Her paper is called: How far can we go? Experiments with visual methods

Methodology Institute Seminar Series
Date: Monday 15 March 2010
Time: 5-6.30pm
Venue: B813 Columbia House
Speaker: Nina Wakeford, Reader in Sociology and ESRC Research Fellow, Goldsmiths College, University of London

This week is busy!

In addition to applying for this, chairing this and talking at this, I am also attending these two INCITE events:

On Thursday

ATMOSPHERES OF PARTICIPATION: ART, MEDIA, POLITICS
Two talks and a discussion about presence, liveness and the importance of participation

Kris Cohen (Art History, University of Chicago) – “Intimacy without Reciprocity: Suffragists, Trolls, and Sharon Hayes’ Art of Protest”

Edgar Schmitz (Art, Goldsmiths) – “Some rather ambient attitudes: indifference, exit and the question of affirmation.”

Chair: Nina Wakeford (Sociology)

Location: IGLT, Whitehead Building
Cost: Free – all are welcome, no booking required
Department: Sociology
Time: 12 November 2009, 18:30 – 20:30

On Friday

ATMOSPHERES OF PARTICIPATION: A WORKSHOP
Friday 13th November 2009
Goldsmiths, University of London
Depford Town Hall, Lewisham Way (map at www.gold.ac.uk)
Organised by Nina Wakeford, Sociology & Goetz Bachmann, CCS

9.30am Welcome and introductions
10am Irmela Schneider (University of Cologne) – “Tele-dialogue in 20th Century German Television: a case study of participation.”
Respondent – Goetz Bachmann (Goldsmiths)

11.30am Coffee break
11.50am Anne Cronin (University of Lancaster) – “Urban billboards, fabulation, and the animation of public space”.
Rachel Moore (Goldsmiths) – ‘Not what the neon sign says…’
Respondent – Celia Lury

Lunch (1.15-2.15, DTHB 110)
2.15pm Karen Mirza (http://www.no-w-here.org.uk/) – “The Museum of Non Participation”
Karen Tam (Goldsmiths Cultural Studies & http://www.karentam.ca/) – “Orientally Yours: Karaoke Singers, Opium Addicts, and Chinese Diners”
Nina Pope (http://www.somewhere.org.uk/) – “Fully Engaged?”
Respondent – Kris Cohen

3.45pm Tea
4.15pm Scott Lash (Goldsmiths) – “Public Sphere as Atmosphere”
Respondent – Ken Anderson (Intel)
5.30 Closing remarks

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED

Who says I don’t have a job -I don’t have time for a job : )

Viewing in:

Viewing out:

I have just submitted an application for an ESRC post doctoral fellowship. The competition is fierce, and a 20% success rate, because gaining a scholarship like this provides tremendous benefit to a new scholar’s career. All fingers crossed.

This week I submitted the “entry for PhD examination” as it is called over here. It is a form that asks for the final title, an abstract and date of submission. Yes, its that kind of document. It was hard work finalising those ten words for the title and getting 358 of the little buggers to summarize the entire thesis. I’ve written a lot, and am currently deeply embedded in the full rewrite, but I keep folding, poking and squeezing words into different shapes. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be happy with the order of the remaining 89,632!

At times like this I am reminded though of that famous line, Don’t get it perfect, get it done!

Indeed.

And soon it will be done, as I intend to submit in September (ha!) (sob)

