This week's wake-up (or wish-you-were-still-in-bed) music was Miles Davis's "All Blues," from his milestone 1959 record, Kind of Blue. What's that got to do with critical making, you ask? Listeners today experience the record as the finished product, but the process that led to its recording was not unlike critical making, especially in its deliberate use of constraints and improvisation. And the record is a lesson that collaborative improvising works only when you have the right people with you. (I'll see if I can find something more in the neighbourhood of salsa for next week...)
No lecture slides to post this week, but here's the video that our guest, Matt Ratto, played in class. You can find this and other videos at the ThingTank website.
I made a small revision to my week 3 slides, which we revisited at the end of the lecture, and have uploaded the revised version to Prezi and BB. (See my earlier post for week 3.)
Next week we consider face-to-face research methods. One of our assigned readings (Lunt & Livingstone) deals with focus groups, and although it might be tempting to skip that reading if you don't think you'll ever use focus groups, I strongly recommend reading it regardless of your interests. On one level it's an article about focus groups, but on another level it's an article about the often-vexing relationship between qualitative and quantitative methods -- a distinction that's deeply relevant to all forms of research, in all disciplines. We'll talk about that in the lecture as well as review how this article deploys foundational vocabulary such as operationalizing, sampling, and variables. These are terms we'll be getting to know very well over the rest of the course, and this reading is a good chance to see them in action.
No lecture slides to post this week, but here's the video that our guest, Matt Ratto, played in class. You can find this and other videos at the ThingTank website.
I made a small revision to my week 3 slides, which we revisited at the end of the lecture, and have uploaded the revised version to Prezi and BB. (See my earlier post for week 3.)
Next week we consider face-to-face research methods. One of our assigned readings (Lunt & Livingstone) deals with focus groups, and although it might be tempting to skip that reading if you don't think you'll ever use focus groups, I strongly recommend reading it regardless of your interests. On one level it's an article about focus groups, but on another level it's an article about the often-vexing relationship between qualitative and quantitative methods -- a distinction that's deeply relevant to all forms of research, in all disciplines. We'll talk about that in the lecture as well as review how this article deploys foundational vocabulary such as operationalizing, sampling, and variables. These are terms we'll be getting to know very well over the rest of the course, and this reading is a good chance to see them in action.
