Writing an essay with Aileen for Taking, Moving, Leaving, our point of departure was cities we lived in and we realized how these cities were not mere geographical locations, but that they were “places”, entangled with experiences, people and feelings. We found that these places and our memories of them, our dreams of them, define and shape our sense of home, and some ways our sense of self. This led us to investigate the notion of place and experience and how they are connected.

The philosopher, Malpas in his book Place and Experience (1999) argues that there is an intimate connection between person and place, and that because were embodied and situated creatures, “all our encounters with persons and things - [are] always “taking place” in place (Malpas, 1999, p. 15) - that we can engage with the world and think about it.

Yet it is noteworthy that he seems to assume that place refers to a single location, place. He does not discuss discuss nomadism. This led me to ask the question: what happens to the self when it’s not one location but multiple locations? It might not be that different than if you stay in one place and love your land like the Australian aborigines who have a conception of human life as inextrically linked with the land (Malpas, 1999, p. 2-3) and it might be that the difference is that it becomes more explicit, that moving, leaving places and discovering others is raising awareness about our relatinship to places and how they color and shape our experiences. Or it might be in fact that with no fixed locale, identity becomes fluid. I have no answer but this is an important question to explore as  175 millions of people live in a more or less voluntary exile, about 10 millions more each year and as place matters and in a non-contingent way, for human beings either nomad or sedentary people.

How to conserve cultural identity through the recording of disappearing languages?

Language is a crucial symbol of cultural identity as well as one of its crucial elements. Yet, there are hundreds of languages which are disappearing as young people leave their villages.

“Of the world’s 7,000 languages, 40 percent are on their way to extinction, with the last fluent speaker of a language dying once every two weeks.”

Two linguists, K. David Harrison and Greg Anderson,aim to stop this disappearition by documenting all these endangered languages. Their project is the topic of a documentary, The Linguists, which is discussed in a Seed’s article.Not only do they travel around the world recording languages in remote areas but they also provide communities with tools to keep trace of their language. Technology becomes a tool to preserve identity and a sense of community. Indeed, it’s not only about recording - keeping a trace - but it’s also about sharing and building relationship:

” The tech tools of recent decades — like text messaging, web pages, chat rooms, and YouTube — are finding use among speakers of indigenous languages, says Anderson. Margaret Noori, a colleague of Anderson’s and a professor of literature and linguistics at the University of Michigan, is part of a network of Native American Ojibwe speakers who have Facebook networks, a website (Ojibwe.net) with easy-to-download language lessons, and who share Ojibwe words with each other using the Zephyr application for iPhone.”

Harrison and Anderson’s project  reminded me of  an article I read a few months ago in the New York Times on an academy in Western India, where students in their early 20’s are documenting oral languages which are disappearing (in that case by writing them down, making dictionaries of languages which have never been traced before).

“If a community has a strong sense of identity and a sense of pride in that identity, it wants to survive and thrive,” Mr. Devy (the founder of this project) said. “The new economy is important. The old culture is equally important.”

It made me think of Bernadette, the refugee from Rwanda living in Denmark that Yasmine met. She was afraid of loosing her language, and her identity. This reminds us of how language shapes our identity, our sense of home and to a certain extent our personal geography.

al

Post-it notes for neighbors: post-it notes to share knowledge and build a sense of community

I’ve just read about an interesting project Post-it-notes-for-neighbors by Cathy Chang, an artist, designer and urban planner on the Urban Omnibus.

Cathy Chang noticed that people use public spaces to post information to share with others. She also noticed that people don’t know each other (in the line of the Bowling alone argument of Putnam).

Starting from the statement:

“Residents are brimming with local knowledge, from the trivial to the empowering: the best slice of pizza, the nearest place to donate clothes, the latest news on the power outage, the lowdown on yesterday’s community board meeting. All of these fragments of local information are dispersed amongst a population within a defined area, and lots of people would benefit from the knowledge and resources of others“, Cathy Chang asks:

“For one, how can our public spaces be better places for sharing information? How can we harness the collective knowledge of a neighborhood?”

To explore this question, she created a project “I lived” where post-it notes to fill in where posted on different windows of stores in Carroll Garden and Cobble Hill where people tell about how long they’ve been living in a neighborhood and how much they pay for their place.

I like this project which again is an attempt to “make things visible” - information about people’s private lives. More generally, it’s about information sharing and building a sense of community in a physical space - a neighborhood. Reading about it I could not help thinking of my study of public online forums on knowledge management…

Last, it’s about creating this sense of community through messages, post-it notes, stuck on public spaces.

