This article develops and mobilises the concept of 'mundane data' as an analytical entry point for understanding Big Data. We call for in-depth investigation of the human experiences, routines, improvisations and accomplishments which implicate digital data in the flow of the everyday. We demonstrate the value of this approach through a discussion of our ethnographic research with self-tracking cycling commuters. We argue that such investigations are crucial in informing our understandings of how digital data become meaningful in mundane contexts of everyday life for two reasons: first because there is a gap in our understanding of the contingencies and specificities through which big digital data sets are produced, and second because designers and policy makers often seek to make interventions for change in everyday contexts through the presentation of mundane data to consumers but with little understanding of how people produce, experience and engage with these data.
In Australia as elsewhere, shared annual commemorative ceremonies such as those on Anzac Day, 25 April, help to connect residents to particular versions of the nation, to the past and to each other. This article investigates what can be gained by pairing the concept of commemorationa set of practices and narratives that draw together national identity, collective and individual memory, grief and mourning, regular ritual, collectivity and material, aesthetic representations of war and deathwith atmosphere and its dynamic combination of space, sensory experience, affect, individual memory and experience and the material environment. It introduces the notion of 'commemorative atmospheres' to explore how such events 'feel', arguing that spatially-specific affective experience can work to connect individuals to the nation. The article builds on scholarship that explores how memorial sites symbolically express aspects of national history and memory, linking this to accounts of how atmospheres can be constituted by architectural form and the material and aesthetic aspects of space. It uses recent research on Australian Anzac Day ceremonies to identify the different spatial elements that contribute to the moods of these events, and explores how these interweave with first-hand experience of the ceremonies and established national narratives. It also considers the sensory perception of commemorative events, identifying how these aspects link to discursive elements, helping to frame national identity for attendees at these ceremonies and potentially for a wider national audience.
This article questions the anthropocentrism of existing treatments of creative work, creative industries and creative identities, and then considers various strategies for overcoming this bias in novel empirical analyses of creativity. Our aim is to begin to account for the nonhuman, ‘more-than-human’, bodies, actors and forces that participate in creative work. In pursuing this aim, we do not intend to eliminate the human subject from analysis of creative practice; rather we will provide a more ‘symmetrical’ account of creativity, alert to both the human and nonhuman constituents of creative practice. We draw from Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of the assemblage to develop this account. Based on this discussion, we will define the creative assemblage as a more or less temporary mixture of heterogeneous material, affective and semiotic forces, within which particular capacities for creativity emerge, alongside the creative practices these capacities express. Within this assemblage, creativity and creative practice are less the innate attributes of individual bodies, and more a function of particular encounters and alliances between human and nonhuman bodies. We ground this discussion in qualitative research conducted in Melbourne, Australia, among creative professionals working in diverse fields. Based on this research, we propose a ‘diagram’ of one local assemblage of creativity and the human and nonhuman alliances it relies on. We close by briefly reflecting on the implications of our analysis for debates regarding the diversity of creative work and the character of creative labour.
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