Video - "Bodies, Space and the Virtual: A Narrative of Becoming"

Click on the above image for the video stream of a keynote presentation I made in May 2013 on the perspectives and constituents of virtual space. Virtual space is becoming less virtual everyday because we live in it. From the online and shared spaces of massive multiplayer games, to GPS and the augmented and networked technologies of iPhones and wireless connectivity, the peoples of affluent economies realize virtual spaces everyday. What do these spaces mean for our understandings of the body? How can we imagine the body, with its associated territories of gender, sexuality and cognitive awareness, in this time of virtual space? This presentation examines these questions in conjunction with selected examples and proposes a conceptualization of the body based on the virtual as a narrative of becoming. Many of the ideas and analytical concepts expressed in this paper come from my doctoral dissertation work, which will be publicly defended in the Autumn of 2013 at Umeå University.

What is virtual space?
Virtual space is codified space. How I elaborate on this answer in relation to bodies, expressions of identity is related to contemporary discourse. What are the Codes of Virtual Space in relation to the body?

Semiotics of the Kitchen - Martha Rosler - 1975

From A to Z, Rosler "shows and tells" the ingredients of the housewife's day, giving us a tour that names and mimics the ordinary with movements more samurai than suburban. Rosler's slashing gesture as she forms the letters of the alphabet in the air with a knife and fork, is a rebel gesture, punching through the "system of harnessed subjectivity" from the inside out.

"I was concerned with something like the notion of 'language speaking the subject,' and with the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs that represent a system of food production, a system of harnessed subjectivity." - Martha Rosler

“Non-material use-values are those goods produced within the housework process which have no material basis: affection, sexuality, companionship, “love,” and the like. These goods satisfy the individual’s non-material needs, which are as important for his/her reproduction as is a grilled steak or an ironed shirt….they are use-values for value.” -Leopoldina Fortunati from The Arcane of Reproduction

“To make the process of production and reproduction of labor-power function, other exchanges are also necessary. The most important of these “secondary” exchanges is that between the male worker and capital mediated by the female houseworker. This exchange and relation is required because the female houseworker’s reproduction cannot only consist of the use-values into which the wage can be transformed; it must also include the consumption of use-values which only the husband can and must produce. For although in this relation this housework is paid for by the wage, it must appear not so. Thus “love” enters the discourse, and the relation can be expressed in other non-money terms. Without love, capital would not be able to make this relation function, nor would it be able to isolate the male and female houseworker within the family.” -Leopoldina Fortunati from The Arcane of Reproduction

Webinar - Bodies, Space and the Virtual: A Narrative of Becoming

“Bodies, Space and the Virtual: A Narrative of Becoming" from Jim Barrett

A webinar (Audio coordinated with slides, just press play) from the keynote presentation I gave at the conference "There and Back Again: Cultural Perspectives on Time and Space" which took place at Umeå University, Sweden 22-23 May 2013, organized by the Department of Culture and Media.

Virtual space is becoming less virtual everyday because we live in it. From the online and shared spaces of massive multiplayer games, to GPS and the augmented and networked technologies of iPhones and wireless connectivity, the peoples of affluent economies realize virtual spaces everyday. What do these spaces mean for our understandings of the body? How can we imagine the body, with its associated territories of gender, sexuality and cognitive awareness, in this time of virtual space? This presentation examines these questions in conjunction with selected examples and proposes a conceptualization of the body based on the virtual as a narrative of becoming. Many of the ideas and analytical concepts expressed in this paper come from my doctoral dissertation work, which will be publicly defended 5th November 2013 at Umeå University.

What is virtual space?
Virtual space is codified space. How I elaborate on this answer in relation to bodies, expressions of identity is related to contemporary discourse. What are the Codes of Virtual Space in relation to the body?

HABITUS: Objects, Behaviours, Rooms by Justin Ascott

Habitus' explores - through a creative dialectic - the way human consciousness is shaped by the compartmentalised structures of the places we inhabit -- primarily the home and workplace - and the habituated behaviours we perform within these various nodes. The mechanical actions we carry out each day -- lead to feelings of disillusionment and disengagement with social reality. The only objects and 'tools' that have the transformative power to expand consciousness are those commonly used by shamans in ritualised contexts - to induce altered states of perception for the purposes of healing, transcendence and revelation.

