Dr Chris Bailey, Sheffield Hallam University
Abstract
In this presentation I aim to demonstrate the power of employing alternative, interpretative analysis techniques in ethnographic work. I argue 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, I demonstrate 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 video game Minecraft.
Here, inspired by research which takes artistic and exploratory approaches towards knowing, I employ interpretative drawing as an analytical move. Underpinned by the work of Deleuze and Guattari I produced 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 helped to shed new light on the site under investigation. As such, this presentation 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.