Dear Human Senses and Creative Beings,
My dissertation research focuses on the cultural productions of young visual media makers in Central Appalachia and how they envision, construct, and act upon possibilities for young people in the region. For the past four summers, I conducted preliminary field research at youth media education programs in South America and Central Appalachia, and I have observed and documented numerous visual productions and performances they have produced. However, since I returned to grad school in 2011, I haven't had as much time to engage in some of my own creative interests, which include multiple modes of storytelling, such as filmmaking, community theater, music/audio, and graphic design. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to combine these interests and activities in a public presentation of "sensory postcards" derived from my preliminary fieldwork.
The University of Kentucky (UK) Graduate Appalachian Research Community (GARC) hosts an annual Appalachian Research Symposium that "is intended to foster a supportive community in which students from various fields can present their Appalachian-based research and creative work." With the exception of 2015, I have presented at the GARC Symposium every year since I started my doctoral program in 2011. This event is one that I look forward to each year because it affords a level of creativity and experimentation that graduate school doesn't always offer.
This year, I came across an article in Ethnography Matters on "Sensory Postcards: Using Mobile Media for Digital Ethnographies" (Droumeva 2015), and I was fascinated by her methodologies and her work with soundscapes. I was inspired to think about some multisensory materials I'd collected from my own fieldwork and to revisit some audio recordings from the previous three summers. I took a little bit of a different take and presented on "Exploring Mountains with Multisensory Methods: Sensory Postcards of Appalachia & the Andes" at the 2016 GARC Symposium.
Presentation Abstract: As a research methodology, ethnographic fieldwork is an experiential process of observing, collecting, and analyzing information from a variety of sources and senses. Many supposedly mundane moments can embody and express “thick descriptions” (Geertz 1973) and deeper understandings of these cultural and environmental contexts. Sensory postcards represent “a form of multimodal inquiry that engage sensory ethnography as an access point into … life, place and human geographies, as well as power relations and models of situated learning” (Droumeva 2015). As media artifacts, these “postcards” can “evoke a ‘moment in time’ sensibility while de-emphasizing the visual component” and emphasizing “instead the temporality of sound, allowing the listener to engage their imagination in constructing a scene without video filling in the blanks” (Droumeva 2015). This presentation will summarize and illustrate some of the basic principles of sensory postcards as an ethnographic method through multiple examples of ambient media artifacts produced during fieldwork in mountain geographies and communities in the Appalachian region of the U.S. and the Andean region of South America. For example, postcards will invite the audience to experience and interpret sensory landscapes of rural and urban settings in Peru, Bolivia, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Discussion will include other possibilities for researchers and their collaborators to apply multisensory methods in ethnographic fieldwork as well as the potential of mobile media production both as field tools and as social contexts for research.
Following are the set of slides and methodological media artifacts that I composed and presented. Please note that headphones, HD, and full-screen viewing are recommended for a fully immersive experience and legible ambient environment information. The slide show combines Google slides with YouTube content, so the slides with videos may appear in lower resolution before clicking on the screen to play the media.
My dissertation research focuses on the cultural productions of young visual media makers in Central Appalachia and how they envision, construct, and act upon possibilities for young people in the region. For the past four summers, I conducted preliminary field research at youth media education programs in South America and Central Appalachia, and I have observed and documented numerous visual productions and performances they have produced. However, since I returned to grad school in 2011, I haven't had as much time to engage in some of my own creative interests, which include multiple modes of storytelling, such as filmmaking, community theater, music/audio, and graphic design. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to combine these interests and activities in a public presentation of "sensory postcards" derived from my preliminary fieldwork.
This year, I came across an article in Ethnography Matters on "Sensory Postcards: Using Mobile Media for Digital Ethnographies" (Droumeva 2015), and I was fascinated by her methodologies and her work with soundscapes. I was inspired to think about some multisensory materials I'd collected from my own fieldwork and to revisit some audio recordings from the previous three summers. I took a little bit of a different take and presented on "Exploring Mountains with Multisensory Methods: Sensory Postcards of Appalachia & the Andes" at the 2016 GARC Symposium.
Presentation Abstract: As a research methodology, ethnographic fieldwork is an experiential process of observing, collecting, and analyzing information from a variety of sources and senses. Many supposedly mundane moments can embody and express “thick descriptions” (Geertz 1973) and deeper understandings of these cultural and environmental contexts. Sensory postcards represent “a form of multimodal inquiry that engage sensory ethnography as an access point into … life, place and human geographies, as well as power relations and models of situated learning” (Droumeva 2015). As media artifacts, these “postcards” can “evoke a ‘moment in time’ sensibility while de-emphasizing the visual component” and emphasizing “instead the temporality of sound, allowing the listener to engage their imagination in constructing a scene without video filling in the blanks” (Droumeva 2015). This presentation will summarize and illustrate some of the basic principles of sensory postcards as an ethnographic method through multiple examples of ambient media artifacts produced during fieldwork in mountain geographies and communities in the Appalachian region of the U.S. and the Andean region of South America. For example, postcards will invite the audience to experience and interpret sensory landscapes of rural and urban settings in Peru, Bolivia, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Discussion will include other possibilities for researchers and their collaborators to apply multisensory methods in ethnographic fieldwork as well as the potential of mobile media production both as field tools and as social contexts for research.
