What most call my attention is the fact that the ethnographer has become an engaged player herself, and the challenge of making an ethnography while being an active member of the community.
The sketch propose a documentary following players outside of the context of the game and following how the game fits into their daily lives. Assesing the relevance of the game into their daily lives and how it fits in their social context might give further insight about the implications of the design.
A documentary showing game play, the players behind the keyboard and their respective lives, and how the design affects the interaction of players.
"The text began with theory and then moved to cultural implications."
The ethnography explores the "American uncanny," which includes memories, hauntings, conspiracies, and as the sketch highlights, themes that are all related in the text to questions of narrative and power.
The text begins with covering issues around data, background historical context, and fleshing out keys terms - to later going through thematically-based chapters that begin with captivity and end with escape.
The cover of the book appears to be the flashing of a light, with a black and white background that invokes the imagery of being an old photo. What interests me is that the light kind of makes a question mark shape or maybe an infinity, which fits well with the topic of the book.
What drew my interest to the text is how the sketch mentions the connections these broader topics of UFO sightings and conspiracies have with the legacies of colonialism and violence in US history; how the question of narrative reveals a unique link between the two.
The sketch proposes a poetry reading of the stories collected by the ethnographer. As a fan of poetry, I love this idea and would enjoy a poetic rendering of these anthropological questions.
Maybe a documentary or engagement with visual anthropology. While there might be an issue with confidentiality of interlocutors, it would be interesting to hear these stories narrated with simultaneous images of the "uncanny" and "hauntings" being played out.
