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Paraethnographic Film: Virtual Enactment and Collaboration in Our Digital Selves
Author(s) -
Boellstorff Tom
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
visual anthropology review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.346
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1548-7458
pISSN - 1058-7187
DOI - 10.1111/var.12225
Subject(s) - avatar , sociology , ethnography , set (abstract data type) , visual arts , media studies , focus (optics) , art , computer science , human–computer interaction , anthropology , physics , optics , programming language
Abstract The film Our Digital Selves: My Avatar Is Me (Bernhard Drax, director: 74m, 2018, https://youtu.be/GQw02-me0W4 ) chronicles the experiences and insights of disabled persons in the virtual world Second Life. In this article, I focus on the making of the film through collaboration between researchers, filmmakers, and community. By discussing techniques of what I term virtual enactment , I explore how Our Digital Selves constitutes paraethnographic film created through a triple collaboration between community members, filmmakers, and ethnographers. This concept can contribute to visual anthropology as a set of representational and analytical techniques responsive to emergent cultures and communities.