, examines how instructors convey manual skills in digital versus physical spaces.
Drawing from 55 hours of online and in-person video-recorded workshop data, this research contrasts student-instructor interactions in online and in-person workshops. It focuses on students’ recruitment practices and the instructors’ responsive strategies. The current study presents a quantitative comparison, of the difference in practices in these two forms of workshop delivery: online and in-person.
In online workshops, limited visibility and lack of a shared physical space constrains instructors' and students' spatial interaction, prompting instructors to rely more heavily on verbal check-ins than physical monitoring. However, the camera’s proximity introduces unique practices like peering, which are more visible to the instructor as an embodied display of trouble.
In this paper, I present preliminary results from the comparative study. I will evaluate the effectiveness of the practices deployed by the participants within the crafting classroom, and consider what we can learn about online interaction and the practices for requesting and providing assistance. By doing so, it contributes to the broader discourse on digital learning environments, offering insights into the tactile and sensorial dimensions of online education.