“Ethnography is a branch of anthropology, the study of people and social groups, but particularly tries to do it from the perspective of the people being studied”
essay : A sensory ethnography of a gig / exhibition / concert / online sonic experience.
Workshop: create your own sonic ethnography in or around college and share it with the class.
My Walk from the University to the bus stop: a sonic ethnography
Wind whips around the buildings outside as I finish my cigarette dragging the dried leaves over the concrete with a light scraping sound. Voices are calling after each other and I hear students saying goodbye to each other. A girl in high heels clops past me and the echoing taps trail off around the corner. I tap out my cigarette. Theres a industrial drill sound in the distance and the sounds of cars and bikes and heavier vehicles speeding past the crossing. I wait with the other people at the edge of the road. When the high pitched beeps begin the crowd knows the road is safe to cross for a moment. Some people with headphones remain stood still at the crossing still with their eyes glued down to their phones and when they look up they run across just in time. I rush through the crowds walking the other direction towards my bus stop. I catch fragments of conversations. Most of them are people on the phone talking out loud; people talk more clearly and pronounced when they’re on the phone as to be heard by the person on the other side and some people animate with their hands as they walk as if they are psychotic. Theres a child sat on the floor crying who refuses to get into his buggy; his mother screams back then gives up to let him sit there and talks to the older child stood next to her in a low calm voice.
At the bus stop no one talks apart from an older lady who speaks loudly in spanish to her granddaughter. Everyone just stares towards the road hoping to see the right numbers on the front of their bus coming towards them so they can go home.
From this research i concluded that using mobile phones whilst out and about strips people of at least one of their senses at a time therefore disconnecting them to the world around them.
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