on the relationship between virtual and physical space… when the “nomad” finds a home - “virtual” yet “real”.

“I soon realised that the site would evolve into some parallel living space, some sort of lateral existence in connection with a different world, through the lens of design. (…)”

See “behind the scenes” at  http://www.bazartropicando.com/home_works.html

Hi,

just read an interesting article, My Living Room, in the Urban Omnibus by James Reeves, writer and designer.

James Reeves describes his perception of New York as he has just moved to Helsinski and that leads him to reflect of what makes him feel comfortable in New York and what is different in Helsinki. He highlights how cities, places in general (and our perceptions of it) emerge from structures, material dimensions (size of the blocks, street labels, stoops vs. court yards, etc.) but also social affordances - which includes mores and practices: cheap food, stores open all night long, etc. in NY which allows a certain life style and a certain type of interactions, and defines your personal space in a different way - your apartment is not the walls of the space you rent, but it extends out in the street. It reminded me my friend John Klima who always told me that “the city was his kitchen”.

Reeves notes:

“There are probably just as many people who prefer a city like Helsinki over New York, so perhaps it’s easier to tackle the question from another direction: is a personal connection to one’s environment simply a function of time and familiarity, or is it possible to arrive in a new city and, after taking a look at its buildings and establishments, immediately have a gut feeling that says, “Yes, this feels good. I could get comfortable here”? ”

I guess this article also touches me as I’m moving soon from NY after 3 1/2 years and my walks through Brooklyn and Manhattan take another dimension. I could empathize with his feelings as he’s reflecting on the places he knows, his routines as I feel the same when I go down Smith Street in the morning, stop by at Victory to get my coffee, or bike up to Prospect Park. Like Reeves I feel like I might not have taken enough photos and I do take some. My next stop is not Helsinski, but London - more exciting than Helsinksi many might say. I’ll tell you more in a couple of months.

I guess these issues can also be linked to the different ways people experience online spaces. We had lunch with two friends yesterday and we were discussing social networking platforms and other online tools. Two of us did not feel comfortable with facebooks and the type of interactions it supported but we loved skype which we perceived as a one-on-one communication tool which allowed us both fast (”peripheral” in some ways in the sense of “peripheral vision”)  and long (in-depth) interactions with people we know and like… More to be discussed here.

al

This morning Claudia sent me an email asking me to post the following message as a “reply” to Yasmine’s post “Is Home a spatial matter?” (Funny as I had mentioned Claudia’s work in my comment to Yasmine’s post).” To follow up on Yasmine’s question “Is home a spatial matter?”, here is part of my exploration of a related question “What is home?”.The question “What is home?” inspires today very different reactions, than it did only 20 years ago. Transience has driven us to loose the sense of place. In that process, we have gained a sense of us. Today, ‘Home’ is an inner-self construction that we carry wherever we go. It is a collection of memories, values, assumptions, priorities and invisible qualities we keep in us. Today, Home is us.“What is home?” is a series of landscape photographs where the horizon is playing the primary role. These images were exhibited at Luis Serpa Gallery in Lisbon, for the occasion of “The Ulysses Fascination” Group Exhibition in May 2008.In each image is quoted a sentence. Some of these sentences are from answers I got to the question ‘what is home?’ This question was sent to a list of people by email…Above are 3 photographs with 3 quotes (more on my blog):1…. and we lose something, don’t we? When we are not able to say “this is where I’m from”. We lose not only a sense of place but a sense of identity. (Pico Iyer)2. HOME is a myth. HOMEish is a more realistic concept, is a place that almost feel like home but there is always someone or something that is missing (Ana Foseca)3. Home is what we are running from: what we are dreaming of. What we try to avoid because we’re dreaming of freedom: what we try to build because we need roots (AL Fayard)ByeClaudia

Yesterday I went to see a multimedia play Continuous City at the BAM (Brooklyn, NY) (http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=123). I was looking forward to going as it was exploring many of the issues I am interested in, issues that we are exploring in Building_Space_With_Words: the interactions between the physical and the virtual space, connectivity, how technology shape our interactions, online communication, a sense of community, what is home. 

Yet, and despite the great technical ingeniousness (e.g. multitude of screens opening up and closing, several movies projected on different sides of the stage), I was somewhat disappointed coming out. First of all, as soon as I came in the Harvey Theatre and saw the stage with its screens and tables with computers and web cams, I immediately thought of a play I saw in Singapore in 2003 and that I loved: a stage with several tables and computers, screens, video projected interactions highlighting how our interactions in a global and connected world have become multiple and fragmented. The play I saw in Singapore was describing the world of call centers and off-shoring in India presenting to the audience the backstage of call centers in Bangalore and thus questioning the influence of global telecommunication and exploring virtual identities. It showed people in India learning how to speak with an American accent, learning things about popular culture (including TV shows and baseball teams) in order to “sound Americans” to the American calling them. It highlighted the de-doubling of personalities and presented the life of these people who have to hide their real identity and work in the middle of the night because it’s the middle of the day in America. This play involved several interviews, clips and to me this documentary part was extremely interesting. 