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

One of my students forwarded me this link “Abstract City”

a lego city created by Christoph Nieman, a NY Times illustrator who just moved to Berlin:

space, mobility (mental and physical) and of course evocative “objects” - his madeleines - and also technology (the blog) as a way to share with others.

thanks Lane for the link.

al

Here is an exhibition (Fondation Cartier, Paris, http://fondation.cartier.com/index.php?lang=en&p=2&c=15&linkid=15) I read about a month ago or so. It came back to my mind while reading Yasmine’s quote. Two of our blog’s contributors, Marc Hansen and Ben Rubin have contributed to it.

Native LandStop EjectNov. 21, 2008 > March 15, 2009

Raymond Depardon and I both came around to this same question: what is left of this world, of our native land, of the history of what so far is the only habitable planet?” Paul VirilioWhile the world has reached a critical moment in its history, where the environment conditions what humans do and what they will become, the exhibition Native Land, Stop Eject proposes a reflection on the notions of being rooted and uprooted, as well as related questions of identity. Whereas Raymond Depardon gives a voice to those who wish to live on their land but are threatened with exile, Paul Virilio examines and challenges the very idea of sedentariness in the face of the unprecedented migrations taking place in the contemporary world. Paul Virilio´s concepts are given form in a design by the artists and architeDiller Scofidio + Renfro, as well as Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan, and Ben Rubin. The exhibition is, therefore, a confrontation. It is at once a contradictory and complementary dialogue between filmmaker and photographer, Raymond Depardon, and urbanist and philosopher, Paul Virilio. Depardon´s work has often explored native lands, and, particularly, the world of farmers, giving value to speaking and listening. His capacity to combine both the political and the poetic is clear to anyone familiar with his work. Through his writing, Paul Virilio has spent much of his time working on notions of speed, exodus, the disappearance of geographic space, and the pollution of distances.

Two quotes that illustrate the dialogue:

“Let us listen to these people, be they Chipaya, Yanomami, or Afar. Let us listen to these people and give them a chance to speak, so we can hear them express themselves in their language, with their own way of speaking, their own facial expressions.”Raymond Depardon 

“The nature of being sedentary and nomadic has changed. […] Sedentary people are at home wherever they go. With their cell phones or laptops, [they are] as comfortable in an elevator or on a plane as in a high-speed train. This is the sedentary person. The nomad, on the other hand, is someone who is never at home, anywhere. ”Paul Virilio 

Sometime ago, I started investigating a visualization of the three types of mobilities that I had identified: mental, physical and digital mobilities.  At that time my explanation was that “when place changes, the social network multiplies, shrinks, evolves, so is the feeling of belonging. Sometimes belonging stays strongly linked to the place of departure (grows even, if we “long in belonging”)… It also explains the notion of displacement, physical and mental, and how digital networks participate to it.” The thinking has matured since… Lately, as I was presenting my neo-nomad research at the CIID, the Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design, I showed a similar version of the sketch. I explained it a little more clearly:
1. Mobilities, mental physical are intertwined.
2. Mobilities that align (vertical or oblique) represent a balanced state (the feeling of being grounded or belonging)
3. Mobilities that do not align (when the physical displacement is disproportionate) represent an unbalanced state (the feeling of NOT being grounded or NOT belonging).
For example refugees are forced to leave their home—travel physically—while mentally longing for the place left behind.  Some use tools and technologies (photographs, video tapes, emails, social networking…) to connect to their homeland, share information about the two spaces connected digitally. Technology helps in balancing the stretched relationship between forced physical mobility and mental mobility.
As another example, when absorbed by the screen and virtual environment (Thinking of Sherry Turkle), other subjects of preoccupation such as physical health problems may arise, and other strategies are taken into consideration to reach a balanced state.
4. It is the RELATIONSHIP between mobilities, and not the mobilities individually that become a topic of investigation (It is because there is a stretch, that there is matter to discuss). The stretch corresponds to a theoretical field of investigation.
5. You can draw a diagram for different kinds of nomads.

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

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    

Hi, I’m not a game player but I’ve always been amazed by people who can go and take on roles in games (e.g. MUD) like World of Warcraft. Second Life is also an interesting example: how to create a virtual world, recreate one’s identity and a “second life”?I am not an expert but what I find fascinating is that people seem to reproduce what they do in the “real world” in this Second Life environment. Our project with Aileen concerns different types of environment - text only, yet I find it interesting that people seem to recreate similar environments when they are online instead of imagining completely different environments? It would be interesting to do an ethnography of public (or semi-public spaces) in Second Life and see what are the affordances of these spaces that trigger informal interactions?See this article in NY Times from 2 years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/technology/19virtual.html?_r=1&em&ex=1161489600&en=128963ee911b8e6c&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin    Any thoughts? I’d like to hear the experiences of people who go and spend time in these online environments. Thanks! al