Gapnotes

Notes from the gap

Study diary

Week 29: 15-21 July 2019

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A bit of a chaotic week. I had to attend an emergency board meeting for my house, so I missed the last unit of Media Activism on Tuesday, but sent my impressions of the readings to the lecturer beforehand.

I also started working more thoroughly on my essay for Media Activism, which I hereby decide to finish a first draft of by the end of next week! I’ve done a bit of footwork for it this week, and I also discovered how relevant Foucault’s Discipline and Punish is for it. I love his take on lepers and plague victims!

There was also the last unit of Qualitative Methods, a course that I see as extremely important and that has walked along us ever since the first in-house classes in October last year. The lecturer will not join us in the next year, so it was a bit of a sad goodbye. I’ve really appreciated these last units on interviewing.

And the last unit of Space and Place was on Monday, but there will also be a colloquium in a week’s time – I’ll be presenting then.

As for my final project I felt I needed some advice about how to handle anonymous informants. I wanted tips and inspiration from the final projects of previous generations, since I can’t imagine I will do a traditional “talking heads” film. So I emailed the programme directors, and one of them suggested I come out to FU campus to talk to him about it. We met on Thursday and he had lots of tips for me. He lent me a handful of films and theses, and pointed me to some other sources. The meeting made me feel really relieved, because I realised just how free I am to create my final project – the film. Afterwards I got an email from him saying that he had now watched my machinima and that he “loved it”. He included some more tips and reflections. This all got me in a very good mood and led me to the following:

I’ve decided that my “preparatory fieldtrip” to Japan in September will not (only) be preparatory, but rather when I start filming! I’ll need a lot of B-roll if I’m only going to have anonymous informants. Since S will be away filming too, our little team needs a new gimbal, and DJI very conveniently released Ronin-SC this week, so I placed an order immediately. I’m also looking into some nice lenses – what a jungle it is! I’m having one in mind …

This week I’ve also started an email conversation with the Japanese person I emailed last week. His answers are really interesting.

Filming preparations: I just sent off the first email to a Japanese shop to ask if I can come there and film a bit. I’m sure I can get many shots without permission, but having it would take away the stress. Before sending off the email I spent some time updating my userpage at FU, which is my more static homepage, like a business card. (And I suppose it will vanish after I have graduated.)

I attended the Stadtfest with A on Saturday and continued to a private party with S.

Lastly, it turns out the book I ordered from a seller on Japanese Amazon to use for the subtitles of my machinima only took three days to reach Germany. But since then it’s been stuck in customs in Frankfurt for three weeks. It’s one book sold to me for 45 yen = 0.37 euro. So if they want me to pay German VAT for it, that would be 3 cent.

Package in customs

Readings

Space and Place

Media Activism

Unit 10: Digital Cultural Activism

  • Budka, P. 2019. “Indigenous media technologies in ‘the digital age’: Cultural articulation, digital practices, and sociopolitical concepts.” In S. S. Yu & M. D. Matsaganis (Eds.), Ethnic media in the digital age. Pp. 162–172. New York: Routledge.
    2) Nakamura, L, & P. A. Chow-White. 2012. “Introduction – race and digital technology: Code, the color line, and the information society.” In L. Nakamura & P. A. Chow-White (Eds.), Race after the Internet. Pp. 1–18. New York: Routledge.

My essay

  • Milan, Stefania, and Lonneke van der Velden. 2016. “The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism.” In Digital Culture & Society, special issue “The Politics of Big Data” (October 2016). Pp. 57–74.
  • Foucault, Michel. 1975. Discipline and Punish. Excerpts and the beginning of Part 3: “Panopticism.” Pp. 195–201. Amazing!

Qualitative Methods

Phenomenological interviews

  • Englander, M. 2012. “The Interview: Data Collection in Descriptive Phenomenological Human Scientific Research.” In Journal of Phenomenological Psychology (43): 13–35.