As the show unfolded I kept thinking of this previous play and had this feeling of “déjà vu”.  The funny part of it is that when I got home, I went on my computer and searched on google: “multimedia play call centers London based company Singapore”. I added the London based company because I remembered that the play I saw in Singapore was done by a London based company and I eventually found the play: Alladeen (http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/digital/Programs/TechAtTuck/InsideOutsourcing/HopkinsPressRelease.pdf). Two of the co-directors were indeed from Moritori, a London based company, but the director was Marianne Weems, who is also the director of Continuous City! That explained my feeling of ”déjà vu”: I lacked the surprise of the first viewer.I preferred Alladeen to Continuous City. I remember Alladeen more as a documentary - although it was presented as a piece of fiction but the “data” (the videos of interviews) were more central to the play. What I really liked in Continuous City were the short clips presenting people from around the world (often living in Toronto) telling us what was their definition of home. I wish we could have seen more of these clips as well as more clips from the different cities mentioned in the Weems’ note (Nairobi, Mexico City, Delhi and Rio) in the BAM program. It might my ethnographic mind but I wanted more of it. 

I personally thought the plot was weak and it just proved me once more how difficult it is to write a play with “a message”. Theatre, novels are works of fiction and when they are too laden with a message, they lost their artistic value. In that sense, the work of Pico Iyer on similar topics - the global soul, the sense of home - seems to use a genre that might be better suited to the discussion of these themes. Listening to the witnesses on the video I could not help thinking of his various books - The Global Soul, Video Night in Kathmandu, etc. - where Iyer explores what identity and home means in this global and mobile world. 

Jason Zinovan’s critique in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/theater/reviews/21cont.html?partner=rss&emc=rss) also regrets the absence of a real dramatic dimension. He notes that technology is at the center: “Technology is a vivid character in this play, but you wish it weren’t the only one”. Indeed, the use of technology is key to the play and one could claim that Marianne Weems by putting it at the center highlights the agency of technology as it has been highlighted by Bruno Latour (1992) and Sherry Turkle (1997; 2005). Technology becomes a character in Continuous City as JV, Sam, or Mike.

In fact, I thought many times of Sherry Turkle’s work watching the play. For example, when you see Sam, the little girl telling her nanny that if she wants to tell her something she can just send her a message on her computer and they end up chatting while they are in the same house. Puzzling to our definition of reality was also the last interaction between Sam and her dad Mike who is finally coming back home after weeks of travel when he’s been video- phoning Sam. Mike is very happy and tells Sam that he’s in the taxi and that she’ll see him soon and Sam startled replied “but I see you, you’re on the computer”. 

On the technology used in the play, video was the only medium used apart from 5 or 6 messages between Sam and her nanny. While there are many video tools nowadays, online interactions are still mostly text-based. However, the use of video is due to the constraints of the stage: it would be hard to show mostly text-based interactions on stage. I was struck by all these talking heads on the screen which are often what video ends up being but which is also why I personally very rarely use video on Skype. I chat or call. I use video only when I am calling with my children so that they can see their grandparents or friends, or if I’m interacting with my nephews and my godson. I will then make faces and show them things of my context in a similar way to which Mike, the dad, in Continuous City goes on “virtual shopping” with his daughter for lunch while he’s in Mexico or he plays virtual hide and seek while he’s in a park in China. I really like these two passages, which reminded me some of the experiments I did with my students while teaching a distributed class (using videoconference) between Singapore and France and the related research I did exploring how people modify their communicative practices to build a virtual space to interact on (Fayard, 2006; see also the work of Austin Henderson on this notion of a virtual space for interactions e.g Dourish, Adler, Belloti and Henderson, 1996;  Henderson and Henderson, 2000). Hence, although I was not completely convinced by the narrative of the play, it triggered many questions and reflections which are very relevant to our project and that I wanted to share with you.

I know Aileen saw the play yesterday but I did not have a chance to talk with her. She just left me a message on my cell yesterday saying that she thought it was amazing. I’m looking forward to reading her take on the play. And of course, if any one else has seen the play, please share your impressions with us. al    

Recent work by Claudia Conduto, The Space In-Between (http://claudiaconduto.blogspot.com/), explores the notion of space and how it is changed by transformations in our ways of living and by the fact that we are increasingly more global. Claudia is questioning the notion of “home” as the “place where we live”, the “place where we belong”. Her focus is on our perception of space, the emotions related to it as we feel we belong or not…   While there is always a sky above our head, how similar, how different is the sky while we are in Brussels, Singapore, Lisbon, or New York? al