Introduction to an Experiment
On the balls of my feet, I involuntarily hover in the doorway to my supervisor’s office. ‘Was there something else you needed?’ Linda asks me, not even turning to face me from her computer. I want there to be. I rack my brain for a second, trying to think through how to voice my anxieties, [...]
It’s Not Really Autoethnographic, but OK
Nicole Ridgway, my sometimes collaborator and often-cited scholar, is also my life partner. It’s mid-2008 and I’ve just walked into our tiny flat in Dublin; I’m doing that doorway-hovering thing again, so she knows I want to speak with her. Nicole puts her finger on her lips and nods towards our two-year-old daughter, Sidonie Ridgway [...]
Approaching the Implicit
I recently redesigned my web site.7 Instead of breaking the works up individually by date or medium or concept alone – which is how many sites are organized,8 but I feel can limit how people understand the work, and body of work – I set up a cross-referenced tagging system and database, like a blog. [...]
‘Body-Language’
Near the launch-time of hektor.net, I was simultaneously learning how to develop physical computing projects and use computer vision software, so my next questions flowed relatively easily from the last. I wondered about provoking and framing activity. I began to ask, ‘How might I actually instigate exploratory movements, and place emphasis on their potential, experience, [...]
‘Social-Anatomies’
‘It’s not that it feels dishonest, really,’ I’m saying to Nicole. ‘It’s just that….’ I struggle to find the words, ‘the way I’m telling it….’ I sigh. ‘It feels so… so… so inevitable.’ Nicole looks up at up me from what she’s doing, with her eyes but not her head. She’s blowing on a spoonful [...]
‘Flesh-Space’
‘Nicks?’ I whisper tentatively. I just got back from a day of administrative crap I had to finish at Trinity. I barely take off my coat and hang it up, and already I’m doing my doorway hovering, eyebrows knitted. My brain has been buzzing with the last few sections I need to write before we [...]
Four years later
It’s more than four years later as I write this section. I passed my viva with no revisions – and this chapter was a highlight for my reviewers, both external and internal. I’m tenured in Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Nicole teaches part-time in the graduate program, and is working [...]
Bibliography
Adler, P. and Adler, P. (1987) Membership Roles in Field Research, Thousand Oaks: Sage. Anderson, L. (2006) ‘Analytic Autoethnography’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography(35): 373-395. Austin, J. (1962) How to do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955, Oxford: Clarendon. Bal, M. (1997) Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, [...]