Visualizing lived experience

Mapping the soundscape of an after-school Minecraft club

Bibliographic Data

ID12700269
AuthorsChris Bailey (0000-0003-1969-5001, Sheffield Hallam University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume21
Issue2
Pages350-367
Publication date2020-02-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueVisual Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1470-3572 • E-ISSN: 1741-3214
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1470357220904384
OpenAlexW3007324544
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited28

This article demonstrates the power of employing alternative, interpretative analysis techniques in ethnographic work. The author argues for the role of sensory interpretation as a valid and necessary method of analytical enquiry, particularly to challenge existing dominant, primarily written discourses that often strive for unrealistic empirical objectivity. In order to make this argument, he demonstrates a combined sonic/visual, interpretative approach to analysis, developed to explore the lived experience of a group of children in an after-school club that took place in and around the world-building videogame Minecraft. Here, inspired by research which takes artistic and exploratory approaches towards knowing, the author employs interpretative drawing as an analytical move. Underpinned by the work of Deleuze and Guattari (see A Thousand Plateaus, 1987: 12), the author produces a visual ‘map’ of soundscape data as a means of exploring potentially side-lined aspects of lived experience, through a process of resemiotization. Developing this sonic/visual approach in context – a process that had an impact on both the analyst and the analysis – helped to shed new light on the site under investigation. As such, this article builds on other analyses of sound in children’s social and educational experience by proposing that interpretative, visual responses to soundscape data can add value to otherwise purely written, or purely sonic, accounts

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Art · Club · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Ethnography · Interpretative phenomenological analysis · Objectivity (philosophy · Qualitative research · Social science · Sociology · Sound (geography · Soundscape · Art Education and Development · Diverse Musicological Studies · History · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access