Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the topic of visualisation practices, such as video recording, note-taking and sketching during field work. Drawing on a case study from evolutionary biology, the interaction between expert knowledge, skill, observation, and the mediating tools and devices shall be studied.

Paper long abstract:

Visualisation practices accompany almost any data collection process in the field. They mostly are employed for documentation and help to translate research objects into “immutable mobiles” (Latour 1990).

As has been observed during ethnographic fieldwork with evolutionary biologists, these practices contribute further aspects to the research and impact the knowledge production. Drawing as a tool during fieldwork, helps to guide the attention, to tunnel and frame the vision and to filter out only the relevant aspects. During this, the methods and devices that accompany this process, play a decisive role. Looking through binoculars and documenting observations in a protocol triggers different ways of sense-making than producing video recordings or drawings in field notebooks. The choice of methods causes different interactions between research object, researcher and visualisation practice. They require different skills and (visual) training. Visualisation practices, thus, are not only pragmatic tools, they also work as epistemological devices and establish different modes of practice.

These aspects also receive attention in the field of design research. Taking visualisation practices as a commonality between scientific knowledge production and design shall allow to draw a fresh perspective on scientific knowledge production through the lens of a design-informed social anthropology. Relating to the concepts of skilled vision (Grasseni 2007), thought style and thought collective (Fleck 1979) and situated knowledge (Haraway 1988) this paper puts the visual material and its related practices into the centre and allows to question the entanglement of expert and peer knowledge, visualisation practice, and (visual) skill with scientific knowledge production.