Genevieve Bell and I have co-written a paper on the WiMAX project I undertook in Sydney in 2006/07. In it we question the rhetoric surrounding much wireless infrastructure that proposes to radically alter our everyday lives. Rather than assuming wireless technology use reflects these kinds of ‘anywhere’ and ‘anytime’ imaginings, this paper explores how and in what ways people make sense of wireless infrastructures. By grounding our analysis in cultural and social practices, we offer a snapshot of a specific set of lived experiences that, for the most part, reject the current formulations of ‘wirelessness’ as a technology of ubiquity. We take as our starting point of analysis, the home as ‘hub’: here we are playing on the notion of the router as a gateway to wirelessness, and also on the centrality of the home as a unit of analysis for social and cultural practice. By taking the home hub as its theoretical and methodological starting point, this paper explores the concept of ‘located mobility’, after all, just because people can use devices everywhere does not mean they necessarily will. Located mobility then suggests the existence of rules and boundaries in relation to wireless internet and computer use in certain spaces, contexts, relationships and periods of time. We are particularly interested in re-inscribing homes as an important part of the urban computing research landscape. After all, for as much as urban spaces are made up of public, civic and commercial sites, they are also composed and comprised of a complicated build out of domestic spaces from the high-density, multi-family dwellings of Asian cities to the tightly-packed row houses and terraces of many European and British cities, urban spaces are also, already domestic spaces.

It is currently under review. This is the abstract.

Home is where the hub is?
Wireless infrastructures and the nature of domestic culture in Australia.

From WiFi (802.11b) with its fixed and mobile high-speed wireless broadband internet connectivity to WiMAX (802.16e), the newest wireless protocol, extending the reach of WiFi across longer distances and more difficult terrain, new wireless technologies are increasingly thought to impact the ways in which we encounter social spaces in public, civic and commercial sites within large urban centers. The paper explores how and to what extent these new wireless technologies might also be reconfiguring and reorganizing domestic practice and social relations. Drawing on a year long ethnographic study of WiFi and WiMax provisioned homes in a major Australian metropolitan center, we argue that new wireless infrastructures are impacting how people imagine and use mobile devices, computers and the internet in and around the home.

I met up with Britt Hatzius last week for coffee and a chat about past projects and potential collaborations. (It was one of those lovely interactions where afterwards you feel compelled to go home and make things). She holds an enviable position at Goldsmiths in which she works as an art director/ visual sociologist/ researcher/ artist on a variety of interesting projects. (She probably has a proper title but that’s what i imagine she does).

Our conversation was sparked by the recent Goldsmiths Photography and Urban Cultures Postgraduate Show 2007: Mise-en-scène at Candid Arts in Islington where I had seen her (and Les Bac) talk about recent work on London cycling (couriers + commuters). The project was linked to Intel’s PAPR ‘Cultural Mobilities: It’s About Time’ – a study of temporality in relation to mobility that looks at what constitutes ‘temporal textures’ and how this might manifest itself. I had heard about the project last year through Nina who was also part of it but this was the first time I had seen it presented.

Being a cyclist and somewhat of a visual researcher I found the whole project fascinating. The culmination of a myriad of visual methodologies was an installation in PAPR’s Portland offices. This is an example of one of the many visual objects that formed the final output; an image of two life size prints of London public buses that were hung from the ceiling that physically invited participants to feel the sensation of London cycling.

I’ve just returned from Tokyo where I attended the Ubiquitous Media – Asian Transformations conference. It was organized by Theory, Culture & Society journal and the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, at the University of Tokyo. INCITE was there in full force, with Nina and Goetz chairing a New Media Arts session and giving a paper entitled New media art and the dilemmas of technological progress. Maria Bezaitis of Intel was the respondent for the session. Unfortunately Rem Koolhaas was unable to make it to delivery his plenary at the last moment which i was looking forward to but there were still some good architectural/urban space sessions to fill the gap.

I’ve blogged more about the trip over at INCITE.

I’m Kat Jungnickel, a PhD student at INCITE [Incubator for Critical Inquiry into Technology and Ethnography] in the Sociology Department, University of Surrey, UK. I’m actually from Sydney but I’ve been in London for almost eight years now (!). But I’m back in Australia for the year (are you still with me?) to conduct an ethnography for my PhD. I’m intending to use this blog to document my research into the visual culture of volunteer community wireless groups. In particular I’m keen to explore the role and importance of visual representations and practices in the everyday ‘doing’ of wireless networking.

There is more here.