I do think that the somewhat relaxed sense that developed in me in the exhibit seemed related to a sense of being in a community as well as a space. People at the show could post to the blog, the words moving through the visual area in a rhythmic fashion, the sound of voices in the background. It was like being able to work or just be, with a sense of people around you whom you could consult when you wanted to, but whose voices and words were accessible and connecting. Also the way the blog is written is welcoming.
Lynne Henderson

“The words between the Spaces: Buildings and Language” is the title of a book by Thomas Markus and Deborah Cameron, an architect and a linguist, where they argue that language shapes our understanding of the built environment.

In their first chapter, they argue that while architecture is usually seen as a visual rather than verbal activity, in fact architects’ work is both visual and verbal. “Making a building is a collaborative process which involves continual dialogue - wit clients, with colleagues, with other professionals like engineers and landscapers, with building contractors. Cuff aptly describes what goes on in these interactions as “constructing a word-and-sketch building” (1992:97). She also makes clear how much written language is produced in any architectural project” (Markus and Cameron, p.1).

Hi,

We have been talking a lot about the material properties of space and of artifacts we use to interact online. I mentioned the discursive practices through which participants in online forums produce a shared culture but I never explicitly define them. Here are the 5 five practices that Gerry DeSanctis and I found enacted by participants in online forums. These practices we argue define the language game of the forum, and include a certain number of activities define below:

Self-referring Use of collective language (we, us, our group); reference to the group (” this group”); reference to the knowledge management community (”as KM enthusiasts”); reference to the geography
Building a shared history Linking; forwarding; quoting; weaving
Expressing legitimacy Introducing oneself; referring to one’s experience and expertise; referring to lurking; welcoming new members.
Enacting a consistent linguistic style Informal; greeting and closings; conversational flow; paralinguistic features (parentheses, emoticons).
Managing relationships Thank you; giving feedback; helping

These practices are not explicitly defined, but they are produced by the core members of the forum, and reproduced by the new comers. If someone does not follow one of these practices, then there will be a debate and the rule will be explicitly stated.

Cheers,

al

Hi again. Previously, I suggested that there are architectural features of the online environment that we adapt to and mould to our own purposes, cues that affect how we interact with each other on the blog.Here I’d like to return to the other kind of cue, which I had labelled interpersonal. First let’s take the e.g.s mentioned by Anne-Laure, so whether a poster is friendly and inclusive, or the poster engages in relationship management at the beginning and end of what they say. Note that the effects on behaviour and interactions of these particular kinds of examples aren’t restricted to online environments. The phenomenon described where an open message is replied to with a more colloquial style, conversely a terse one is responded to in minimal terms, is an instance of the widespread phenomenon of accommodation – it happens all the time in face to face interactions too. People accommodate accents for instance, and start to imitate patterns of speech of the person they are talking to, even if they are not conscious of doing so. And in the photocopier room you can imagine you will respond more chattily to someone who asks you how it’s going and makes small talk than you will to someone who just nods at you, starts to use the machine and seems distracted or in a rush to leave. In addition to discourse cues, other cues like tone of voice, facial expression and posture are also crucial to how we engage with people and the types of exchanges we generate. I am calling these types of cues interpersonal as well.

Now, when it comes to interpersonal cues in online environments, some of them are harder to render than others, and some of them are hard to render at all; because online we have only words to get across all of these nuances, and written words at that. So we need to find ways to express visually tone of voice, emphasis, smiles etc. mainly through alterations to presentation of the text. Meeting and greeting people at the beginning and ends of posts is a relatively straightforward way to translate certain kinds of relationship management to online contexts, though sometimes it can feel a bit stilted and contrived. Other ways of capturing particular emotions or attitudes have become almost conventionalised: italics for emphasis, asterisks for picking out an *individual* concept, all caps for SHOUTING, and of course smileys and other punctuation… It can be difficult to use these tools successfully though: writing colloquially is quite a particular skill [cf Al’s observations under reality vs realism: it takes a lot of work and editing to make your text read like a natural conversation].

I think there’s a lot more to say here but I’ve already gone on for too long, and it would be great to get some feedback before continuing. To sum up the story so far, distinguishing between architectural and interpersonal cues in virtual and physical environments gives rise to a four-way taxonomy: physical space architectural cues, virtual space architectural cues, physical space interpersonal cues and virtual space interpersonal cues. I’ve suggested examples in each of these categories; the characteristics of each environment form constraints on how each type of cue is realised but we can match up equivalent types of cue in each space.