Habitus refers to lifestyle, the values, the dispositions and expectation of particular social groups that are acquired through the activities and experiences of everyday life. Perhaps in more basic terms, the habitus could be understood as a structure of the mind characterized by a set of acquired schemata, sensibilities, dispositions and taste. The particular contents of the habitus are the result of the objectification of social structure at the level of individual subjectivity. The habitus can be seen as counterpoint to the notions of rationality that are prevalent within other disciplines of social science research. It is perhaps best understood in relation to the notion of the 'habitus' and 'field', which describes the relationship between individual agents and the contextual environment.

Pierre Bourdieu elaborates on the notion of Habitus by explaining its dependency on history and human memory. For instance, a certain behaviour or belief becomes part of a society's structure when the original purpose of that behaviour or belief can no longer be recalled and becomes socialized into individuals of that culture.

'Run with the Heart of the Blind' by Gabriel Bohm Calles (2013) A Critical Reading

On a large screen projected onto a wall, a body assumes postures surrounded by sharp lines and hard edges, sheer right angles create the effect of broad cross-hatching or boxes. To the right and left large wall screen projections drags the viewer down abandoned corridors, by doorways that open to empty classrooms, past deserted desks and ancient specimen cases. The school is closed, but the cleaner remains. The sound of footsteps fills the space, footsteps and the grind of trolley wheels. The relentless head-height corridor and classroom scans unwind to the left and right. Straight ahead is the Butoh stillness of a body trapped by the architecture that surrounds it. The sound of footsteps sets a hypnotic rhythm, which after a time begins to be mirrored in the breathing of the viewer.



Gabriel Bohm Calles’ Run With The Heart of the Blind at Umeå School of Art is a room size, triptych video installation that explores and questions important concepts of movement and space, the body and architecture, along with the themes of discipline and control.

 

The School is an architecturally constructed space that performs a defining role in the lives of millions of people. In Run With The Heart Of The Blind school corridors, the long rectangular prisms that do not bend (literally and metaphorically) are blistered by dozens of glass panes that allow visual access to other rooms. These rooms are empty classrooms, closed in by low ceilings, small doors and beige flooring. In these spaces Bohm Calles performs exaggerated maneuvers in slow motion, often with cleaning utensils; mops, dusters, brooms. In each sequence the body of Bohm Calles occupies a foreground position in the inflexible extended rectangle of the corridor, time flows away into the distant background of the space. We the visitor/viewer share the same space visually with the body, as we are at equal head height with Bohm Calles, we see the intimate contrast between the soft form of the body and the building-sized box in which it and we are packed.

 

The tasks performed by people in architectural spaces are most often regulated by the space itself. The classroom is the perfect example of the regulated space in form and purpose, and one that we have all experienced. The classroom is utilitarian in form and function, divided by desks, chairs, and tables for working, with the relatively large teacher’s desk as a monumental point. In Run With The Heart Of The Blind the human body defies the structures of the space. This defiance is accomplished by the sense of time generated by the movement of the body, and the visual field in the side images down the corridors.

Bohm Calles' movement is a slow paced progress, not unlike what one would imagine is the final walk of the condemned prisoner. Bohm Calles caresses a mop head for minutes with a vacant stare into the middle distance, rubs his head along the frame of a window in a sensual act of body dusting, he follows the reflections in the glass of windows with a mop handle (or is his reflection following him?), then sits in the posture of a child, as he straddles a javelin-like broom, with a cocked head, seeming to listen to the thin line in the eternal corridor, waiting for some signal from far away. Finally the desk is violated, as Bohm Calles lies half-fetal upon it, a soft non-geometrical form dressed in black and collapsed upon the shiny cold surface.

