“Ethnography is a research approach that produces a detailed, in-depth observation of peoples behaviour, beliefs and preferences by observing and interacting with them in a natural environment.” (Brenda Laurel)

Methods such as observation and participation are used to attempt to understand aspects of human society. The main advantage over traditional methods of research is the deeper insight of participants on a more tangible level.

I wanted to apply this idea to my own project. By employing sympathetic research methods I felt that a more honest and accurate representation of the participants would be portrayed. By saying sympathetic I mean to consider what is appropriate for people to reveal in certain situations. Using ethnographic techniques largely involves observation of participant’s usual feelings and opinions as opposed to questioning in a formal way. Hopefully this approach allowed me to interact on some level and therefore led to a more honest account of participant’s thoughts and opinions.

This is a Diagram of research tools for conducting academic ethnography.(Tim Plowman) Most of my research fits into the category on the top right.

Gillian Wearing is a British artist who works mostly in photography and video. I was attracted to her work because of her interest in observation; she obviously has a deep interest in human behaviour and has an excellent way of portraying this visually.
I would like to use this idea of creating art through research/observation because I think that photography and video are very real ways of capturing people in their natural environments. I did this through street photos.

I looked at examples of pieces of art that use public information to communicate. Although not ethnographic I think they relate to the idea of observing social behaviour. ‘d-tower’ is an art piece that maps the emotions of the inhabitants of a city in the Netherlands. Participants answer a questionnaire online and the results are translated into four emotions- happiness, love, fear and hate. The strongest emotion is represented by a colour that takes over a structure that is situated in the city. This means that participant’s emotions are shared with the rest of the city anonymously.

This is something that I would like this project to develop into. The most important difference is that I do not have a device to collect continuously updated research and therefore have no way of creating a real-time piece of interactive art.

REFERENCES
Design Research: Methods and Perspectives edited by Brenda Laurel
Mass Observation by Gillian Wearing