Hope this makes sense. Looking forward to hearing what you think, cheers, milena.

 Contemporary artists question our perceptions of affordances, interrogating the functions of objects and the meaning of situations. One might think of the extreme questions by surrealists’ works such as  Marcel Duchamp’s fountain or Rene Magritte’s “This is not a pipe”. A similar questioning is at the core of Claudia’s work on chairs: what is a chair? Is a chair an object that affords sitting? Then what does it  becomes when you hang it from the ceiling, when you put it on stilts and take a way the sitting part, or when you make a cascade of  chairs? http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/a/34724.html  I also interpret Sophie Calle’s Prenez soin de Vous as an exploration of the “affordance” of the phrase “take care of yourself” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/16/artnews.artWhat does this phrase afford to Sophie Calle? She does not know. She does not know how to interpret it and thus she asks 107 women to interpret it for her - to tell her what they read, what they understand, what they feel. Does this phrase affords “support”, “caring”, “affection”? For the author of the words, if you take the literal meaning it does, for all these interpreters it does not.Yet this might show the difference between texts and artifacts: artifacts afford in the sense that they suggest and/ or limit actions; affordances are not infinite. Text can be endlessly interpreted and in some ways there are no limits.Then you’d tell me does it make sense to talk about the affordances enacted through discourse? I guess it does as here we are not looking at the content per se, at its interpretation, but at the discursive practices and how they help creating a sense of space that trigger some type of interactions and allow the building of a sense of shared identity. As you can see, I am exploring here. Any thoughts and comments are welcome. Thanks. al  

Hi, as mentioned earlier, Building_Space_With_Words (BSWW) emerged from my attempt to explore the relationships between two parts of my research. The first one is my work with John Weeks on Space, Informal Interactions and Affordances. I am describing this work more in details below. My interest for space and informal interactions also led me to study interactions of commuters in train (I was myself commuting 2 1/2 hours /3 hours / day - fortunately only 3 days a week! I was lucky many people on the train were commuting on a daily basis). To learn more about this short study, see http://www.bazartropicando.com/thetrain/TCE.htmlThere is an increasing recognition of the importance of informal interactions in organizations, but research examining the effects of the physical environment on them has produced contradictory results, and practical attempts to control the level of informal interaction by design have been marked by unintended consequences. Some of my research with John Weeks (IMD), based on observations of people interacting in the copier rooms of different organizations, lead her to explore the properties, or affordances, of space that trigger informal interactions. These observations were interpreted using the concept of affordances developed by ecological psychologist James Gibson. The affordances of an environment are the possibilities for action called forth by it to a perceiving subject. Thus, to humans, handles afford grasping; paths afford locomotion; slippery slopes afford falling. While research on affordances has typically focused on individual behavior, we extend it to social behaviors, such as informal interactions in organizational settings (Fayard and Weeks, 2007). The affordances of an environment arise from its social meaning, conventional rules regarding use, and its physical properties.We identify the social and physical characteristics that produce the propinquity, privacy, and social designation necessary for an environment to afford informal interactions.  Propinquity refers to the fact that informal interactions can occur only in places where people encounter each other. All else equal, the more traffic that flows through and past a place, the greater the chance of an encounter. The architecture of a space - how accessible it is, how enclosed, how large - influences both the opportunity and the social obligation for interaction.  Privacy, the ability to control the boundaries of interaction, has two dimensions:  spatial and temporal. People must have confidence that they are heard by those to whom they are talking, but not overheard by others. Privacy also implies control over access to oneself: to the extent that being in a place obligates us to interact with those we would rather avoid, or prevents us from exiting an interaction when we desire, it is not a private place. Lastly, some spaces feel like natural, comfortable places for informal interaction, and this depends on a set of imperfectly shared expectations and understandings, social designation, about what is appropriate and normal in these spaces.  Our work aims to show the importance of space, highlighting the need to develop a conception of space as jointly physical and social in its influence. My question in this project is: do these affordances make sense in virtual spaces?Do people reenact them through language, through discursive practices? If they do, how do they do that? How do their practices evolve?al