 

The floor, the wall, and the utensil are mixed with the body in Run With The Heart Of The Blind. From the actions of Bohm Calles we can ask, What can this be other than a mop? But I think the answer to the question is more complicated than the choreography offered by the artist. The mop remains a mop even with the re-purposing by Bohm Calles. The mop does take on a broader visual range of possibilities in the manipulations of the performance. But it is not altered in itself. What is more dramatic in the performance are the visual and spatial juxtapositions between the body, the utensils and the architecture.

The results of the interaction between the audio of the heavy footsteps and trolley wheels in a loop, the two moving images of the corridor on opposite walls and the third screen of the body of Bohn Calles in contortions (often with utensils), gives an enclosed claustrophobic feeling for the viewer, accompanied by the sensation of being drawn apart in ones own body. The footstep is the point the body touches the world, the continuous monotonous rhythm of the heady thud-thud-thud of the fall is symbolic of the transfer point between the body and the world. With Run With The Heart Of The Blind the tools we are given have failed. There is no work going on, only a slow agonizing struggle with the space around the body.

 

Michel Foucault wrote famously of the school, “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (Discipline and Punish 1977 Alan Sheridan trans. p. 228). The controlled space of the school encases the body in a finite range of possibilities for movement, posture and visual appearance. Within this constricted space Bohm Calles extracts a limited range of movement, postures and actions, which do not make sense when framed by the structures of the school and its utensils. In achieving the range of postures and actions the structures of the space are not disturbed permanently. Elements of the space are remixed for as long as Bohm Calles occupies the space, and then the vacant classrooms and empty corridors return to silence and immobility. These structures await the next group of students they will train.

Amidst the tensions of movement within the space and how it forms behavior, are the actions of Bohn Calles as signs, or indicators of the history of formalized space designed to provide training. A specimen case of glass, filled with preserved birds, stands at the end of a corridor. The glacial-cleaner slides past the case and continues to struggle with the asphyxiating lines of corridor and ceiling around him. The stock-still birds in the glass case watch through the dusty glass. They are stacked and packed. They are arranged and disciplined in their display. The birds are totally visible, totally controlled, totally perfect and totally dead. The apparatus of the classroom is a machine that produces similar perfect specimens.

Run With The Heart Of The Blind is the anti-panopticon. But its tragedy is how small the actions are, how little space there is to move within the boxes we build to educate our children in. Between the rows of desks and sharp lines of the corridors, there are small possibilities to find new ways to stand. The heavy footsteps and trolley dragging through the center of my brain after two hours of sitting with Run With The Heart Of The Blind convince me I am in a machine of infernal intention; but on the other side of the room I see a friend, who seems to be fashioning a statue from his own body and the tools he was loaned to work with. From between the straight lines around us emerges a single shaking curve, trailing away into an uncertain distance. It is very difficult to see, but possible.

 -------------------*--------------------- 

James Barrett 

Umeå March 21 2013

The Country House Revealed as Monument

"The balance of forces between monuments and buildings has shifted. Buildings are to monuments as everyday life is to festival, products to works, lived experience to the merely perceived, concrete to stone, and so on. What we are seeing here is a new dialectical process, but one just as vast as its predecessors. How could the contradiction between building and monument be overcome and surpassed? How might that tendency be accelerated which has destroyed monumentality but which could well re-institute it, within the sphere of buildings itself, by restoring the old unity at a higher level? So long as no such dialectical transcendence occurs, we can only expect the stagnation of crude interactions and intermixtures between 'moments' — in short, a continuing spatial chaos. Under this dispensation, buildings and dwelling-places have been dressed up in monumental signs: first their façades, and later their interiors. The homes of the moneyed classes have undergone a superficial socialization' with the introduction of reception areas, bars, nooks and furniture (divans, for instance) which bespeak some kind of erotic life. Pale echoes, in short, of the aristocratic palace or town house. The town, meanwhile, now effectively blown apart, has been 'privatized' — no less superficially — thanks to urban 'decor' and 'design', and the development of fake environments. Instead, then, of a dialectical process with three stages which resolves a contradiction and 'creatively' transcends a conflictual situation, we have a stagnant opposition whose poles at first confront one another 'face to face', then relapse into muddle and confusion"- Henri Lefebvre The Production of Space p223.

