[Last modified: November, 27 2024 10:26 AM]
During this week’s lectures on multimodality a distinction came to the fore for me: Multimodality on the one hand can be a technique to illicit meaningful conversations. It can be a way to delve deeper into experiences and memories by seeking out situations and experiences that allow someone to connect with parts of themselves which may not always lie at the surface.
On the other hand, multimodality can be not only method but also output: a way of storytelling that allows the interlocutors far more agency and reduces the filter that is the anthropologist (as has been so beautifully done by the Almaarii project – Closets – Almaarii)
Seeing how evocative the Almaarii images are, there is no doubt for me that the multimodality of that project intensives the human connection you feel. It brings you closer to gaining a fleeting understanding of someone’s experience.
For my own research on online shopping, multimodality will play a part, at the very least as method. As I walked through Heal’s Christmas section as part of this week’s exercise, it was easy to see how visiting a shop with an interlocutor could facilitate conversations about their Christmas traditions, their tastes, gifting and their close personal relationships. It would be an echo what the shop itself tries to do: Gently priming while allowing agency.
In a store like Heal’s, the reality is that the environment has been carefully crafted to prompt customers to purchase goods: As you walk in you transition into a new world. The frosty air makes way for warmth as you pass from the entrance hall into the store. Warm lighting creates a path to follow. Partitions block out the natural light and the outside world, enveloping you in this experience of Christmas. Candles burning fill the air with scents of pine, cloves and clementine, cinnamon and red berries. The herringbone floor is engineered to look like wood but made of a material that absorbs the sound of my footsteps so that I and my fellow shoppers hear the instrumental Christmas music mixed with the gentle murmurs of those shopping together. I am transported and everything has been done to allow my senses to fully engage in the shopping experience, tapping into memories as well as aspirations.
How then to use multimodality to translate the memories and aspirations of my interlocutors into a form that allows greater connection and understanding for the person consuming the ethnography?
A gift list, a mood board, a recipe, an image of a shopping basket… echoes of material goods imbibed with meaning. Echoes much fainter than their original utterance, but hopefully still audible.