Group items tagged

"The computer science research community is going full speed ahead developing exciting new algorithms, but it seems a bit disconnected from what it takes to get their work used."

I thought this article is interesting, basically you need to understand more than just computer science to develop a program that is usable to a particular group.

The Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard is a unique collaboration between the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Visual & Environmental Studies (VES). Harnessing perspectives drawn from the human sciences, the arts, and the humanities, the aim of SEL is to support innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography, with original nonfiction media practices that explore the bodily praxis and affective fabric of human existence. As such, it encourages attention to the many dimensions of social experience and subjectivity that may only with difficulty be rendered with words alone. SEL provides an academic and institutional context for the development of work which is itself constitutively visual or acoustic - that is conducted through audiovisual media rather than purely verbal sign systems - and which may thus complement the human sciences' and humanities' traditionally exclusive reliance on the written word. The instruction offered through SEL is thus distinct from other graduate visual anthropology programs in the United States in that it is practice-based, and promotes experimentation with culturally-inflected, nonfiction image-making.

Harvard seems to have a lot going on for it... In context for what we /do/ with digital ethnography materials, I wish that more of the projects that are featured were actually available for, at the very least, preview (at odds with the program's description of conduction through audiovisual media...). I wish I knew more about Zeega (and the apparent connection based on large logo presence on the projects page), even if it is only in alpha... http://zeega.org/about.php

The projects at SEL provide a rich landscape for sensory/experiential exploration. This type of work really opens the mind to new perspectives and detail that is often exploited or skewed through popular media - like maintstream cinema or video games. Being a huge fan of the film "Where Eagles Dare" and the old SkyTram at Disneyland, I really enjoyed the Greunrekorder - Swiss Mountain Transport Systems sound recordings. I wonder if anyone has conducted similar research on the Portland Aerial Tram. Many of the trailers were exquisite, too. "Sweetgrass" looks to be an amazing documentary.

This article is written from the computer science perspective on how social sciences are used to analyze Human-computer-interactions (HCI) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). Tthis article is talking about how ethnomethodology can help computer scientist to design systems allowing people to interact in groups through technology and computer networking. The article is concern on people's behaviors that takes them to interact with the technology and how they do it, some of these points can be stretched and transfer to understanding the behaviors of individuals that interact in digital communities. It continues talking about the influence of the participant in the design of the technology, which brings to my mind the discussion about how the data gathering and "aggregation of information" shape the actions, the behaviors and the data available, which at the same time can dictate how the technology is been developed

This article is really dense, bringing in a framework of participatory democratic society into on-line platforms. It is interesting concept but I have not been able to discern what the pilot project "Mobile Phones, Risk and Health" is about. Nonetheless, it poses good questions about who analyzes and constructs the data, the participants or the social scientist?

Sensate is an online, media-based journal for the creation, presentation, and critique of innovative projects in the arts, humanities, and sciences. Our aim is to build on the current groundswell of pioneering activities in the digital humanities, scholarly publishing, and innovative media practice to provide a forum for scholarly and artistic experiments not conducive to the printed page.

Marko Pelijhan is an incredible digital artist, a lot of his work comments on surveillance. This project is a cool collaboration with North and Arctic Peoples and climate scientists - and brings up some important questions for me around open authoring and traditional ecological knowledge, how might platforms like this incorporate the necessary feedback loops or knowledge-ownership protocols of a particular person/group. How do you protect the sacred in the digital sphere? "The Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) is a non-profit, international group of individuals and organizations, founded by Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman, whose goal is to promote the creation of open authoring, communications and dissemination infrastructures for the circumpolar region. Its aim is to work with, learn from, and empower the North and Arctic Peoples through open source technologies and applied education and training. By creating access to these technologies while promoting the creation of shared communications and data networks without costly overheads, continued and sustainable development of autonomous culture, traditional knowledge, science, technology and education opportunities for peoples in the North and Arctic regions is enabled."

The Interest Group for Digital Practices in History and Ethnography will address the data concerns of history as a research domain and those of the ethnographic disciplines (including cultural anthropology, folklore studies, ethnomusicology, interpretive sociology, and science and technology studies). This group proposes to build a medium sized tent (smaller than the whole of the digital humanities or of the social sciences, larger than a particular discipline) to explore strategies and frameworks for the collaborative care and use of research data of diverse types.

I really like the concept of "scene," as it is applied here. The author uses it to mean the ways groups of people gather in clusters historically, emotionally, and physically. He argues the term avoids the "fetishiz­ing tendencies of subcultural theory". Does it, though? If mapping and analyzing subcultures brings with it a temptation to nail down hierarchies of taste cultures (as in - "my study of zine making shows this is a real zine, that is not" - a temptation that looms even bigger for those of us who try to study our own subcultures), how does scene help us avoid that? Might I be tempted to flash my knowledge of the scene/ being a scenester in ways that produce the same effect? The visualizations help map out the fluid connection between actors and organizations. Describing local fan communities as "a nexus of niches" is tremendously helpful. I'd be interested to see this kind of network analysis applied to online fandoms across platforms. Thinking about the graph though, I'm not sure I need it to understand what he found. It looks cool (and bonus - !science), but I could do just as well without it. If the graph isn't supporting the argument - what is it doing? Final note - I like the choice of the word "patronage" - it may capture something really interesting about the relational and inter-generational aspect of scenes!