Moodboards are a creative method intended to visually communicate an affect, a sensation of an experience or, most often, a product or a service currently being designed. Moodboards are mostly used by advertisers, designers, and filmmakers to make arguments to potential funders or audiences. In this roundtable, we contend that moodboards occupy and take advantage of the fruitful intersection of visuality (seeing, looking, visualizing), affect (the sensory experience we have in response to experience), culture (the meanings we attribute to our world) and design methods (steps taken to solve problems, answer questions and make sense of anything). We propose Moodboard as a digital method for creatively studying the material, multisensory and embodied nature of experience. We invite colleagues for a conversation around moodboards as speculative, future-oriented methods for making sense of, analyzing, and visualizing material.
This roundtable brings together:
Annette Markham, who will introduce the panel, focusing on the remixing and mashup characteristics of moodboards. She will situate this approach within broader epistemological frameworks for sensemaking.
Gillian Rose, will dive into the specifics of how a digital moodboard might work, using the specific case of Pinterest.
Anne Marit Waade will further explicate the method, reporting on a case whereby moodboards are being used in Denmark as a way to remix and rethink a physical region.
Katrin Tiidenberg will discuss how various interfaces and platforms provide instances of moodboards that can be used to inform and enhance our understanding of visual culture in a digital age.
Debora Lanzeni will conclude by discussing the inextricable links between the digital, the material, and the sensory, focusing on how the concept of moodboards can enhance our ethnographic understanding of all three in a digital era.
Following these short provocations, we will open up the roundtable to more open discussion among audience and panelists.
