IVSA Showcase

“Tech analysts estimate that over six billion emojis are sent each day.” It is safe to say that emojis have a big involvement in the way we visually communicate. Just as all language and communication requires a certain level of translation and interpretation this is also true for emojis. I have a fun story to illustrate how I first became aware of this reality.

The photograph of a young, female graffiti artist next to a piece of graffiti that reads “Breast Cancer Awareness” is a reflection of a community longing to be heard. The history of breast cancer is one of shame and silence. Although many cases of breast cancer are documented throughout history, it was not until the 20th-century social movements concerning breast cancer that the majority of the public became aware of the severity of this disease.

This observational ethnographic film (“ethnografilm”) chronicles the daily lives of Diablo Steve and Sapphire Pam, a homeless and heroin-dependent married couple.

With an emphasis on versatility, this collection of t-shirts has been designed to be All-purpose for any and every sports fan. Today’s sports fan is an interesting character as they relate to today’s globally connected world. Fans create alliances with certain sports clubs/teams for a wide variety of reasons.

Over the last 2 years, Hilary Pilkington has been conducting (overt) ethnographic research with a number of divisions of the English Defence League under the auspices of the MYPLACE project. As part of this research she and the filmmaker – Dmitry Omelchenko obtained a visual material completed into film.

Urban Performance <Art> Only for Dyslexics explores ways of understanding the relationship between art, psychology and neuropsychology as disciplines, taking art to the educational field and the pedagogy to the field of art in search of common solutions granting each other benefits from their own disciplinary canons. It is an inclusion action art for children with reading difficulties. It was launched August 18th 2012 in the Anthropological and Contemporary Art Museum (MAAC) of Guayaquil.

Vision is the sense that constantly lures us to the world. This is why philosophers condemned vision as prone to illusion. Constant and obvious, image is something out of thought, unless mechanically created. Still, we still doubt about its honesty, authenticity, and the truth of its obviousness.

Advertisements are important social and cultural documents. A representative sample often reflects a society’s concerns and values as accurately as well-executed surveys do. But how is this possible? How could images designed by people who don’t know, or haven’t talked to, us — and who are completely self-interested to boot – possibly reflect our innermost thoughts and feelings? Figuring out how exercises in persuasion by self-interested advertisers somehow manage to create reliable indicators of public sentiment has puzzled social scientists for a long time. Fortunately, it looks like the new social media may provide a key to solving that puzzle.

This documentary has been created as part of the Digital Anthropology (MSc) program at UCL and has been nominated one of the three best films in the autumn/winter class in 2012. It is about Ozan Figani’s life, a hairdresser originally from Turkey, Anatolia, who owns a traditional Salon in East London. Little by little he starts to reveal his true first job (music and poem writing).

This is the first of a two-part, auto-ethnography about teaching and learning with documentaries. Given the increasing substitution of video screens for flesh and blood professors it is critical to think about both the contexts as well as the contents of these pedagogic practices.