visual anthropology | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Museum Fatigue Reads, April 5, 2014

April 5, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Mustang Wanted Compilation Google Glass Diaries The Camera That Changed the World People’s Park Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life The Dawn of Modern Tourism [Infographic] Open Access Maps at The New York Public Library The Global Flow of People: Global Migration from 1990-2010 The Incredible GDP Map that Shows Half of U.S. Output is Generated by a Few Cities Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon and its Workers Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption Climate Change 2014: Impacts, […]

Categories: Museum Fatigue Reads • Tags: Amazon, Climate Change, games, Google Glass, maps, migration, New York Public Library, Taiwan, tourism, visual anthropology

The Mona Lisa: Art in the Age of Digital Consumption

August 3, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

The Mona Lisa is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable images in the world. Perhaps second only to the Eiffel Tower, it is an icon of the tourist experience of Paris. So, when we arrived at the Louvre with thousands of other tourists, of course, the first thing we did was go to see it. I have heard that often when tourists first see the Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre, the portrait is much smaller than they expect. The idea, […]

Categories: Museums, Random Reflections, Tourism, Video clips, Visual Anthropology • Tags: art, Mona Lisa, Photography, Pierre Bourdieu, tourism, visual anthropology, Walter Benjamin

Editing a Homework Film on iMovie for the iPad

March 12, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

This past week in the anthropology senior seminar we looked at narrative documentaries in anthropology and discussed issues of dramatization and aesthetics in John Marshall’s classic, The Hunters, and Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds. Both films were shot without sync sound equipment and feature both the heavy editorial hand of the filmmaker and a strong narrative voice (“Voice of God”) telling the story. In class we spent some time discussing the aspects of social life that cameras are good at capturing—things like movement, color, […]

Categories: How To, iPad, Teaching, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Anthropology, imovie, iPad, senior seminar, teaching, The Hunters, visual anthropology

“Visual Notes” with iPhoto for the iPad

March 10, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Just days after posting a long description of teaching film with the iPad that discussed streaming ethnographic film, taking visual “notes”, and presenting them during class discussions, Apple announced iPhoto for the iPad. I purchased the application the evening it was released and immediately I realized it would improve upon the way I organize and present my “visual notes” during class discussions. As I described in my earlier post, it is really easy to use the iPad to make screen captures of […]

Categories: How To, iPad, Teaching • Tags: classroom experience, film, iPad, iphoto, teaching, teaching film, visual anthropology

Teaching Film: Streaming Films and Taking “Visual Notes” on the iPad

February 29, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Since the day my first iPad arrived nearly two years ago, I have enjoyed experimenting with it in my research and teaching. From the beginning I was impressed with the possibility that a single device could replace my lecture notes, deliver my Keynote presentations in class, store movie clips, file journal articles, keep ebooks, record field notes and just be fun. Initially I had planned to blog about my experiences, sharing things that I learned. I started out strong with […]

Categories: How To, iPad, Teaching, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: classroom experience, film, iPad, teaching, visual anthropology

Reflections on Photography: Seeing and Feeling

February 9, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Roughly the first two weeks of this semester’s anthropology senior seminar we are taking a brief look at photography, perception and representation. My idea was that before we discuss visual anthropology or ethnographic film we should take some time to examine the human eye and the representational power of photography. Since different parts of anthropology broadly look at humans biologically (biocultural/physical anthropology) and as meaning-making creatures (sociocultural anthropology), I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose a biological/neurological description of […]

Categories: Teaching, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: camera lucida, Photography, roland barthes, senior seminar, visual anthropology

Explosion of Images: My Anthropology Senior Seminar Experiment

February 2, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

For the first time since I started at Hamline, our anthropology department is offering a senior seminar and I am the one lucky enough to be teaching it. With no history of offering such seminars, there is no set model to follow. Also, the senior seminar is only a requirement for anthropology majors who declare beginning this year, so the class has only attracted a small number of students—only seven students—the smallest class I have ever taught. Very exciting. Freed from […]

Categories: Teaching, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Anthropology, senior seminar, teaching, visual anthropology