Experimental Afters: On Meaning Making with Collective Visual Fieldnotes

Abstract This essay explores the development of collective visual fieldnotes as an experimental ethnographic method that invites public participants to become research interlocutors within field site activities—as part of a broader effort to innovate ethnographic practice through the lens of art, science, and technology studies (ASTS). In developing this practice, the authors’ research team attends to the ways that ASTS reimagines how research encounters unfold and how knowledge is made. In a multiyear sensory ethnography focused on solid organ transplantation, members of the public were invited to visually reflect on their experiences during project events, “gifting” their visual notes to be included as part of the authors’ larger set of fieldnotes. These visual contributions were iteratively analyzed and later transformed into a transient sculpture modeled on the form of metal stabiles, enabling a new mode of reflection on transplantation’s affective terrain. From this process, four domains of key insights were drawn out: (1) rogue affects, (2) aesthetic surprises, (3) dialogical modes, and (4) cultural scripts. We conclude by reflecting on the role of ASTS sensibilities for understanding data analysis as a material, situated practice and on the qualities of emergent knowledge created through these processes.