Hidden in Plain Sight: Multi-Modal Inquiry into Technical and Speculative Worlds

Undergraduate / Graduate

How do people encounter phenomena that defy perception yet saturate their lives? What techniques are social scientists developing to investigate technology, the environment, and the virtual as they interrupt, exceed, or expand the human? Whether because of their monumentality (e.g., mass culture, infrastructure, disaster) or their latency (e.g., design, prognosis, information), these domains exhibit a "suprasensible" quality that can exceed bounded description. And yet, we are in constant contact with them. In response, scholars have devised "multi-modal methods" to broaden the social sciences' sensory, descriptive, and relational repertoires. This set of methods explores the analytic and ethical potential of non-linguistic description (e.g., photography, film, drawing, sound recording) and embodiment (e.g., performance, dance, role play). It also questions the possibilities and limits of reflexivity and collaboration, by revisiting the researcher-researched relationship. This course is a research practicum. We will dedicate half the week to discussing the objects, aims, and relevance of "multi-modality" to investigating technical and speculative worlds. In the second half, students will develop and workshop their original research projects incorporating multi-modal methods (whether course-specific or as part of a year-long thesis project). The course is interdisciplinary in focus and intent and fulfills the MAPSS methods requirement.