Can't you just SMELL the ethnography?

This makes me SO excited! I've often wanted a kind of scratch-and-sniff ethnography. If we can use film/photos/sound recordings in ethnographic representation, then why not use smell as well? My new goal in life: write the first web-based monograph that uses smell along with video and audio-- though I might have to wait a decade...


___________________________________________
From the BBC website:
Wednesday, 28 February 2007, 11:57 GMT

'Fragrant future beckons for web'

Many South Koreans are serious video game players
Within a decade the net will be able to deliver smells as fast as it does data, predicts a report.

The forecast came in a wide-ranging survey produced by the South Korean government to find out what consumers will want from future technologies.

[...]

The long-range predictions in the survey came from interviews carried out with about 3,500 technology experts in South Korea.

The country has long been known for its dedication to hi-tech.

Net-using citizens enjoy some of the highest speed broadband connections in the world, widespread high-speed mobile networks and the country's education system makes extensive use of the net to teach and track pupils' progress.

The hi-tech panel behind the report believed that, by 2015, the net will be used to deliver data about smells to a fragrance cartridge sitting next to a computer or other device accessing the net. [...]


for the full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6404067.stm

Public service announcement

This could be you in June...


OK so probably you'll be somewhere exotic working on the final project but if you're in the UK you could be getting touch with nature alongside 1,000s of others at the archetypal British festival - Glastonbury. But only if you register by this wed (this isn't buying a ticket, its just registering your interest) www.glastonburyregistration.co.uk

...yesterday's visit to the Cafe Insomnia

...in all these months that the i've been drinking cafe-au-lait at the Cafe Muse, I've never visited the little place nearby...I've always been put off by the clientele and decor but also the name...The Cafe Insomnia. It doesn't bode well. Perhaps on occasion I've been tempted to drop in while passing the Cafe Insomnia...but I never ventured past the yellow door and I've always been frightened by the sounds of radical bonhomie that spills out into the streets.

That all changed yesterday when I saw an old friend in there...Ivor...who invited me in. For the past five years Ivor has been living in his current place, a small flat on th 3rd floor of a house in S**** Ma[d]chester. Four different people have ended up living in the room below. Sometimes in the middle of the night he presses his head to the floorboards to hear them s-s-snore. Sometimes early in the morning, before the trains and traffic interrupt his silent reverie, he also presses his head to the pillow just to hear the blood pound in his head. It reminds him of the many things that are part of him, that are found just under the veneer of his skin but has never seen. In some odd, disengaged and degraded way it also reminds Ivor that he's alive.

Ivor introduced me to Zotovitch...a regular habitue at the Cafe Insomnia...who it transpires is Le Rabelais supermarket's vice-president. He talks hard about the need for softening up Arabs for the market and advocates a permanent state of war. When asked about peace the answer cannot be found in his flabby words and rhetoric...nor in his overbearing but perhaps once handsome face. He desperately needs some exercise...for here is a man carved out of the worst type of lard (the sort that lies exactly halfway between piety and a bistro lifestyle) and yet he urges leaner and fitter men into war. Zotovitch's appetite for war would change the minute he was made to run round the training field, thus breaking him many weeks before any actual combat. Ultimately he requires a regime change from pate de fois gras to salad and climbing stairs. That or a change of menu is in order down at the Cafe Insomnia...

American Fair Use law

Hey. The Americans among us should find this interesting. The documentary filmmakers' statement of best practices in fair use can be found here or by following the links in the first article.

Cute with Chris

This man has a web-based show. It is a short-form series, updated twice a week, that relies on pictures of cute animals, silly letters from teenage girls, and strong sense of irony. Which is to say it is highly entertaining and outside of the view of the "mainstream" "audience." The above episode holds some relevance to what we've been learning about working in TV in ED2, and it shows what sorts of things are possible outside of that model. These are very very different from the types of films we make, but I think there is potential in short-form series that don't cost a lot of money to make and are consumed more like web-comics than traditional film or television. Admittedly, I have no idea where this man gets his money and he isn't travelling anywhere, so the types of documentary work in this medium would be limited in that sense. Still, I think this is an interesting prospect for people staying close to home.

