Multisensory Ethnography Through Emplaced Augmented Reality

Incorporating moving and still images and audio within the text, I examine in this article how site-specific augmented reality (AR) can convey ethnographic research and forms of embodied knowledge through emplacing the audience and engaging their body and senses in multiple ways. I adopt the notion of emplacement from David Howes (2005) as understanding the stimuli of the mind and body in relation to the environment. I present as a case study my own AR installation Through the Wardrobe, exhibited 2019-20. As a dynamic practice-as-research project, the installation illustrates the potential for integrating anthropological visual culture and material culture theory via the audience studies of ethnographic media. The combination of multisensory stimuli with spatial media like AR opens the possibility for the ethnographer to present complex ways of knowing.