Right back to Berger again, hmmm…

Week eight has seen me viewing and engaging with other #ededc ethnographers. It interests me how varied other ethnography’s have been, from almost academic writings to possibly abstract undertakings. This has concerned me, not because of the range of outcomes, but because of how these outcomes will be classified. The goal of explicate meaning within an academic essay in my opinion cannot be matched in true modality, modality offers broader understanding which in turn leads to the development of notion. So, take Ginas ethnography, I would suggest, that ethnography is wide open to interoperation, and has great ability to further notional thinking because of that values set. Where others are carefully designed, take my own and Steph’s appear to be a more semiotically closed loop, onto the more literary academic approach nature of Nikki’s. All of these approaches are valid (in my opinion) but can grading criteria cope with the vagaries of interpretation and abstraction? This issue appears to be globally recognised.

Week eight has also seen my thinking move towards spatial mobility and transformation, being facilitated by my ethnography. The notion of Fellrunnners moving across existent landscape, while virtually connecting, describing that movement. This leads me to consider (in response to our own modernity at the beginning of the 20th Century) using Designing Modern Britain (previous post) as a vehicle for thought, having similarities with our current period of flux and change in our postmodern period. For instance, the consideration of the possibilities of the ‘new’ delivering existent manifestations of those notions (read Designing Virtual Britain). Example being the London tube regeneration (Frank Pick) leading to an almost ‘Wellian’ vison of time travel and the future, this leading nicely into our final study block ‘Posthuman’, and how virtual educational experiences can be defined or designed in relation to design as an academic study (Critical Design).