Walking with 360 Video: Immersive 360° video as a method for sensory and visual anthropology
Over the past decades, co-creative, participatory, as well as sensorial and immersive audiovisual media, have increasingly been introduced as methods in visual anthropology. Historically, advancements in film technology have greatly influenced tools and methods visual anthropologists use in fieldwork. Ethnographic practice has responded to the emergence of 360° video technology as a tool for ethnographic enquiry. This technological development brings about new challenges, understandings and reflections on the value of these new tools for ethnography and filmmaking. Since 2019, the research environment entitled “Social Institutions, Political Governance, and Integration of Refugees (SIPGI)”, a long term collaboration between Gothenburg University and the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University, applied participatory 360° video production as part of a multi-sited urban ethnographic enquiry with Syrians living in cities in respectively Sweden, Turkey, and Jordan. The approach combines 360° video with walking transects methods of re-enactment and participatory theatre for collaborative immersive storytelling with Syrians. Participatory workshops were organized in-situ, whereby participants produced their own 360°video immersive stories around themes of everyday encounters, shared identities, and memories. The 360°video technology enabled participants to critically analyze their own realities and experiences of social encounters. The methodology was implemented using small versatile insta360 OneX2 360° video cameras and Meta Quest 2 VR headsets for playback. This seminar discusses the outcomes of this visual urban ethnography, its ethical challenges, implications for qualitative data analysis and how these methods improves qualitative research and inquiry.
Josepha (Joshka) Wessels is an award-winning environmental documentary filmmaker and Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies with a background in Human Geography and Visual Anthropology at the School of Arts and Communication (K3), Malmö University, Sweden. Her interests are in communication and media for change, citizen media and social movements and she has scholarly expertise in the Arab world, migration, climate change and water issues. Next to social and environmental broadcast documentaries, she also produced several award winning VR360 experiences. She is keen on exploring the use of video and immersive technology in visual anthropology and combining her scholarly and media production skills in her innovative methods.
Event Details
- Date:
- 18 November 2024 at 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
- Categories:
- Research methods
Description
Over the past decades, co-creative, participatory, as well as sensorial and immersive audiovisual media, have increasingly been introduced as methods in visual anthropology. Historically, advancements in film technology have greatly influenced tools and methods visual anthropologists use in fieldwork. Ethnographic practice has responded to the emergence of 360° video technology as a tool for ethnographic enquiry. This technological development brings about new challenges, understandings and reflections on the value of these new tools for ethnography and filmmaking. Since 2019, the research environment entitled “Social Institutions, Political Governance, and Integration of Refugees (SIPGI)”, a long term collaboration between Gothenburg University and the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University, applied participatory 360° video production as part of a multi-sited urban ethnographic enquiry with Syrians living in cities in respectively Sweden, Turkey, and Jordan. The approach combines 360° video with walking transects methods of re-enactment and participatory theatre for collaborative immersive storytelling with Syrians. Participatory workshops were organized in-situ, whereby participants produced their own 360°video immersive stories around themes of everyday encounters, shared identities, and memories. The 360°video technology enabled participants to critically analyze their own realities and experiences of social encounters. The methodology was implemented using small versatile insta360 OneX2 360° video cameras and Meta Quest 2 VR headsets for playback. This seminar discusses the outcomes of this visual urban ethnography, its ethical challenges, implications for qualitative data analysis and how these methods improves qualitative research and inquiry.
Josepha (Joshka) Wessels is an award-winning environmental documentary filmmaker and Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies with a background in Human Geography and Visual Anthropology at the School of Arts and Communication (K3), Malmö University, Sweden. Her interests are in communication and media for change, citizen media and social movements and she has scholarly expertise in the Arab world, migration, climate change and water issues. Next to social and environmental broadcast documentaries, she also produced several award winning VR360 experiences. She is keen on exploring the use of video and immersive technology in visual anthropology and combining her scholarly and media production skills in her innovative methods.