Category: digital domain

Crowdsourcing (part of) a syllabus…

 

Diversidad etnica
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I’ll be teaching a new course this coming spring term (2012) on digital ethnography (with a likely, but somewhat bland, title of Digital Ethnography). As a methods course preceding the establishment of a new media & culture graduate certificate, I’m thinking it iwill attend to at least two areas under the “digital ethnography” heading: doing ethnographic work using digital tools, and doing ethnographic work in the digital domain.

Barring a few reading options, this is as far as I’ve gotten in the planning. I am seeking comments and input from students (potential or otherwise) about what else the course might take on. So, please post comments here with suggested readings, methodological issues, tools you are curious about (or have used)—in short, anything that you’d love to see in a class of this sort. In that I’m imagining this class to be a collaborative experiment in general, having at least part of the syllabus co-authored/crowdsourced is fine first step in my mind. And I’ll certainly credit any/all contributions that I end up using!

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mimetic inquiry @ AFS 2011

I’m heading to the annual American Folklore Society meetings in Bloomington, IN, and will participate in a poster session focused on digital humanities. This will be the test drive for the “mimetic inquiry” concept I’ve been batting around. A JPEG of the poster is above, and here is how I describe the concept on the poster:

Embracing an ethos within digital humanities that positions the “digital” as simultaneously object of study and context of scholarly practice, mimetic inquiry utilizes tools of digital content creation and manipulation to generate interpretative analysis that is both process and product-oriented. As such, it entails ethnographically-grounded interpretation that echoes artistic processes, while proposing a move beyond textual representation as the norm for cultural research.

I’m hoping to get some feedback so that I can continue to refine the ideas I’m working with and push this idea further into the realm of usable.

 

Materiality of Digital v. Analog?

One of many iterations of my noise board....with one digital pedal in there.

One of many iterations of my 'noise' board….with one digital pedal in there.

I’ve been thinking about ways to talk about the “material culture” components of the boutique pedal building world with regards to digital v. analog. Practically all of the pedals are built using analog circuitry—and exist as physical objects—whereas the commerce surrounding these objects takes place in digital domains: web-based retailers, discussion boards, and YouTube vids/demos.

I’m intending to think on this more…another post (or two) to come.