SESSION 3.2.1 Roundtable. Sensing the Intangible in the Field: The Potentiality of Immersive Media for Understanding Across the Inter I

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What:
Roundtable
When:
11:00 AM, Friday 9 May 2025 (1 hour 30 minutes)
Where:
Concordia University Conference Centre - Room A   Virtual session
This session is in the past.
The virtual space is closed.
Theme:
Hybrid
Organizer: Melissa Park (School of Physical and Occupational Therapy / Culture Mental Health Research Unit, Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University, Canada)

This round table brings together emerging scholars and expert discussants in the fields of sensory ethnography and 1st person, experience-near critical phenomenological frameworks in anthropology to discuss the affordances and limitations of immersive technology/techniques for understanding “inter” experiences. Drawing from the ongoing ethnographic, participatory and research creation projects of an interdisciplinary group of emerging scholars, the aim of this roundtable is to raise questions related to what happens in the inter, and what immersive binaural sound recordings “do” in the hermeneutic process. Emerging scholars will provide the foundation by presenting binaural vignettes related to the care of persons living with Alzheimer’s in India, connectedness for older adult members of the Jamaica Association of Montreal, the impact of immersive sonic art for mental health in psychiatric settings in Montreal, and a neurodiverse phenomenology related to the reception of art in the museum, and its creation in inter-media artistic collaboration. Expert Scholars will provide insights, based on their respective backgrounds in sensory ethnography and immersive technology, to open up a discussion on the role and function of binaural immersive technologies, situated in the range of approaches used to understand the intangibility of sensorium across history and cultures (Howes, 2024) and the ways in which immersive media provides a bridge in-between neurodiverse experiences as a sound object (Grond & Devos, 2016).

Speakers:

• Emily Bain (Concordia University)
• Martina Padovani (McGill University)
• Meena Ramachandran (McGill University)
• Tamara Stecyk and Vincent Laliberté (McGill University)
• Havana Xeros (Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Montreal, Canada)
Discussants:
• Florian Grond (Concordia University)
• David Howes (Concordia University)

References
Grond, Florian, and Piet Devos. 2016. “Sonic Boundary Objects: Negotiating Disability, Technology and Simulation.” Digital Creativity 27 (4): 334–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2016.1250012.
Howes, David. 2024. Sensorium: Contextualizing the Senses and Cognition in History and Across Cultures. 1st ed. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009329668

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