2. Research Phase 1

Task: Undertake primary and secondary research

Methods: AEIOU, psychogeography, artefact analysis, literature review

Team: Tanya Singh, Zuzana Galova, Roshni Suri

Timeframe: 7th August - 25th August

Our first task was to set a plan to begin the research we wanted to undertake:

• AEIOU

• Psychogeography

• Artefact Analysis

• Directed storytelling

• Love and breakup letters

• Review of social media.

We planned out our research so that whilst we would pick up some insights along the way, we would intentionally set aside time to analyse and synthesise the data together after completing the study.

You can jump straight to the analysis pages here.

AEIOU + Psychogeography

Our in-person research for psychogeography and AEIOU took us to four locations: The Ned, the Bank of England, Southwark Cathedral and a regular bank in London Bridge.

The Ned

We chose to look at The Ned as a former bank to see if the environment still held power like it would have when operating at Midlands Bank. We chose a hybrid of AEIOU and psychogeography as we wanted to use the categorisation AEIOU provides. However, the activities, interactions and users of the Ned would be less relevant, given that it is now a hospitality venue.

Images and working analysis video. Video by author

Southwark Cathedral

To look at the religious side of the project, we visited Southwark Cathedral to perform the same analysis. Southwark Cathedral was chosen as it is a prominent place of worship, being a cathedral rather than a church. We anticipated the cathedral's expansive range of religious artefacts and elements to observe and study.

Images and working analysis video. Video by author

Bank of England

We visited the Bank of England, initially thinking we could visit the inside of the bank; however, we were firmly directed towards the museum entrance instead. All was not lost, though, as the building still gave us some elements for a partial AEIOU, and the museum contents were informative about the history of money.

Exhibits at the Bank of England museum. Images by author

Artefact Analysis

Alongside banks, where money is housed, we needed to examine money as physical items to learn about this topic. We looked at the three prominent and widely used versions of physical money: bank cards, British coins and notes, from the view of their material, aesthetic, interactive, social, political, psychological and historical contexts. The act of simply holding and interacting with the coins and cash made me nostalgic for times when I used to count the penny jar, and for a moment, made me appreciate what we have lost in the digital world.

The artefact analysis was weighted towards the 'money' aspect of the project because we couldn’t access any religious artefacts we thought would be relevant. We did begin to analyse jewellery as a status symbol of wealth, to be compared to a sacred piece of jewellery (i.e. a cross pendant necklace); however, we felt that this wasn’t useful towards understanding people’s behaviour, which was the focus of the research, so we discarded this before completing it.

Cards

Anaylsis of bank cards. Image by author

Cash

Analysis of coins. Image by author

Literature Review

Our literature review took place primarily with my teammate Zuzana, who offered to conduct this aspect of our research while away during the summer. Podcasts, journal articles and books were reviewed to understand the interaction between religion and money better.

Surprisingly, one of the most insightful and clarifying pieces came from a YouTube video from the School of Life, which explained Max Weber's thoughts on Protestantism and money.

While as a team, we covered some interesting ground in the literature review, ultimately, it was limited due to the broadness of the topic; we would eventually have to return to more literature once we had narrowed down the area of focus.