Embodied Representation: Audiovisual Media and Sensory Ethnography1

Abstract

This article represents a reflection on the application of the perspective provided by sensory ethnography to audiovisual media productions. It starts from the debate on anthropology of the senses and sensory ethnography to underline the importance of the rendition of a recording body in a film or sound recording. The text then moves to review examples from the work of Jean Rouch and Steven Feld, underlining how the two developed specific recording technologies that allowed them to give to their media work an embodied character. Finally, the article approaches the relationship between sensory media and interaction through engagement with the work of Merleau-Ponty, stressing how from a phenomenological perspective an embodied camera is always an interactive camera.