Microethology
Researching everyday technoculture for media producers, theorists and educators
Microethology will develop methods for analysing the everyday interactions of people and digital media hardware, software and services. It will bring together digital media businesses, academics and media researchers: firstly to share ideas and to draw on their best practices and methods in understanding emergent media technocultures; and secondly to offer and extend approaches and methods developed in my own research, and that of the Play Research Group at UWE. The project will develop through workshops and seminars, and through the production of written and audiovisual case studies for use by the project's partners in their own research.
The project will investigate digital culture as experienced in the everyday and habitual coming-together of human bodies and technologies in both domestic and media professional environments. Developing microethological methods, the project will analyse the intimate and moment-by-moment encounters between people and technologies, both small-scale media events and moments in larger media events (particular interactions between user and device in an augmented reality game for example). These moments and events will be documented using video, photography and audio recording, and analysed through the editing process and the production of audio-visual case studies. Workshops and seminars will be organised to generate, share, and disseminate both research methods and findings.
Autumn 2010 update
The Autumn term, 2010, marked the preparatory stage for the full Microethology project which will start in January 2011.
During this preparatory period, Seth Giddings began the task of collating, converting and logging a number of years’ worth of video, photographic and audio data. Some of this material, and key concepts and methods to be explored in the project proper, have been aired at a number of events:
Dr Giddings was invited to speak at the Media in Action conference, University of Siegen, Germany in June. The title of my presentation was ‘The microethology of humans and nonhumans at play’.
Dr Giddings' presentation ‘The ethology of virtual creatures’ was presented as part of a panel (with Patrick Crogan, Helen Kennedy and Bart Simon) called Puppy Machines at the Zoontotechnics: animality / technicity conference, Cardiff University.
Teaching ethology:
Dr Giddings has been testing microethological methods through his teaching on a level 2 Media and Cultural Studies module (Media Culture 1) and an Masters level Media Culture & Practice module (Media Culture and Practice 1). Students conducted ethnographic interviews on the effects and affects of everyday technological change (Media Culture 1) and video microethological studies of videogame play (Media Culture and Practice 1).
Related output:
The final proofs of Giddings' anthology The New Media and Technocultures Reader have been submitted to Routledge for publication in February 2011. This reader includes key articles and essays on the ethnography of everyday new media culture, and on theories of technoculture central to Seth's project overall.