“social space is not a thing among other things" - Lefebvre

s
p
a
c
e
i
s
n
o
t
a
t
h
i
n
g
a
m
o
n
g
o
t
h
e
r
t
h
i
n
g
s
,
n
o
r
a
p
r
o
d
u
c
t
a
m
o
n
g
o
t
h
e
r
p
r
o
d
u
c
t
s
:
r
a
t
h
e
r
,
i
t
s
u
b
s
u
m
e
s
t
h
i
n
g
s
p
r
o
d
u
c
e
d
,
a
n
d
e
n
c
o
m
p
a
s
s
e
s
t
h
e
i
r
i
n
t
e
r
r
e
l
a
t
i
o
n
s
h
i
p
s
i
n
t
h
e
i
r
c
o
e
x
i
s
t
e
n
c
e
a
n
d
s
i
m
u
l
t
a
n
e
i
t
y
–
t
h
e
i
r
(
r
e
l
a
t
i
v
e
)
o
r
d
e
r
a
n
d
/
o
r
(
r
e
l
a
t
i
v
e
)
d
i
s
o
r
d
e
r
.

Two Presentations on Gameworld Space

HUMlab will be streaming two presentations on gameworld spaces from the Connecting the Dots: Movement, Space, and the Digital Image conference held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge. The session will be streamed live in HUMlab X (The Arts Campus) as part of the Lunchbox Learnings series.
This is a chance to hear two very interesting papers on game space in the popular games Minecraft and The Sims (see abstracts below) by two well-known scholars: Dr Seth Giddings, new media and game studies lecturer and Programme Leader for Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Creative Industries from the University of the West of England (co-editor of New Media: a critical introduction (2009), editor of The New Media and Technocultures Reader (2011), and author of Gameworlds: virtual media, everyday life (forthcoming)); and Dr Alan Blackwell, Senior Lecturer in neuroscience and Human Computer Interaction with The Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.

We will be starting a little earlier at 11:15 am on 12th April, Friday, and we will end at about 12:30 pm. Even though this is a streamed session, there will be plenty of chances to ask questions and take part in the discussion.

All welcome!

Useful Links:
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/585271961485244/
Website for Connecting the Dots: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2069/
Digital Cultures Research Center: http://dcrc.org.uk/
Seth Giddings: http://www.sethgiddings.net/
Alan F. Blackwell: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/

ABSTRACTS:

“The Metaphysics of Minecraft”
Alan F. Blackwell
University of Cambridge

Minecraft is a popular computer game of the “sandbox” genre, where players explore and build in a virtual world. The user typically experiences this world as a “first person” view, from the point of view of a virtual avatar. The screen shows an imaginary landscape of hills, grass and trees, or when mining, dirt, gravel, coal and various ores. The player can grasp a variety of tools in his or her virtual hand, and controls these pickaxes or other implements with the computer mouse. The contents of the world may be shared with other players, via one of many Minecraft servers, each of which contains its own virtual world, with the avatars of other players on that server exploring, mining or creating around you.

This kind of virtual world sandbox game is not unusual. Much attention was paid by media and media scholars to the game “Second Life”, originally launched in 2003, 6 years earlier than Minecraft. Second Life also allowed the player to interact with the avatars of other players, explore and create houses or products. But the distinctive nature of Minecraft is the lack of realism in this virtual world. Unlike the animated fantasy world of online games such as Second Life, the graphics of Minecraft have extremely low resolution, looking intentionally crude. The virtual world is constructed of cubic blocks, nominally a metre on each side, meaning that the player can make rapid progress felling blocky trees for timber, digging blocky mines for coal, and assembling blocks into houses, farms or larger structures. Unlike the fine textures of realistic virtual worlds in multiplayer online role-playing games, the large blocks of Minecraft seem like giant digital Lego. Players can rapidly collect building materials and tools for ambitious construction projects, or even deploy an inexhaustible supply of digital blocks in a non-competitive creative mode. Lack of realism results in a system that is democratic and generative to a degree not seen in comparably popular games.