Final Project

Films borrowed from and/or recommended by the institute:

  • Laurent Van Lancker:
    • Eth(n)ics Vietnam (2001, 26 min)
    • Disorient (2010, 36 min)
  • D.E. Moore: Dansumae (2014, ca 40 min)
  • David Ferrando Giraut: The Accursed Stare (2017, 35 min)

Japanese

Apps

  • Memrise: 77,100 (jōyō kanji, start of 小6)
  • Nextbook 漢字:
    • Repeat of 小2 level 11–74 (finish)

Other

Articles

Videos

Week 28: 8-14 July 2019

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The second semester is coming to an end, but we have one week left. I’ve already successfully registered for the next semester.

My assignment was screened and discussed in our last class of Poetic Framing on Monday. The theme was childhood trauma:

I spontaneously decided to come out to the FU campus for this class, and we had a beer afterwards with the lecturer. Which made it harder to concentrate on the Space and Place unit on “the natural environment” directly afterwards. We also had internet problems due to a technical change in Eduroam.

Tuesday was Media Activism. I wasn’t crazy about the idea I had pitched to the lecturer for a final essay (I just wanted to respect the deadline for the pitch), but later in the week I came up with an idea that I really like. I immediately set to working on it and will pitch it to the lecturer next week, when I’ve browsed some more of the readings I’ve found.

Wednesday was a great session of Qualitative Methods, on narrative interviewing.

In Immersive Technologies on Thursday we had a guest lecture by our programme director in Second Life. After class had ended I was taken privately by the co-lecturer to some Japanese “sims” where we got me a kimono (since proper apparel was required) and walked around in the deserted Edo-style village. It was quite amazing! She even managed to show me (by accident) some adult areas of Second Life. So I changed back from my kimono and danced a bit:

Seriously, I’m quite taken with Second Life. I didn’t even know it still existed. Every time we’ve had class there I’ve been wanting to stay longer. It’s the opposite to all the VR experiences we’ve tried, none of which has left me wanting more.

As for my final project, I feel a resistance every time I’m to write a simple email in Japanese. I finally managed to send off an email with a couple of questions to the person who contacted me about my study, but to be fair he was mainly interested in hearing about the results of my study. Well, that’s a good thing too, that there is interest in the community to learn about themselves. My Japan trip in September will show if, or rather how my idea will be doable.

I’m focusing heavily on Japanese kanji now, and it’s a bit disheartening to not feel that I get better in Japanese as such while doing so. It’s like training only biceps for weeks on end. But maybe that would be a good idea if your biceps were severely underdeveloped. I’m currently about to end grade 5 in Memrise, but it’s so much harder to write a kanji from kana, so in Nextbook I’m struggling with grade 3 and decided to repeat grade 2 first.

I cancelled my subscription to The Economist because at this rate I’m paying about one euro per article I read, which I don’t think it’s worth. The Economist has been my connection to the outside world. It was a conscious choice to not rely on social media for that. But I don’t have time for the outside world right now.

Readings

Poetic Framing

  • “Finding Your Creative Identity.” (Unknown source.) Read the first pages. Great text.
  • Film: Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette 2003, 88 min)

Media Activism

Unit 9: Media Activism as Cultural Activism?

  • Deuze, M. 2006. “Ethnic media, community media and participatory culture.” In Journalism 7(3), 262–80.

Qualitative Methods

Narrative interviewing

  • Jovchelovitch, S. and M. W. Bauer. 2000. “Narrative Interviewing.” In M. W. Bauer and G. Gaskell: Qualitative researching with text, image and sound: a practical handbook. London, Sage Publications: 1–14.

Japanese

Apps

  • Memrise: 62,500 (jōyō kanji, 小5)
  • Nextbook 漢字:
    • 小2 level 70–72 (finish)
    • 小2 level 1–10 (repeat)
    • 小1 level 6–44 (finish)
    • 小3 level 1–11

Other

Articles

Film

  • Tampopo (1985, 114 min)

Week 27: 1-7 July 2019

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I’ve started to focus more on my upcoming final project and therefore less on the last units of our ongoing courses. The mangaka I emailed last week tweeted about my study to his 28,000 followers. I got about 30 visitors to the page and one person who contacted me. Not bad for a start.

