The “Boules� of Naousa, a Living Tradition. Constructing knowledge in multimodal ethnographic research Fotis Begklis, PHD Student Westminster University
Few information about the project
The research started in 2008 when I visited for first time Naousa as part of my Mmus at SOAS (Multimedia presentation: www.theboules.org) 2009-2012 Ongoing fieldwork and collection of multimedia materials (frequent visits every few months) Currently in post production and resolving copyright issues
The custom of Boules The custom of Boules (Naousa, Greece) is very old and has survived through modification, simultaneously incorporating local traditions, and myths and legends about the struggle of the community over the last five hundred years. Boules possibly originates from ancient Greece and the Dionysian rituals. The custom of Boules has been performed uninterruptedly from the 19th century. The custom lasts around two weeks and culminates on a big public procession on the last day (always 40 days before Easter).
The iDoc
The final interactive documentary will be a blend of locative media, social media and traditional documentary film that reveals the transformations in music and musical experiences, practises and knowledge transfer shaped by the borrowings and appropriations, the emerging global culture, the new affordable digital technologies and the communication networks. This interactive multimedia object which I'm working at the moment and I was hoping to be ready before the beginning of this year's celebrations (middle of February) combines geo-tagged videos from the main processions (with google maps) interviews, footage from private and public celebrations, Youtube videos and photos.
Aims of my research
The initial goal of my research wasn’t so much to learn about the custom of Boules itself but to learn about the people behind the masks who so obsessively keep this tradition alive. The purpose of using the form of an iDoc is to render more transparent the relationship between source and interpretation, to open up non-linear narrative paths through the ethnography, and therefore to more vividly reveal the interconnections among different dimensions of musicians lives. And to create a “digital interactive space” for otherwise silent or marginalised voices to be heard and to present the narratives of their experience directly in their own words.
Methodology ď Źâ€Ż
My fieldwork explores the histories, beliefs, livelihoods, and identities of traditional musicians mainly located in Naousa and also in big urban centres like Athens and Thesaloniki but also in local centres and small villages. The emphasis in the empirical ethnographic research is on observing, participating and analysing the embedded nature of the tradition in local cultural, social, economic and political conditions through the combination of: interviews, observational footage of everyday life, recordings of specific events and spoken memories of those events, (all recorded digitally, in various ways) social networking encounters, you tube, web pages, gigs and personal encounters with musicians in the field—both real and virtual and local and distant.
Multimodal ethnographic work
Ethnographers, currently have a wide range of digital media at their disposal for conducting fieldwork, for aiding analysis and for representing their completed work. These include digital media such as photographs, video film, audio-recordings, graphics and others besides. All these media can be integrated together into multi-modal environments.
Creating and transmitting ideas in a form that is visual, linked, interactive, and accessible to a worldwide audience increasingly becomes a kind of second nature and possible the natural way to represent a world that is moving from a unified narrative into a multiplicity of voices.
Final questions
Can Interactive documentaries provide opportunities to see how “re-mediating” ethnographic materials in a multimodal digital space can create knowledge networks around them in a way that potentially enriches the material and enhances the knowledge transfer or keeps and enriches an old tradition in this context?
What access and resources are available to ethnographers and how best to exploit this new multimodal participatory digital technologies to create, transform and share knowledge?