The freedom offered to players extends well beyond facility of movement in the virtual world. The Swedish creator of Minecraft, known as Notch (and his company Mojang), have intentionally allowed fans to decrypt and modify the Java language source code of Minecraft itself. A determined player can substitute new pieces of code for any part of the Minecraft system – a practice described as “modding”. Mods are shared among players, allowing individuals to choose more and more mutated versions of the game world – with different tools, materials, plants, animals or monsters, as well as magic powers for the player. For those without sufficient skill to write Java code, it is still possible to change the world by replacing the block surfaces or the appearance of their own avatars with alternative textures. And where players are inclined to tinkering, it is possible to create automated machinery and gadgets in the Minecraft world itself – using redstone (a fictional kind of semiconductor) with switches, pistons – and even virtual computers inside the computer, that can be programmed in their own simple language to make robots do the mining and building on your behalf.

These facilities reconfigure space in the virtual world of Minecraft in surprisingly profound and reflexive ways. Rather than a literalistic re-construction and re-presentation of “virtual reality”, Minecraft offers a democratised spatial poetics – an Open Work, in the sense defined by Umberto Eco. The boundaries between coal and code are permeable to an extent only previously imagined in the dream allegories of Neuromancer and the Matrix. Minecraft players not only inhabit the worlds of each other’s imaginations, and collaborate to redefine the game they are playing, but blur the bounds between the product itself and their own media culture. They share advice on recipes and mods via active support communities and wikis. But even more prolifically, they use screen recorders to make videos of their avatar playing the game, with voice-over narration explaining their constructions and adventures, or giving advice to new players. Minecraft players may spend as much time watching videos of other people playing as they do playing themselves. And the machinima affordances of the Minecraft world lead to players creating their own homages to popular films such as the Hunger Games, with the original narrative re-located into the block world of Minecraft. As with building and modding, the blocky low resolution is liberating to young creators who could never emulate professional animation standards, but probably didn’t want to. Older players gain YouTube followers by using custom mods or additional animation software to create meta-narratives – postmodern commentaries on the genre and its communities – such as the Egg’s Guide to Minecraft series.
At the time of writing, the emergent media ecology of the Minecraft community is racing ahead of critical commentary. This abstract has attempted to set out the scope of reconfiguration between space and action. But the children currently playing Minecraft seem likely to become a new generation holding radically altered expectations of digital space.

————————————-

“Sim You Later: at play across virtual and actual space”
Seth Giddings
University of Western England

Current developments in mobile and locative media, and in augmented / mixed reality media (for instance at the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol) take the permeability of virtual and actual space as a given. Digital space is thought of not as the worlds within worlds of virtual reality or cyberspace as imagined in 1990s, but rather as ‘content’ or experience delivered to – for instance – a smartphone user as they navigate their everyday environments. If the separation or transcendence of the actual lived world was the technological imaginary of virtual reality, then the dissolution of media technology into an augmented everyday is the promise, or dream, of pervasive media.
However the interpenetration or layering of digital and actual space does not dissolve the specific media/technological forms of digital space. Rather we see a mixing or layering of heterogeneous domains, some the quotidian environments of streets, homes and playgrounds, some the intangible domains generated from databases, algorithms and user interfaces, some rendered in the Euclidean geometry of game engines, others in the text-constituted spaces of chat and Twitter. To understand these composite realities, I would argue, we need to pay attention both to the technological nature of digital spaces as software and hardware, and to particular events in which virtual and actual spaces are generated.

The presentation will draw on microethological studies of the play-testing of pervasive media games, and of children’s videogame play across digital and physical gameworlds. Microethology is a theoretical and empirical method of participant observation in intimate events in technoculture. The presentation will suggest key concepts for studying emergent behaviours of, and in, the mixed realities of emergent digital media cultures. It will argue that digital space should be understood in relation to three significant factors:

behaviour – both human and nonhuman;
time – particularly the speculative and iterative time of simulation;
play – both serious and phantasmagorical.

