seminar project #1: investigate a community…

We were asked to choose a community to deeply investigate over the course of the semester. This was the first project involving that community. We were to observe and examine the community according to Dori Tunstall's five characteristics (mentioned in an earlier blog post—historic consciousness, life goals, organizational structures, relationships, and agency) and organize this information into a 25 slide (no more, no less) presentation. The presentation is meant to be stand-alone (meaning I shouldn't need to stand next to it verbally expanding for a viewer to understand).

Because the content/context of my thesis will be food, I chose Discuss Cooking (an online cooking community) for my investigation.

Here is the presentation:

Discuss Cooking Community Presentation from Liese Zahabi on Vimeo.

I enjoyed this deep dive… Examining the community along these structured guidelines forced me to look at it from perspectives I probably wouldn't have on my own. And this structure actually illuminated more subjective qualities about the community and members as well.

We will use this community throughout the semester for both seminar and studio projects—so you will see more of Discuss Cooking. I'm sure you are waiting with bated breath…