Monday: Space and Place.

On Tuesday we had a long awaited online meeting with the administration and sorted out some communication issues.

Followed by Media Activism.

No Immersive Technologies this week due to holiday in the US.

I took the relatively calm week as an opportunity to read up on current internet privacy issues and record a podcast with my co-host Hax on Friday:

After exporting and uploading I hurried to join S in a Black Lives Matter demo through Kreuzberg. We met my classmate M there with her partner (?) K.

On Saturday we went to Forecast at Radialsystem to see three brilliant presentations.

In the evening we finally got to watching the Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror. I was not impressed, as I knew I wouldn’t be: I dislike the burden of making decisions that should have been someone else’s job!

My Sunday reading was Patrick W. Galbraith’s The Moe Manifesto, an excellent introduction to or summary of the moé aspect of otaku culture. All the key figures, from Azuma Hiroki over Honda Touru to Saitou Tamaki, feature with short but perfectly concentrated interviews, framed by a tasty layout in full colour. I loved this little book. It’s a perfect reference to come back to and let lead me further in my own research.

This week was also when I took up drawing. It felt wonderful to be at it again. Participating.

Readings

Final project

  • Kazumi, Nagaike. 2015. “Do Heterosexual Men Dream of Homosexual Men?: BL Fudanshi and Discourse on Male Feminization.” In Mark McLelland et al: Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan. University Press of Mississippi. Pp. 189–209.
  • Galbraith, Patrick W. 2014. The Moe Manifesto: An Insider’s Look at the Worlds of Manga, Anime, and Gaming. Tuttle. 192 p.

Japanese

Apps

  • Memrise: 35,700 (kanji, mid 小5)
  • Nextbook 漢字: 小2 level 58–69

Other

Articles

Video

Week 26: 24-30 June 2019

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Another very intensive week, during which I had two presentations and handed in my essay concept for Media Activism.

On Monday I presented in Space and Place (in my refurbished studio) on how the Street is divided between traffic participants:

And on Thursday I presented in Immersive Technologies, on sex robots and remote controlled bodies:

On Tuesday we had John Postill as a guest lecturer in Media Activism – we had prepared questions that he answered. I’m currently reading his latest book The Rise of Nerd Politics, which is highly relevant for me.

The mangaka I emailed replied and offered to spread the link to my otaku study on his quite well-followed Twitter account. I have yet to reply (I want to improve the homepage a bit first).

I’m near the end of the Japanese translation of my machinima – the Lang-8 users provide excellent corrections. I emailed one of the authors that I quote to ask him for the exact quotes in Japanese, but he hasn’t replied and I want his book anyway, so I managed to find a seller on Amazon that ships internationally. ETA mid July!

On Friday I did half a Critical Mass with S. It was somehow more boring than usual – less music, less lights, but lots of yelling car drivers. We went to have Vietnamese food on the street instead, and my classmate J happened to pass by with his friend.

On Saturday I mounted the last wall skirtings in the hallway and today I was just at home, avoiding the heat outside (39 degrees!) and reading in the sofa. It’s such a treat to return to Michael Fisch’s ethnography on trains in Tokyo, since I’m not reading it for any class. It’s fantastic.

We finished When They See Us on Netflix plus Oprah’s one-hour special. Horrible in so many ways, but brilliantly executed by Ava DuVernay and the actors. Hopefully the series can lead to actual change, as extraordinary culture has the power to do every now and then.

Readings

Media Activism

Unit 7: Digital Activism

  • Postill, J. 2018. “Data Activism.” In The Rise of Nerd Politics: Digital Activism and Political Change. Chapter 3: 58–88. London: Pluto Press.

Space and Place

Unit 8: Geographic Information System (GIS) & Multimedia Mapping

  • Gibson, Chris, Chris Brennan-Horley, and Andrew Warren. 2010. “Geographic Information Technologies for cultural research: Cultural mapping and the prospects of colliding epistemologies.” In Cultural Trends 19: 325–348. Routledge.

