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Karl Andersson

Anthropologist

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Week 36: 2-8 September 2019

September 8, 2019 by Leave a Comment

A tiny week of free time and preparations before heading off to Tokyo. I had dinner with A on Thursday and hosted a little get-together with the new student S and his wife N on Friday – drinks in my studio and dinner at Vietbowl. We were joined by K and S, and continued to Hops and Barley to meet R and A, and a visiting Japanese designer, H.

I published my Space and Place paper “The GPS Selfie: Embodied Mapping Practices in Veloviewer Explorer” on Researchgate and the accompanying film Tiling on Youtube:

Got very nice feedback from the users of Veloviewer Explorer, which was the subject of my research. One of my informants wrote to me:

“individuals’ use of geographical information systems (GIS) can be seen as a form of self-expression”, that is a great conclusion and valid one!

And Ben Lowe, the developer of Veloviewer, published a blog post about it and tweeted that the audio and video “capture what Exploring is about”:

Karl's short film created to accompany a paper for his masters is fantastic. So good in fact that I've wrapped it up in a blog post: https://t.co/b4BMwcwxiS
The audio & video from a couple of Explorers he interviewed as part of his research really capture what Exploring is about. https://t.co/HwyESPiv1G

— VeloViewer (@VeloViewer) September 5, 2019

It felt important to share my findings with the community immediately instead of waiting for the paper to be graded first. And I am relieved that the community felt correctly represented.

I spent some time reading the last chapters of Michael Fisch’s ethnography of the Tokyo commuter train system. I really loved this book and how it managed to convey something important through a mix of technical theory and personal stories. Man and machine. Man with machine. An innovative ethnography that apparently took many years to produce.

I submitted my thesis proposal draft on Friday, which officially closes the second semester for me. So I have now effectively studied half of this programme, and I will take a well-needed break in Tokyo for four weeks before kicking off the third semester with in-house classes in the beginning of October.

Japanese

  • Nextbook 漢字:
    • 小3 writing level 44–53

Other

Articles

  • The Economist:
    • How WhatsApp is used and misused in Africa
    • Alan Turing, a computing pioneer, will feature on Britain’s £50 notes
  • The Guardian/book review: Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani – a manifesto for the future
  • Larry Jordan: What Media Creators Need to Know About the New Apple File System (2017)

Book

  • Fisch, Michael. 2018. An Anthropology of the Machine. Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network. The University of Chicago Press.
    • “Forty-Four Minutes.” Chapter 5: 166–205.
    • “Ninety Seconds.” Chapter 6: 206–59.
    • “Conclusion: Reflections on the Gap.” 260–66.

Video

  • The Ministry of Counterculture: Monologue for two: Timon Screech about Erotic Art in Japan
  • Max Yuryev: Do I Regret buying the Ronin SC? – Honest Review

Film & TV

  • Toy Story 2 (1999, 92 min)
  • Christiane Amanpour: Sex & Love Around the World. S1 E1: Tokyo. (2018. God, I hate this kind of TV journalism.)
  • Futurama S2

Filed Under: Study diary

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Unreal Boys - a film about shotacon

Unreal Boys is my graduation film. It’s a documentary about three young men in Tokyo who like the Japanese comic genre shotacon. Read more.

Tiling short film

Tiling is a short film that I made as part of a semester paper. Read more and watch it here.

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