• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Multisensory ethnography: sensory experience, the sentient body and cultural phenomena Thomas Jackson Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Media and Communication January 2018 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2018 The University of Leeds and Thomas Jackson The right of Thomas Jackson to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by Thomas Jackson in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. For my wife, Claire Jackson. Without your endless support this work would not have been possible. Acknowledgements Jim Brogden, for acting as my primary supervisor, consistently communicating such great enthusiasm regarding my work and asking all of those difficult questions. Simon Popple, for acting as my secondary supervisor, presenting so many fantastic opportunities for research collaborations and dedicating such a large amount of time to offering feedback on my work. Andrew Prescott, for acting as the external examiner and creating such excellent opportunities for me to showcase this project. Kate Nash, for acting as the internal examiner and for our lively and informative discussions regarding virtual technologies. Edgar Gómez Cruz, for not only offering such valuable insights into ethnographic methods, but also for being such a great friend. Helen Thornham, for asking so many critical questions of my work and presenting such great opportunities for me to develop and test my theoretical arguments. Brian Larkman, for inspiring me to start working with 360° photography and offering invaluable feedback on the many research projects I have undertaken which employ it. Paul Ratcliff, for so generously helping me to learn about field recording and offering such insightful feedback on the many recordings I have made. Rachael Brown, for providing such great support regarding the administrative and contractual requirements of this PhD. All colleagues within the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds, past and present, for creating such a supportive and inspirational working environment. My parents, Sue and Colin Jackson, for instilling in me the confidence to take on this challenge, testing the practical work so extensively and proofreading this thesis. The Communities and Culture Network+, the British Academy, the Natural Environment Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for providing the funding which made many of the projects cited in this thesis possible. Abstract This practice-led PhD offers two contributions to the emerging discipline of sensory ethnography: a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationships between sensory experience, the sentient body and cultural phenomena and a series of new sensory research methods. It comprises the thesis presented here, a number of practical projects and a ‘dossier’ of associated outputs, including conference papers, workshops and symposiums, public engagement activities and successful funding applications. For the purposes of assessment and dissemination, all of these components have been collated into a single online presence: www.multisensoryethnography.com. The primary piece of practice associated with this PhD is a multisensory and participatory virtual archive of Temple Works, a Grade I listed building in South Leeds (Jackson, 2016a). This project, hereafter Experience Temple Works, is a proof of concept implementation of all of the methodological innovations advocated in this thesis and also embodies the theoretical contributions detailed in the writing. Experience Temple Works was created as part of a 30-month ethnography with the community of artists and makers resident within the building, hereafter Temple.Works.Leeds. The theoretical arguments presented in this thesis and the associated practice were developed in parallel and it is therefore recommended that they are ‘read’ in concert, allowing the relationships between them to be revealed. In order to facilitate this, the footnotes in this thesis regularly include links to pertinent ‘locations’ within the practice. The structure of this document intentionally blurs the conventional distinctions between the review of literature, methods and findings. These aspects of the research are inextricably linked and cannot effectively be addressed in isolation. The thesis offers an analysis of the potentialities and problems which sensory ethnography introduces, arguing that it offers new and innovative ways of understanding the lives of others but will only be established as an enduring and meaningful development within anthropology if a number of significant challenges can be overcome. Synthesising theoretical perspectives from numerous different disciplines, the thesis argues that multisensory research methods are central to understanding the complex and interdependent relationships between the senses and culture, bringing into question ethnographic studies which attempt to separate out individual sensory modalities from the multisensory matrix of perception. A new theoretical framework for sensory ethnography is introduced which attempts to unify key concepts from a range of cognate disciplines and is based upon a helical model of evolving and reciprocal correlations between sensory experience, the sentient body and cultural phenomena. Methodological contributions are made through the evaluation of a series of new technological modes of representation (developed by the author) which 4 not only have the potential to significantly impact upon the production, dissemination and reception of ethnographic studies, but which might also become a platform through which ethnographic knowledge is co-created with the research participants. Finally, the practical projects which implement and embody all of the methodological and theoretical contributions in this thesis are situated, with specific reference to the impact they have attained. The salient argument of this thesis is that sensory ethnography is an exciting but profoundly challenging new discipline. It has the potential to significantly impact upon any research project which implements fieldwork methods in the study of cultural phenomena but its future is dependent upon the rethinking of long-established practices related to the production and dissemination of ethnographic knowledge. Research Questions How might multisensory, participatory and ‘virtual’ technologies impact upon the 1 execution, dissemination and reception of ethnographic studies? Given the fundamental limitations of representing sensory experience in language 2 and writing, how might technological modes of representation create new ways of communicating the fieldwork experiences upon which ethnographic knowledge is founded? Do multisensory and embodied technologies have the capacity to engage 3 non-academic audiences in the processes of ethnographic research and to represent the resulting findings in ways which are meaningful to those audiences? To what extent might a more cohesive and integrative theoretical framework inform 4 the analysis of the relationships between sensory experience, the sentient body and cultural phenomena? What social, cultural, technological and academic impact might be attained by the 5 creation of a multisensory and participatory virtual archive of Temple Works, a Grade I listed building in South Leeds? 5 Table of Contents ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................................................4 CHAPTER 1: The potentialities and problems of sensory ethnography .....................8 1.1: The senses, language and writing ................................................................................................13 1.2: Closeness, abstraction, mediation and repetition .....................................................................21 1.3: The body ............................................................................................................................................26 CHAPTER 2: The rationale for a multisensory approach to ethnography .................30 2.1: The senses and culture ...................................................................................................................31 2.2: Neurological studies of cross-modal perception .......................................................................36 2.3: Modality-specific ethnographies ...................................................................................................39 CHAPTER 3: A new theoretical framework for sensory ethnography .........................46 3.1: Production ..........................................................................................................................................49 3.2: Transformation ...................................................................................................................................52 3.3: Reception ...........................................................................................................................................55 3.4: Interpretation .....................................................................................................................................58

Load more

  130

Copy Link