Immersive Technologies

Unit 7A: Virtual Embodiment and the VR Self

  • Boellstorff, Tom. 2011. “Virtuality. Placing the Virtual Body: Avatar, Chora, Cypherg.” In Frances E. Mascia-Lees (ed.): A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment. Chapter 29: 504–520. Wiley-Blackwell.

Extra

  • Fisch, Michael. 2018. “Operation without Capacity.” Chapter 3: 79–120. In An Anthropology of the Machine. Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network. The University of Chicago Press.

Japanese

Apps

  • Memrise: 34,200 (kanji, mid 小5)
  • Nextbook 漢字: 小2 level 42–57

Podcast

  • サブカル 008–011

Other

Articles

Mini-series

  • Ava DuVernay: When They See Us (2019, 4h 56 min)

Week 25: 17-23 June 2019

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God, what a busy week. Lots of classes and readings, plus that I prepared my presentation for Space and Place, which I will have tomorrow. Such a challenge to condense it to ten minutes after having done so much research.

I also wrote questions for the guest lecturer of next week’s Media Activism (no class this week) – that was our assignment.

The highlight of the week was when the grade for Digital Anthropology from the first semester came on Monday, along with very extensive feedback from one of the lecturers. I put a lot of effort into my machinima and I think the grade and feedback was very fair.

It’s such a great feeling to be graded by a superior. You seldom have that chance in life after you finish school, is my experience.

I started to contact people in Japan, starting with one mangaka and a subculture expert who I know from before. The latter replied and immediately sent me to some relevant web resources. He also offered to check the Japanese translation of my machinima. I’m planning to make a new version where I narrate in Japanese. I’m translating the narration myself, but let native speakers on Lang-8 correct it, one chunk at a time. Lang-8 is such a great idea, I can’t believe I haven’t used the site for years!

The landlord of the Tokyo house I stayed in in 2013 replied that it was taken.

On top of all this I completely refurnished my studio and the result was amazing. It has become a place (!) which inspires me and which I long for. The final touch was a desk for S, so that we from now on both can use the studio as we want. Unfortunately it is extremely hot right now.

Classes:

  • Monday: Space & Place. Unit 6. Third and last unit on applied mapping.
  • Wednesday: Qualitative Methods. On interviewing across ethnicities.
  • Thursday: Immersive Tech. Unit 6. Guest lecturer.
  • Friday: Research Proposal. The last unit out of four.

Readings

Media Activism

Unit 7: Digital Activism

  • Postill, J. 2018. Chapter 2: “Nerds of a Feather”. In The rise of nerd politics: Digital activism and political change, pp. 27–57. London: Pluto Press.

Space and Place

Unit 7: The Built Environment

  • Gieryn, Thomas F. 2000. “A Space for Place in Sociology.” In Annual Review of 
Sociology. Vol. 26, pp.463–496. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews. (Originally for unit 1, but I had apparently not got through it then, so it was good that this important text was repeated in this unit!)
  • Latham, Alan. 1999. “Powers of Engagement: On Being Engaged, Being Indifferent, 
and Urban Life.” In Area. Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 161–168. Royal Geographical Society.

Qualitative Methods

Interviewing 2

  • Gunaratnam, Y. 2003. “Messy Work: Qualitative Interviewing Across Difference Researching Race and Ethnicity.” In Methods, Knowledge and Power, pp. 79-105. London: Sage Publications. (I’ve only read half so far!)