Place and QR codes

Place and QR codes from Jim Barrett

"It is my assessment that this new model of cultural production results in approaching exhibitions as a process—that is an ongoing conversation with the public. Nevertheless, while the action may be with art spaces and non-profit galleries, these places have to make sure that they also stay relevant because the action does not necessarily stay with them: it moves anywhere due to the possibilities offered by the new state of globalization supported by networked culture". - When the Action Leaves the Museum: New Approaches to the Exhibition as a Tool of Communication by Eduardo Navas 

The Internet of Things Mediated by QR Codes

The Internet of Things Mediated by QR Codes on Prezi

A QR (Quick Response) code is two-dimensional visual structure that can be registered with a digital camera in a portable device. Whereas a linear bar code may accommodate 128 characters; a 2D QR Code, can comprise as many as 7,089 characters. QR code reader apps are available for the iPhone, the Android, and through service providers such as Sprint. QR codes can be scanned from even low-resolution computer screens, online videos (including YouTube), stickers and printed-paper. QR codes have been used to link to stored content not available on the Internet as well as lead the user to a specific website, special offer or otherwise unavailable multimedia content. Louis Vuitton has used QR codes in product design, and Teradadesign and Qosmo's N Building in Dubai allows users to read the building by accessing GIS-positioned Twitter entries from customers, make reservations and download coupons.

Qosmo's N Building in Dubai
The recent production by Cirque du Soleil of ‘Love’, a tribute to the music of The Beatles, features an iTunes app that is accompanied by a QR code for the 5th anniversary of the production. The user could unlock extra content within the app that includes music, video and still images of the show. The QR code also allows the user to enter a competition to win DVDs and music. Overall, the use of QR codes in publication and publicity has assisted in the expansion of multimedia and cross-platform content. The logical extension of the use of QR codes is as an added dimension to print publications, particularly in relation to subjects dealing with digital and multimedia production. In any use of QR codes there are three rules to observe:

1) Mobilize the landing page: the site the QR decodes to should be active and even live, with regular updates and a community aspect to it. If the QR Code you have made resolves to a url make sure the page is optimized for display on a mobile device. An easy way round this issue it to make sure the landing page is equipped with agent switching. If the site is not under your control then you can use Google’s mobilizer by adding the url to this string: http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u= If you are mobilizing your own site such as your blog then there is an even better option which will mobilize your site, generate a QR Code for the mobilized url and keep usage statistics, it’s called Delivr. Another possibility to consider is Mippin, which has an option to include advertising but you must have an RSS feed for it to work. Whatever you end up doing make sure the user of your QR Code sees content optimized for mobile devices because 99.9% of the time they will be using a camera phone.

2) The second rule of QR Codes is to make sure the url is as short as possible. Many mobile devices and reader software have difficulty with a QR Code matrix greater than 33×33 and some even falter with those dimensions. This means you should aim for a small matrix rather than a large matrix. In QR Code encoding the number of bytes at a given Error Correction Level (ECL) will determine the matrix size (see chart below) therefore a shorter url can mean a dimensionally smaller matrix. Dependence upon a third-party to decode and direct traffic is dangerous. The content, decoding and url/server provision should be handled by the publisher under contract or within the domain of the publication itself.

3) The third rule of QR Codes is, if the QR Code you have made resolves to a url, the online content must add tangible and significant value to any offline content. In terms of promotion added tangible and significant value includes prizes, limited access materials (special remixes or editions of recordings, limited edition T-shirts and so on) or discounts or coupons.

The method of delivery in relation to QR codes must be carefully considered. Malicious QR codes combined with a permissive reader can put a computer's contents and user's privacy at risk. Dependence upon a third-party to decode and direct traffic is dangerous. The content, decoding and url/server provision should be handled by the publisher under contract or within the domain of the publication itself. They are easily created and may be affixed over legitimate QR codes. On a smartphone, the reader's many permissions may allow use of the camera, full Internet access, read/write contact data, GPS, browser history, read/write local storage, and global system changes. Risks include linking to dangerous websites with browser exploits, enabling the microphone/camera/GPS and then streaming those feeds to a remote server, analysis of sensitive data (passwords, files, contacts, transactions), and sending email/SMS/IM messages or DDOS packets as part of a botnet, corrupting privacy settings, stealing identity, and even containing malicious logic themselves such as JavaScript, or a virus. These actions may occur in the background while the user only sees the reader opening a seemingly harmless webpage. Intricate, artist-created QR codes that are part of larger posters, or online in spcific websites are ways of lessening the risks for hacking with QR codes.

