Tag: intimacy

“Can You Hear Me Now?”: Listening in China’s Romance Simulation Games

I was clicking through a game studio’s website when an image caught my eye. In a warm, cozy office, several people sit in front of their laptops, heads slightly tilted, listening carefully through headsets and taking notes. In the background, cartoonish banners on the walls display the phrases “Leave a comment” and “After hearing the players’ voices, what are your thoughts?” in large font. People gather to stick their notes onto the wall or read the ones written by others. The accompanying text reads: “Through all the challenges, it is the support and companionship of our customers that has fueled our pursuit of dreams… Our team sat in the player experience hall, where we carefully listened to the voices of our players.” (read more...)

Why Study Smell in Clothes?

The question that opens this text guides a research project that brings together two fields on the margins of social studies of knowledge, materiality, and technology: olfactory studies and textile studies. At this intersection, we seek to ethnographically explore a minor gesture: smelling the clothes of someone who is no longer present in an everyday, domestic context. In this exploration, we are confronted with thinking of writing, rather than as a means of describing what is perceived, as a way of being present; something that accompanies the gesture, that accounts for what happens when we smell, what is evoked and fabulated, something that also shapes the encounter itself. (read more...)