Weird america is an example of a podcast that is more documentary based, has more visible advertising and is slightly more mobile in its perview. Again, it is pertty limited in terms of what we are doing, but RSS subscriptions and itunes allows these episodes to be directly delivered to your computer or email. It is still pretty light, but the limitations inherent in this form of distribution are very different from those in television.

Computer Drawing

I want to to play.

Sunday Funday

Matt & Phred's 8pm...see you there!

Central Asia Project at Cornerhouse

Where is the line between ethnography and art? What's the difference between an artist who wanders off the tourist path and the ethnographer who represents people and places through artistic media?

I find myself asking these questions after spending quite a bit of time over the last two days in the seminars and exhibitions of Cornerhouse's Central Asia Project. For those of you interested in Central Asia, this is a must-see/do/experience. In short, Cornerhouse, amongst others, organised for 3 British artists to spend time in Kazakhstan--live with families, travel, hold seminars about art, etc.--and now they have a handful of Central Asian artists visiting England, exhibiting their work and creating new pieces for exhibition in Central Asia.

At a talk today, I found myself identifying so strongly with what the UK artists were saying about their experiences of going with still cameras, video cameras or sound recorders and trying to process the sights, sounds and emotions and mediate/interpret them into pieces for this exhibition. Shona Illingworth's video installation 'Karlag' is particularly moving. It has inspired me to re-cut some of my footage and explore the relationships of art, the senses, emotions, memories and ethnographic representation through visual media.

The Central Asian artists' pieces are fascinating and enchanting--an artistic version of 'indigenous media', perhaps? I especially connected with Natalya Dyu's philosophy and her work. She's the youngest of the artists and seems the most motivated to tell the world that 'Kazakhstan is not a wild country'--something I also try to do through film. Her video and interactive digital media pieces on computers make me think of possibilities for us as visual anthropologists to deal with fantasies and dreams or other issues for our subjects.

So that's my abbreviated review of the exhibition. I know I'll be going back several times until the exhibition closes (1 April), so let me know if you'd like to go and fancy some company!

http://www.cornerhouse.org/art/info.aspx?ID=356&page=0

worth waiting for...

drums



Add to My Profile | More Videos

yes please!

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1077910372

The Mighty Boosh - Nannageddon

Hope you like it!

Blackpool

Editorial Note: Photos can't be rotated once they are uploaded through blogger. Also, there is a limit to the total amount of space blogger allows for photos, so it would be good to keep the files under 2mb, or even less. (Uploading to flickr first is a good option if you don't have photo editing software) Thanks. -Kelly

Prehistoric love

Archaeologists find remains of neolithic embrace. Click on the image for more information.

Creative archive

Following on from Kelly's post here is the website for the Creative Archive that I mentioned in ED2 http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/archives/creative_archive_licence_group/

But sadly the bbc aren't offering up their footage anymore as it was a trial period :(
Still a few BFI clips which are quite fun...And hopefully it is a sign of things to come.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

:) thank you kelly!

Internet Archives

Hello. In response to ED2's discussion of Archives, here are a few places that list useful resources.

And edited list from a political news website.

A longer list from wikipedia

For Kat...

Have a wonderful day!

Tenori-on

The tenori-on is a musical instrument that incorporates light into sound to make a more aesthetically integrated digital instrument.

Mooninites

As some of you may know, Boston has recently been all aflutter because of a guerrilla marketing campaign that was mistaken for terrorism. Authorities were called when citizens spotted circuit boards with LED lights hanging from overpasses and in subways. The LED lights were formed in the shape of Mooninites, secondary characters from Aqua Teen Hungerforce, an American cartoon with a cult following. The ensuing panic over these devices effectively shut the city down and cost police hundreds of thousands of dollars.





The artists who were hired to make the ads were arrested for orchestrating a bomb hoax. They respond:

We're gonna need a montage!

What every observational documentary needs to make it a bit snappier...

'Show a lot of things happing at once,
Remind everyone of what’s going on
And with every shot you show a little improvement
To show it all would take to long
That’s called a montage'

Fast Love

Fast Love on Vimeo

Le Grand Content