Table Of ContentFigure
Concept and Method
Edited by
Celia Lury
William Viney
Scott Wark
Figure
Celia Lury • William Viney • Scott Wark
Editors
Figure
Concept and Method
Editors
Celia Lury William Viney
Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies Department of Anthropology
University of Warwick Goldsmiths, University of London
Coventry, UK London, UK
Scott Wark
Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
ISBN 978-981-19-2475-0 ISBN 978-981-19-2476-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2476-7
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Preface
Knights of the Oblong Table
—Di Sherlock
When I call them
Knights of The Round Table
it’s a spur to the collective wit.
The nomenclature derided,
others are proffered, dismissed,
until, all things considered,
someone comes up with
Knights of The Oblong Table.
There we have it.
The confederacy shifts
dune-like,
presence, absence
configure, reconfigure
in the uncertain wind.
The Table a stout ship,
the Crew vociferous –
riffing, roaring,
cursing, complaining,
joking, jibing,
expleting, explaining,
v
vi Preface
sparing, sparring,
fooling, finagling,
loquacious, voracious,
complicit, explicit,
hopeful, doubtful,
always
respectful
always
remembrance.
No captains
stowaways
hostages
tourists.
Passengers
by invitation only.
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to acknowledge the help and support of their col-
leagues from the project ‘People Like You’: Contemporary Figures of
Personalisation—Sophie Day, Helen Ward, Roz Redd, and Yael Gerson—
and the artists associated with this project—Felicity Allen, Stefanie
Posavec, and Di Sherlock.
This volume was collated from presentations given at a conference
called Figurations: Persons In/Out of Data, which was organised under the
auspices of the ‘People Like You’ project and held at Goldsmiths,
University of London, December 16—17, 2019. We would like to thank
our keynote speakers, Wendy H. K. Chun, Jane Elliott, John Frow, and
AbdouMaliq Simone, all of our presenters, and everyone who attended
the conference and participated in discussions. In particular, we would
like to thank our conference assistants, Avery Delaney, Stephanie
Guirand, Ming-Te Peng, and Saba Zavarei, for their hard work, and
Lizzie Malcolm and Daniel Powers from Rectangle for designing our
conference poster and booklet.
The ‘People Like You’ project is funded by a Wellcome Trust
Collaborative Award in the Medical Humanities and Social Sciences,
2018-2022 (205456/Z/16/Z). We thank the Wellcome Trust for their
support in making this volume Open Access.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction: Figure, Figuring and Configuration 1
Celia Lury, William Viney, and Scott Wark
2 The Work That Figures Do 21
Leila Dawney
3 In “The Cloud”: Figuring and Inhabiting Media Milieus 41
Scott Wark
4 Figure to Ground: Felicity Allen Interviewed by Celia Lury 65
Felicity Allen and Celia Lury
5 The Research Persona Method: Figuring and
Reconfiguring Personalised Information Flows 77
Liliana Bounegru, Melody Devries, and Esther Weltevrede
6 Engines, Puppets, Promises: The Figurations of
Configuration Management 105
Matt Spencer
7 Figuring Molecular Relapse in Breast Cancer Medicine 127
William Viney and Sophie Day
ix
x Contents
8 The Gardener and the Walled Garden 149
Sophie Day, Jayne Smith, and Helen Ward
9 Data Through Time: Figuring Out the Narrative Self in
Longitudinal Research 173
Jane Elliott
10 Figuring Out Exposure: Exploring Computational
Environments and Personalisation in Interdisciplinary Air
Pollution Research 197
Emma Garnett and Srishti Bhatnagar
11 Figures of Speech: Stuck in the Middle with ‘People Like
You’ 221
Celia Lury
12 Ubiquitous Surveillance and Data Selves 243
John Frow
13 Figuring Accompaniment: The Creation of Urban
Spaciousness 263
AbdouMaliq Simone
Notes on Contributors
Felicity Allen is an artist and writer whose current work is mainly
focussed in two forms, the concept of the Disoeuvre (exhibited in 2019
at x-hibit, Vienna, and published by Ma Bibliothèque) and Dialogic
Portraits, which she makes in series through watercolour on paper as well
as textual, audio, and video recordings. Her first series produced the two-
volume artist’s book Begin Again nos 1–21, collected by Tate and the
Getty. The third series, commissioned by Turner Contemporary, pro-
duced the film As If They Existed (2015). She is currently making Dialogic
Portraits with Refugee Tales and with the cross-disciplinary research proj-
ect ‘People Like You’. See also www.felicityallen.co.uk.
Srishti Bhatnagar is a medical anthropologist interested in health, gen-
der, and intersectionality. She obtained an MSc from the University of
Delhi, with a specialization in Social Anthropology and has held research
positions at The Institute of Economic Growth and Purple Audacity
Research & Innovation, New Delhi. She has conducted ethnographic
research on the social and cultural perceptions of asthma, air pollution,
and sexual and reproductive health. Currently, she’s pursuing a qualita-
tive UI study on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on food delivery
applications.
xi