Immersive Technologies

Unit 6: Uncertainty as a Technology, Technology as Uncertainty

Japanese

Apps

  • Memrise: 40,900
  • Nextbook 漢字: 小2 level 27–41

Podcast

  • サブカル 003-007

Other

Articles

Video

Radio

Week 24: 10-16 June 2019

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I presented in Media Activism Unit 6, titled “media activism and ethnographic research”. I chose to present on Anonymous and how to research them and similar groups. I included clips from an interview with Anonymous ethnographer Gabriella Coleman that we made for the 5july podcast in March 2017:

Although I didn’t write much about it last week, that was the week when I kick-started my Japanese learning again, in preparation for my preparatory field trip to Tokyo in September 2019. Not least did I try to immerse myself in Japanese podcasts, but most of them were terrible. This week I finally found one I really liked, something on subculture and philosophy – but mainly just a serious and clearly articulated talk. I have only listened to one episode so far.

I also found an app by Nextbook that trains your kanji writing skills. It’s for primary school grades one through six, which is the levels I’m doing at Memrise too. I’ve just started grade five at Memrise, but in the Nextbook app I’m only in grade two, because I realised I can’t even write simple kanji like 家 (house), despite I would recognise them immediately. So I bought the full version for 28 euro and hope it will pay off!

Reading manga
Captured while reading manga.

I finished Kurumatani Haruko’s manga “アイドル様の夜のお顔” – the main part last week and the little afterstory “眠れぬ夜は彼のせい” this week. Both stories were as lovely as I have come to expect from Kurumatani, my favourite shoujo mangaka.

I have yet to start contacting people in Japan. It’s a bit of a hurdle to start writing those emails. At least I inquired about accommodation today, by contacting the landlord of the house where I lived during autumn 2013.

On Friday I spontaneously joined the conference AI Traps at Bethanien and listened to two panels with presentations. It was very warm though, one person in the audience even collapsed.

On Saturday I went with S to an art opening for Frau Katzenfisch aka Sushi Girl in Friedrichshain, where we met K & S who joined us for dinner and a stroll around Reuter & Weser-kiez for some 48h Neukölln.

Sunday was spent reading in the sofa – my favourite pastime!

Classes:

  • Tuesday: Media Activism. Unit 6, which turned out to be all about my presentation on Anonymous and how to research similar groups.
  • Wednesday: Qualitative Methods. We almost missed this as the teacher was one hour late. So that was one lost hour of confusion and worried messages in our Whatsapp group. So unnecessary.
  • Thursday: Immersive Tech. Unit 5.

Study

Media Activism

Unit 6: Media Activism & Ethnographic Research

  • Jordan, T. 2015. “Hacktivism: Operation Tunisia, Modular Tactics and Information Activism.” In Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society, pp. 176-91 (read from p. 185). London: Pluto Press.
  • Wong, W.H., & Brown, P.A. 2013. “E-Bandits in Global Activism: WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and the Politics of No One.” In Perspectives on Politics 11 (4), pp. 1015-1033. (Read selectively.)

Unit 7: Digital Activism

  • Postill, J. 2018. “Hiding in plain sight”. In J. Postill, The rise of nerd politics: Digital activism and political change, pp. 1–26. London: Pluto Press.

Qualitative Methods

Interviewing – ground skills

  • Bernard, H. R. 1995. “Unstructured and Semistructured Interviewing. Research Methods in Anthropology.” In Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. London, Altamira Press. Pp. 208-236. (Just looked it over, as I had already read the text “by mistake” in the first semester due to confusion about the structure of units. It’s a great text.)

Immersive Technologies

Unit 5.

Only videos this time.

Japanese

Manga

  • 車谷晴子：“眠れぬ夜は彼のせい” (2005). In アイドル様の夜のお顔 (2007), pp. 155–189.

Apps

  • Memrise: 45,800
  • Nextbook 漢字: 小2 level 1–26

Podcast

  • サブカル 002

Other

Articles

AI Traps

Conference in Bethanien on “automating discrimination”, organised by Disruption Network Lab:

  • THE TRACKED & THE INVISIBLE: From Biometric Surveillance to Diversity in Data Science (with Adam Harvey, Sophie Searcy and moderator Adriana Groh).
  • AI FOR THE PEOPLE: AI Bias, Ethics & The Common Good (with Maya Indira Ganesh, Slava Jankin and moderator Nicole Shephard).

Video