Following are the set of slides and methodological media artifacts that I composed and presented. Please note that headphones, HD, and full-screen viewing are recommended for a fully immersive experience and legible ambient environment information. The slide show combines Google slides with YouTube content, so the slides with videos may appear in lower resolution before clicking on the screen to play the media.
Postcard Playlist:
- Audio walk to Faro la Marina, lighthouse in one of several sea-side public parks in the Miraflores district of Lima, Perú (June 25, 2013)
- Audio walk through Plaza de Mayo during a parade with young people from a local school in Sucre, Bolivia (July 23, 2013)
- Audio excerpt of a brief interruption to an interview with a young woman leader in Whitesburg, Kentucky (June 13, 2013)
- Audio walk while feeding the chickens at Stompin Crick Farm outside of Hillsboro, West Virginia (July 14, 2015)
- Audio walk while feeding the pigs at Stompin Crick Farm outside of Hillsboro, West Virginia (July 14, 2015)
These sensory postcards experientially present various ethnographic moments of particular field sites, and they provide some intimate context for these places. After presenting each postcard, I asked participants to tell me what they heard and what they thought they heard. Then I told them why and where I was, and the relevance of each piece.
For example, Lima, Perú is a city of more than 10 million people, which is the largest city I've ever been in. The traffic is extremely congested, fast-paced, and seemingly chaotic, which is far more intense than any traffic I've ever experienced in my home state of Kentucky or my brief residence in Boston. The street noises become more serene and more diverse as the walk progresses toward the sea-side park. The urban soundscape challenges some of the assumptions that people may have about Peru or South America more broadly, and it provides a palpable experience of the precarity of being a pedestrian in this context. The visual representation of the newspaper clipping illustrates the park and the popular parapete (parasailing) rental business that is centered there.
The parade in Sucre, Bolivia was one of numerous parades that I encountered while I was there. Before going there, I read in a travel guide and other literature that parades are culturally commonplace, serve a variety of official and informal purposes, and can even break out spontaneously depending on the occasion. For example, I once encountered a personal birthday celebration parade after dark. The youth parade in the soundscape completely overtook the Plaza de Mayo with young people cheering and waving to onlookers. In contrast, the photo shows the same plaza on a calmer day with a family enjoying a walk in the park with their child.
The postcard in Eastern Kentucky is an interview excerpt from an ethnographic research project on young women leaders in Appalachian for which I served as a research assistant to my doctoral advisor. The young woman is a prominent leader in a well-known non-profit and various regional organizations. The brief audio clip is actually an interruption in our conversation that reveals her leadership skills in action in what may otherwise seem like a mundane moment. Instead of ignoring the interruption as irrelevant, this excerpt makes the work she discusses in the interview more concrete and places the listener in the busy environment of the building where she works. The image is taken from the top of Pine Mountain at a popular scenic overlook above the town where the interview took place.
The two soundscapes in West Virginia both occur on the same farm when I helped take care of the livestock for a family who was on vacation. The immersive sounds of the chickens and pigs as I fed them represent reciprocity with a research collaborator and the daily commitment of care and physical labor that it entailed. There are no people sounds other than my footsteps, which is also an interesting juxtaposition as a rural soundscape in the US in contrast to the urban soundscape of Lima. The photo shows the family's farm gate and the agricultural/entrepreneurial activities they engage in outside of their full-time jobs.
I hope these multiple multisensory moments transport you somewhere new and interesting or at least help you experience these places in a new way. I plan to utilize sensory postcards as a method in a more intentional way in my fieldwork, so look and listen for more multimedia content in the future...
Be Kind, Be Kin,
*AnthroBone
P.S. My dissertation research methodology includes young people as research collaborators in representing their identities and cultural productions in public venues like the GARC Symposium. I was pleased and proud to collaborate with the Appalachian Media Institute to help organize screenings of AMI films produced by the 2015 summer documentary cohort of interns. So as a bonus track, I also want to acknowledge and share the multimedia work that they presented at the 2016 GARC Symposium.
P.P.S. I also created a new standalone page of TravelTips that includes some lessons learned when I traveled to South America and England in 2013. I plan to update it with additional lessons from domestic travel and research in the near future...
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