Sensory Ethnography Lab
Encyclopedia
The Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard University
is an interdisciplinary center for the making of anthropologically informed works of media that combine aesthetics and ethnography
. Production courses associated with the SEL are offered through Anthropology, Visual and Environmental Studies, and the Graduate School of Design
.
, ethnographic filmmaker of In and Out of Africa and Sweetgrass. In the year-long core class, "Sensory Ethnography," students receive instruction in ethnographic media practices, and create a substantial work in video, still photography, hypermedia, or sound. Advanced graduate students are also provided with training and equipment to produce media ethnographies in conjunction with their written doctoral dissertations. One example includes students working alongside Ernst Karel and visual artist Sharon Lockhart to produce "Sound Safari", a collaborative phonography project, in Bath, Maine. .
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
is an interdisciplinary center for the making of anthropologically informed works of media that combine aesthetics and ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
. Production courses associated with the SEL are offered through Anthropology, Visual and Environmental Studies, and the Graduate School of Design
Harvard Graduate School of Design
The Harvard Graduate School of Design is a graduate school at Harvard University offering degrees in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and Design.-History:...
.
Background
Established as a collaboration between Harvard’s departments of Anthropology and of Visual and Environmental Studies in 2006, the SEL provides technical facilities and support for Harvard's PhD in Media Anthropology, set up in 2007 as part of the graduate program in Social Anthropology. It has been praised as an "innovative initiative" at Harvard to integrate art-making within the cognitive life of the university, and was proposed as a model for future endeavors in the graduate curriculum by the Presidential Task Force on the Arts' Report in 2008. The SEL is managed by musician, anthropologist, and phonographer Ernst Karel, and directed by Lucien Castaing-TaylorLucien Castaing-Taylor
Lucien Castaing-Taylor is an anthropologist and artist who works in film, video, and photography.Since 2002 Castaing-Taylor has taught at Harvard University, where he is Director of the Sensory Ethnography Lab. His works include In and Out of Africa, which he made with Ilisa Barbash in 1992...
, ethnographic filmmaker of In and Out of Africa and Sweetgrass. In the year-long core class, "Sensory Ethnography," students receive instruction in ethnographic media practices, and create a substantial work in video, still photography, hypermedia, or sound. Advanced graduate students are also provided with training and equipment to produce media ethnographies in conjunction with their written doctoral dissertations. One example includes students working alongside Ernst Karel and visual artist Sharon Lockhart to produce "Sound Safari", a collaborative phonography project, in Bath, Maine. .
Affiliates
- Barbash, Ilisa and Castaing-Taylor, LucienLucien Castaing-TaylorLucien Castaing-Taylor is an anthropologist and artist who works in film, video, and photography.Since 2002 Castaing-Taylor has taught at Harvard University, where he is Director of the Sensory Ethnography Lab. His works include In and Out of Africa, which he made with Ilisa Barbash in 1992...
. SweetgrassSweetgrass (film)Sweetgrass is a 2009 documentary film that follows modern-day cowboys as they lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana's Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. It was directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor, a Harvard anthropologist, and produced by his wife Ilisa Barbash... - Karel, Ernst. Heard Laboratories
- Lockhart, Sharon. Lunch Break, Exit, Double Tide
Students
- On Broadway (Aryo DanusiriAryo DanusiriAryo Danusiri is an Indonesian film director.He started his first documentary, Village Goat Takes The Beating, about Aceh human rights violations, in 1999. This documentary was an official selection at the 2001 Amnesty Film Festival in Amsterdam...
) - Chiaqian (Demolition) (JP Sniadecki)
- As Long As There's Breath (Stephanie Spray)