iPhone | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Have Mobile Phones In the Classroom Reached Their Calculator Moment?

February 9, 2015 by Museum Fatigue

Last week, while reviewing our class syllabus on the first day, I made a decision to do a little experiment. Rather than make the announcement that mobile phones should be turned off during class, I did the opposite. I told my visual anthropology class that unrestricted use of mobile phones in class would be allowed this semester. Allowing all students to use their devices freely at all times seems very counterintuitive. In fact, even now I am concerned that in […]

Categories: Education, Higher Education, Teaching, Technology • Tags: calculator, classroom experience, iPhone, mobile phone, technology, TI-35

Mystery Object #19: Breasts and Personal Technology

May 31, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Subject to continual upgrade cycles and constant and dependable obsolesce, our personal technology resist the attachment and love that we develop for them. While we take them everywhere and learn to depend on them for communication, entertainment and even to find a bite to eat—the technology pushes back and resists our advances—never retaining the object-histories that might give them human meaning over time. With no history our personal technology never develop the patinas of value that speak to their interaction […]

Categories: Bodies, Gender, Mystery Objects, Technology • Tags: accessories, affection, breasts, crack chic, iPhone, mouse pad, personal technology, puni puni, steampunk

(Simple) Mobile Visual Ethnography Equipment

March 13, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I’m often telling folks that the goal of my visual anthropology class is not to make filmmakers, but to use basic equipment to have my students make films together with others… For the past few years, students in my class have been working with local volunteers from our university neighborhood—The Hamline Midway—to make simple films together. During the first half of the semester they get to know one another, and the students get to learn the equipment, by making a […]

Categories: Anthropology, Fieldwork, Gear, How To, Visual Anthropology • Tags: FlipCam, FurryHead Windscreens, iPhone, visual ethnography, Zoom H1

An OFF Pocket™ for Sensitive Fieldwork?

December 16, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

I like the idea of privacy. When you carry a mobile phone, regularly check in to Twitter, often update your Facebook, or use Google products, however, privacy really can’t be much more than that—an idea, a dream, a conceptual ideal. So, earlier this year when I read about Adam Harvey’s Kickstarter project, the OFF Pocket™, I immediately loved the idea—a black pocket that you drop your phone into to disconnect it, shield it from the network, quiet its connectivity. It was […]

Categories: Fieldwork, Gear, Privacy, Review • Tags: Adam Harvey, anthropologist, bag of holding, China, eavesdropping, iPhone, Kickstarter, mobile phone, OFF Pocket™, reporter