Reflections
My general research interest lies in multimodality, in meaning making and in material expressions of communication and meaning. Transcription is here an important tool. I bring my background and experience in art, linguistics, IT and as a teacher with me as I approach my data. You could say that this is my library of professional experience. Add to that dance, music, parenting three children and having lived in different countries. All this together helps me approach my data with a wide lens, and different filters, that I can apply at will. A reflexive approach, certainly, and reflexive using different and multiple perspectives.
I have always loved colour, so I use colour in transcriptions. I find images fascinating and I include images in transcriptions. I remember playing and sorting things in different categories and patterns as a child. I do the same thing with data. I move and sort and categorize data, marking with colours, structuring and in this process I find patterns. The patterns reveal things that were hidden and then suddenly emerge in the data.
Some of the best things aren’t planned. They just come, but they come as a result of working. Painting or working with data is not that different. No the productive surprises come as a result of hours of working, testing, trying out textures, patterns, combinations of ‘ingredients’ that may prove to be dead-ends but that also give surprising results. And now I should put this process into what will be an article for an academic journal with a focus on methodology. What I have described here does not fit in the format of that article, but it is no less important or relevant to the process.
I suppose I’m attempting to explain the feeling of the process here rather than describing the process so that it can be replicated. There are feelings involved in research. These can be feelings of frustration or joy over the work process. Sometimes (often) it is just a feeling of being so tired that I cannot think anymore. When that happens I know I have to let myself take a break, but I never feel I want to give up. No, the process of research is just too interesting, In the midst of all the hard work and long hours with only myself and my computer there is that moment of discovery that is exciting. It is that feeling of treasure, of revelation, of finding out, that to me is so satisfying that I would not want to do without it.
multimodal study 