Curry Kitchen… an autoethnographic update!

Emily Bowen

I have been on my curry making endeavour for about 3 weeks now, throughout this time I have made from scratch Butter Chicken, Sri Lankan Salmon Curry and a Moroccan Lamb Meatball Curry and all of them have been yum!

It has been great getting to cook a family meal from scratch every week but it has been eye opening (or closing considering the amount of onions used in these dishes). Because of the fact that I have only ever eaten Westernised curries before this experience, I was under the impression that each curry would come out a vibrant and smooth texture. Little did I know that most curry sauces we are served in restaurants or out of a jar have been pulsated in a blender to within an inch of their lives before meat is added and the dish is served. To keep up with our daily intake of…

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Curry Kitchen..BCM320 Digital Artefact.

Emily Bowen

Concept: 

When asked to begin thinking about my independent research project Digital Asia, my mind leapt (gracefully of course) to my favourite thing in the world…food. And while overall my experience with authentic, non-Australianised Asian food has been reasonably limited (2 weeks in Vietnam and 10 days in Sabah, Malaysia can only open the eye so much), one massive aspect of Asian cuisine I have never authentically explored myself is the art of making a curry from scratch! Sure I’ve had the odd Patak’s butter chicken and korma or a $10 Manjits takeaway box but my knowledge of curries extends this far.

In a bid to broaden both mine and my families horizons (taste wise) and work on my cooking skills (I need proof and documentation that I am in fact ‘wifey’ material), I decided that a digital artefact named aptly ‘Curry Kitchen’ would be the perfect way to do…

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Akira, epiphanies and subliminal messages….

Emily Bowen

(Akira 1988)

In this week’s seminar we looked further into the concept and practice of auto-ethnography (a way of research and writing which combines auto biography with ethnography). Essentially auto-ethnography is writing selectively about past epiphanies on events, customs, values and beliefs of other cultures to aid others understanding on said culture. One does so by becoming a participant observer within the culture by taking notes about the culture and notes on the writers own engagement with it.

As someone who has very little experience with the world of anime ( I have only seen cult classics Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle in year 8 Japanese) I was very excited to once again broaden my horizons in BCM320 with what is arguably one of the OG anime films of the late 80’s.

When viewing Japanese film Akira (1988) as a participant (live tweeting) and an outside observer (being an…

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Gojira, live tweeting and autoethnography…BCM320 Week 1.

Emily Bowen

(Gojira 1954)

Our first Digital Asia seminar of the semester introduced me to the concept of auto -ethnography (an approach to research and writing which draws on personal experience to understand cultural experience), it also was my first experience live tweeting which made me realise not only my tendency to use humour in light of uncomfortable and serious situations but also that the Japanese film makers of the 1950’s were masters of symbolism in their emphasis on the impact of atomic and nuclear weapons.

As a Caucasian Australian I have been brought in a household which is not religious by any stretch of the imagination and have only practiced ‘traditions’ within my family and friend groups. My parents are both very open minded people so I never grew up around racism or any other kinds of discrimination and have made the most of growing up in a multicultural country like…

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