Stills from the Inner Ear Shorts: Collecting and Living with Data

Data collection and representation invariably involve interpretation with various layers of translation. We designed the Inner Ear—a porcelain device that both captures and represents home vibration data—to rethink the relationship between home dwellers and their data. In this paper, we report on the deployment of the Inner Ear with seven participants in Seattle, Washington, USA. We examine stills and quotes from the Inner Ear Shorts: short documentary films that capture participants’ experiences and reflections with the Inner Ear. Our findings outline nuanced relationships with data that foreground sensorial and conscious experiences to engage with objects, spaces, and infrastructure, and deemphasize legibility to give space to memory and broaden definitions of data. We discuss how more ambiguous relationships with data can be beneficial to reconfigure everyday lives with data. We conclude with a reflection on the use of documentary filmmaking as a complementary methodological approach to synthesizing and analyzing research data.