Panel Statement

Panel: The Madness of Methods: Emerging Arts Research Practices

Harold Garfinkel, fa­ther of eth­nomethod­ol­ogy, once de­scribed his method­olog­i­cal “pref­er­ence to start with the fa­mil­iar scenes and ask what can be done to make trou­ble.” My work ap­plies this sen­si­bil­ity to the de­sign of pub­lic rit­u­als. I will pre­sent re­search from sev­eral col­lab­o­ra­tive vox pop ex­per­i­ments and sit­u­ate this work as “mak­ing trou­ble” for the as­sump­tions that tra­di­tional jour­nal­ism cre­ates when it uses so­cial media to cu­rate the pub­lic back to it­self. Cul­mi­nat­ing with a call to arms, I argue that the de­sign­ers and fun­ders of new civic plat­forms should em­brace the op­por­tu­nity to re­design our pub­lic rit­u­als from the ground up.

• Joshua McVeigh-Schultz is a de­signer, scholar, and media maker in the Media Arts and Prac­tice PhD pro­gram in the School of Cin­e­matic Arts (US). He is in­ter­ested in the in­ter­sec­tion be­tween in­ter­ac­tiv­ity de­sign and rit­u­als of pub­lic life. He com­pleted an MA in Asian Stud­ies at UC Berke­ley and an MFA in UC Santa Cruz’s Dig­i­tal Arts and New Media pro­gram. He works as a re­searcher for the In­sti­tute for Mul­ti­me­dia Lit­er­acy and is a mem­ber of the Civic Paths re­search group, study­ing new mod­els of po­lit­i­cal en­gage­ment at the in­ter­sec­tion of civics and pop-cul­ture. He is also a de­signer in the Mo­bile and En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search Lab, where he de­vel­ops spec­u­la­tive ex­pe­ri­ences for built en­vi­ron­ments and mo­bile in­ter­ac­tion.