Paper short abstract:

In this paper I address the issue of depiction and audio-visual descriptions in ethnographic research, asking what work audio-visualizations do.The paper is based on a study that follow ethnographically the processes of tranformation of woolen fibre on the South American Pampas.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I address the issue of depiction and audio-visual descriptions in ethnographic research, asking what work audio-visualizations do. TThe paper is based on a study where woolen fiber is followed through different sites: for instance in sheep shearing and a spinning facility on the South American Pampas; in a scientific laboratory; and an art collection in Buenos Aires, where it appears as a work of art. By looking ethnographically into processes of transformation of woolen fiber, the paper explores how fiber helps figure and reconfigure modes of doing ethnography. I draw on ANT/STS approaches that hold that descriptions are never mere illustrations (cf. Fyfe and Law 1988) and that ethnographic witnessing, story-telling and visualizations, are never 'innocent mirroring' (Haraway 1994). I suggest that a combining of multiple modes or technologies for doing ethnography - including the textual, the tangible, audio (between noise and silence) and visual (also engaging invisibility) - offers possibilities to cut across ontological realms of subject, object, language and being (Latour) allowing for a 'spilling over' between artistic and scientific practices and discourses. This, in turn, not only has implications for the onto-political value of the knowledge we produce, but also opens up for a discussion about the interference, selection and 'versioning' of the fields we both construct and convey.

References: Fyfe & Law (1988) Picturing Power: Visual depictions and social relations. London and New York: Routledge

Haraway (1994) A game of cat's cradle: science studies, feminist theory, cultural studies. Configurations 2.1 59-71