CONFERENCE UPDATE: "Tourism & Photography: Still Visions -- Changing Lives" -- Sheffield, UK, 20-23 July 2003. "Only one month left to our annual research conference on 'Tourism and Photography'! Please find a draft programme and additional information including a registration form at our website. 'Tourism & Photography' is organised by the Centre for Tourism & Cultural Change (CTCC) at Sheffield Hallam University on 20-23 July 2003. Its aim is to critically discuss photography as an element of the tourism experience and as a force capable to changing the identity of peoples and images of place. It will be the first time that a major international research conference focuses on the interrelationship of tourism and photography. We are currently expecting around 140 international academics and art & cultural practitioners to join the conference. Around 90 papers organised in no more than three parallel sessions will draw upon a number of disciplines including: anthropology, photography, art history, tourism, cultural geography, aesthetics, sociology, psychology, political sciences and marketing. The event will also be open to photographers, travel writers, research students and representatives of the regional arts und cultural sectors interested in the tourism-photography debate. Photographer Martin Parr will be one of our keynote speakers. Martin has published different works on tourism and the tourist (e.g. "Small Worlds") and is associated with Magnum Photos. He has also been the curator of the John Hinde Butlin's Postcard Exhibition recently held at the Photographer's Gallery in London. For further information, please contact David Picard or visit us."

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"Cherchez le Chercheur" No. VII

There isn't much to say about this particular picture. Only that it was always fun to leave town with the neighbour kids (equipped with sharpened cutlasses) on Saturdays, to walk to their farmland on the forested hills and to help with the seasonal harvesting. Considering, at that time, the rainy season, it was quite a muddy experience, too.

Click here for last week's picture.

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EXHIBITION: "Game on -- The culture and history of video games". The Barbican Gallery, London. 16 May – 15 September 2002. "Game On is the first major UK exhibition to explore the vibrant history and culture of video games from 1962-2002. This highly interactive exhibition examines the game design process from conceptual drawing through to the finished game and identifies the key creative people who make them. It will explain the developments in hardware technology from the colossal computers of the early 1960s to the recent consoles like X-box, GameCube and PlayStation 2, illustrating how content and technologies need each other to move forward successfully. The influence games have had on culture in Europe, North America and Japan will be explored, and a series of eight new commissions by contemporary artists, architects and designers responding to games, complements the show." You can download the exhibition's very informative press release as a .doc-file.

CLASS: In 2002 there was a class at Stanford University called History of Computer Game Design: Technology, Culture, Business: "This course provides a historical and critical approach to the evolution of computer and video game design from its beginnings to the present. It brings together cultural, business, and technical perspectives. Students should come away from the course with an understanding of the history of this medium, as well as insights into design, production, marketing, and socio- cultural impacts of interactive entertainment and communication". The course was part of the larger project How They Got Game: The History and Culture of Interactive Simulations and Videogames.

DEGREE: At Liverpool's John Moore University (UK) you can even do a MA Degree in Digital Games: "The course not only provides excellent employment routes for prospective students but is also an opportunity to engage in research into this subject. We strongly believe that digital games are one of the most significant and potent cultural forms of our time and therefore deserve serious academic study. This underpins our approach throughout".

JOURNAL: "Game Studies: The international journal of computer game research" is "a crossdisciplinary journal dedicated to games research, web-published several times a year at www.gamestudies.org. Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games. Our mission -- To explore the rich cultural genre of games; to give scholars a peer-reviewed forum for their ideas and theories; to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming".

I'm more and more inclined to think that Andrew Phelps expressed the truth when he said/wrote: "[...] tracking the rise of games as a medium of popular culture, and perhaps THE medium of the times". --zeph

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Inspired by a presentation at the Institute of European Ethnology in Munich yesterday about exploitation of Jewish Art, I became more interested in the subject and just by case found a brand new article of National Geographic News of June 12th.

"The case is hardly uncommon. Africa has for years been losing its cultural heritage to looters, dealers, and sometimes even tourists looking for unusual souvenirs. The problem has become so severe that some types of African traditional and sacred objects have vanished completely from the continent, ending up in museums, universities, or private collections outside the continent."

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Interested in the article Pop. Anthropology:... and the discussion of Ashaninka and Ashanti (ha), I searched for a general overlook of indigenous peoples in Brazil and thereby found an interesting page of the INSTITUTO SOCIOAMBIENTAL. The Page contains "Indigenous Narratives", "Projects and Partnerships", "Languages", "Indigenous Organizations", "Indigenous Policies", "Art", "Rights, "News" and an "Encyclopedia". As I said, a general overlook!

Available in Portuguese and English !

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Students from the University of Munich can read a huge variety of books about computers and internet online and for free via the Universitätbibliothek München (if they are logged in via the university network). The page Elektronische Medien contains a link to "Safari Tech Books Online", which provides the books for paying users. If your are not a student in munich, you may take a look at this comprehensive link collection to free online books worldwide. Via our library news

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From 20. through 24. September 2004 the "Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft" stages the 29. Deutscher Orientalistentag in Halle/Saale, Germany. It has the motto "Barriers -- Passages".

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WANGO is a premier international membership organization for non-governmental organizations worldwide. Further Informations see WANGO

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Some interesting lnks to anthropology, sorted by their user rating, can be found at Anthrotech, a company that uses anthropolgical methods for research about the way people use technology.

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Matthias Matussek, chief editor in the Rio de Janeiro office of the the german news magazine Spiegel, reports about some deadly clashes between the Ashaninka Tribes and some smaller remote cultures in the brazilian rain forest. Obviously Matussek seems to have far more knowledge in biology and prehistory than in anthropology, as he uses widely the terms of those sciences, which on the other hand makes the article really fun to read.

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The Süddeutsche Zeitung writes today (in german) about Claus Biegert, the reportedly "most important" german journalist specialised in indigenous peoples. The article is more or less unknowingly treating the question of cultural exchange between western societies and indigenous ones, as well a the so often percepted fascination of the indigenous way of live as a alternative and a better one.

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"Cherchez le Chercheur" No. VI There is a mutual fascination that link children and fieldworker. For the kids, the researcher's presence forms a welcomed entertainment. They have an astonishing capacity for integrating this curious element in their midst. For the fieldworker, children are amusing and outspoken narrators, brilliant observers, language teachers, spreader of rumours, etc. But are they reliable informants?

Though kids are also likely to become the most annoying, disturbing and devastating element during fieldwork - time-consuming, demanding and full of gossip. Beware of those who are about to squat your valuable privacy, just like these kids did, too...

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