{"id":96,"date":"2023-02-11T16:32:59","date_gmt":"2023-02-11T15:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aksioma.org\/scale\/?p=96"},"modified":"2023-05-11T20:04:46","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T18:04:46","slug":"digital-ethnography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aksioma.org\/scale\/workshops\/digital-ethnography\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Ethnography (for artists)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This workshop explores how ethnographic fieldwork methods can become a key part of the artistic research process. Ethnography is a holistic method for exploring cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subjects. It emplaces the researcher\u2019s self in a field site as a consequential social actor and conceives their body and perceptions as an integral part of the toolkit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After an introduction in the central concepts, ethics, and methods of digital ethnography, we invite participants in an autoethnographic experiment that we call \u201cInternet diary\u201d to reflect upon how differently digital culture is experienced across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Cuba, such as in many other parts of the world, media files (such as films, photos, music, etc.) are shared primarily offline and interpersonally on pen drives or from phone to phone when internet access is restricted for economic or political reasons. People in Cuba, for example, have found an ingenuous way to distribute all kinds of web content in the form of the Paquete Semanal (The Weekly Package), a one-terabyte collection of digital material compiled by a network of people with various forms of privileged internet access. It is circulated nationwide on USB sticks and external hard drives via an elaborate human infrastructure of deliverymen, so called Paqueteros who deliver right to their clients\u2019 homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such alternative distribution networks not only make up for limited internet access but also have the potential to avoid online surveillance and data extraction and are difficult to monetize or co-opt through advertising. Hence, they represent a striking alternative to algorithmically-powered platform capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To experiment with the intricacies of offline cultures ourselves, we invite participants to document their internet consumption ON THE DAY BEFORE THE WORKSHOP and make it accessible offline.<\/strong> Participants are asked to prepare a folder containing everything they have watched\/read\/seen online on that day. Each participant is also asked to detail the strategies they used for downloading and archiving these materials. All these personal archives are then compiled into one folder that represents a day in the group\u2019s internet use. During the workshop, we will then explore and try out different ways to organize and distribute these offline data to make them meaningful to others, just like the curators of El Paquete Semanal do. Upon Nestor\u2019s return to Havana, this curated archive will then be circulated as a collaborative work in Paquete Semanal\u2019s art section, an ongoing artistic intervention by Nestor that repurposes this offline distribution network as a digital exhibition space. Artists among the participants are invited to explore ways to represent their work in such an offline form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants will develop:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n