Perspectival Kinaesthetic Imaging and the Anthropology of Making

In this lecture Perspectival Kinaesthetic Imaging is being proposed as a participatory anthropological methodology designed to facilitate the study of craft and the process of making. Drawing on research and material from the HANDMADE - Understanding Creative Gesture in Pottery Making project (https://handmade.web.ox.ac.uk/home) I will be focusing on the relationship between making and thinking, during the creative engagement with form-generating materials. Perspectival Kinaesthetic Imaging is employed in the context of multi-sited participatory observation adapted to facilitate the multimodal sensitivity needed for the study of material enactive signification in the context of skilled material practices and creative material engagement. The lecture will follow the ways of the hand, using a combination of multimodal visual captures (i.e., photography, video, observational drawing and mobile eye-tracking). Each of these multimodal visual captures affords a specific spatiotemporal perspective from which to identify and observe morphogenetic events of interest (e.g., creative gestures and modes of enactive signification). The basic idea is that the juxtaposition of different media affects how we observe and what can be observed, by enabling the discovery of semiotic connections and material relations which are often obscured when seen from a single perspectival point.

Pitt Rivers Museum Research Seminar in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology, Trinity Term 2025

Fridays, 12pm-1.30pm (Weeks 1-4)

In person at the Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Theatre (entry via Robinson Close).

Convened by Dr Beth Hodgett and Dr Christopher Morton