[ISEA2015] Paper: Kate Hennessy, Claude Fortin, Aynur Kadir, Reese Muntean & Rachel Ward – Producing New Media Ethnographies with a Multi-Sited Approach

Abstract (Long paper)

Keywords: Multi-sited ethnography; research-creation; inductive approaches; digital cultural heritage; intangible heritage; Aboriginal research.

Ethnography is an inductive methodology that generates its own object of study through a series of encounters, while laying bare the modes of construction that are used to do so along the way. The result, the ethnographic media text, serves as the canvas for a subjective reflection on culture, but it is also often its own art piece that can take the form of a literary work, an illustrated catalogue, a collection of photographs, a video or an installation. What happens when ethnographic works are made with electronic media or when they are interactive? Does the use of digital research tools disrupt the making of ethnographies or does it trigger the emergence of new possibilities for ethnographers? Are some methodologies better suited to addressing the new ontological conditions of emerging digital-material research tools? By presenting three new media ethnographies that have been produced with a multi-sited design approach, our article suggests that this particular methodology might offer significant advantages when conducting ethnographic research involving new media technology. These examples of practice aim to show how the affordances of electronic art can better support an object of study that is complex in scale, multi-dimensional, shifting, and multiply situated.

  • Kate Hennessy, Assistant Professor, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Canada. I am a cultural anthropologist with a PhD from the University of British Columbia (Anthropology). As the director of the Making Culture Lab at SIAT, my research explores the role of digital technology in the documentation and safeguarding of cultural heritage, and the mediation of culture, history, objects, and subjects in new forms. My video and multimedia works investigate documentary methodologies to address Indigenous and settler histories of place and space. Current projects include the collaborative production of virtual museum exhibits with Aboriginal communities in Canada; the study of new digital museum networks and their effects; ethnographic research on the implementation of large scale urban screens in public space; and as a founding member of the Ethnographic Terminalia curatorial collective, the intersections of anthropology and contemporary art practices. hennessy.iat.sfu.ca/mcl
  • Claude FortinDoctoral Candidate, Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Montreal and Vancouver, Canada. social smart cities; public interaction with and through technology; immersive installations; digital displays and media façades.
  • Aynur Kadir is an interdisciplinary scholar, media anthropologist, a doctoral researcher at the Making Culture Lab, Simon Fraser University, Canada, who works with Uyghur community in northwest China. She is working on her doctorate with Kate Hennessy on the safeguarding of Uyghur cultural heritage in China exploring various different digital platforms. Aynur is an award-winning ethnographic filmmaker, researcher at Xinjiang Folklore Research Center, China. She has an MA in Folklore Studies and a BA in Education Technology. She is interested in using digital media in the research, preservation, management, interpretation, and representation of cultural heritage to study how digital technology might be used to transform institutional cultures, methods, and relationships with audiences. She intends to conduct her doctoral research on the use of digital technology for the purpose of archiving Uyghur Intangible Cultural Heritage and make this knowledge available not only to scholars and the general public, but also to indigenous peoples so all can benefit in the future.
  • Reese Muntean, Making Culture Lab at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
  • Rachel Ward is completing her Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology with a focus on digital anthropology, intangible cultural heritage and experimental ethnography. She strives to convey culture using interactive, visual, digital and sensory-based mediums. Rachel earned her Master’s degree in Social Anthropology from The London School of Economics in 2010. The following year, she completed a degree in Visual Anthropology at The Australian National University as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. After completing material culture training at the American Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian Institution (SIMA program, 2013), Rachel is now focusing on experimental methods of representing intangible cultural heritage through the technological modification of local material culture (such as musical instruments) and digitalia. She is currently in the process of translating her documentary film, “Appalachian Punks: A Resurgence of Tradition” (2014), into an interactive ethnographic art installation (a prototype was recently exhibited in Vancouver), as well as a web-based interactive documentary as a novel platform in conveying the results of her archival research and fieldwork in Appalachia.

Full Text (PDF) p. 108-115