Virtual Worlds and Indigenous Knowledge: learning to tell stories and make positive change across cultures

Presenting tomorrow morning at the Association of Internet Researcher 11th annual conference in Gothenberg, Sweden.

Observing Three Learning Situations

As part of the Environments for Teaching and Learning course I observed the work of three educational practitioners in learning and teaching situations. In choosing the settings for the sessions I attempted to diversify the spaces. The first of the three I chose was a traditional classroom with a centre ‘stage’ at the ‘front’ with equipment and a desk. In the classroom the learners were well defined as an audience and sat in rows separate from the leader of the session. The second space I observed for teaching was a large lecture theatre with seating for around one hundred people. Once again the audience sat in rows and the educator took up a position behind lectern at the front of the amphitheatre style space. The third location I observed for teaching was a computer lab where a workshop was conducted in physical computing. I commenced this study with the idea that a space defines the interactions that occur in it. This idea seemed to be fulfilled by my observations, but the focus for this report is the style and strategies of those leading the learning and teaching sessions I observed.

Technology

A common thread through each of the sessions I observed was the use and misuse of technology. In the traditional classroom setting an overhead projector was used, as well as a white board and reading aloud from primary texts. References were made to websites during the session by the educator but these sites where not shown to the class, despite their being a computer and projector in the room. These were never turned on during the session, although they working perfectly. The educator read from several texts during the session, while standing behind the desk at the front of the room. At one point a question was put to the class in general for anyone to answer but there was no response. The line between the educator’s space and the learners was crossed when hand outs were distributed but no discussion was made about the handouts only a single reference to what they described. Similarly in the lecture hall session I observed the line between the leader of the session and the audience was never crossed. In regards to the technology used in the lecture hall the educator set up a video camera to film the lecture to be put out on the web later. The projector the educator was planning to show slides on did not work. As a result the lecture is only verbal with no visual materials. The educator stated the slides will be put on the course website later. In contrast to the classroom and the lecture hall, the computer lab workshop had a technician in attendance during the entire session. As a result there were no technical problems that lasted more than a few minutes and the use of technology was extensive. I conclude from these observations regarding the use of technology in the learning situation, that technical support is an essential element in learning.

Participation and Engagement

In my limited experience of teaching I have found the active participation of learners in learning to be an effective measure of understanding and contextualisation. In the three learning sessions I observed I noticed several techniques used by the education practitioners for drawing out the learners into speaking, making a decision or seeking an opinion or confirmation regarding what was being dealt with. In the classroom questions were put to the group but of the three questions put to the class none were answered. Towards the end of the session a learner asked an impromptu question. After a short break in the middle of the classroom lecture, the educator entered the room to begin the second half of the session eating an apple. The eating of the apple seemed to disengage the leader of the session from making contact with the learners. In the lecture hall the educational practitioner leading the session opened the session with a question, “How is it going with the reading?” which led to a short discussion on the readings for the course. Later in the session the educator said “You can speak up and break in at anytime. It is so boring when I just talk”. This statement was met almost immediately with a question. Finally the educator wrote on the whiteboard several keywords and then asked for definitions from the group. It was not until definitions had been given that the next topic in the session was taken up. This forced several of the learners to speak up during the class which in turn led to short discussions. These strategies can be contrasted to the use of the whiteboard in the traditional classroom session where the educator read out from the text. There was no discussion around anything that was projected or written by the educator in the classroom setting.

The use of objects for teaching was a part of the computer lab workshop and facilitated participation and engagement from the group. While the genre of the subject area (computer science) made the use of objects in learning more self-evident, I can see that it could be possible to use objects in learning for any discipline. There was no central space defined in the computer lab workshop and the leader of the session was forced to move around the learners and speak from different parts of the space. The learner’s attention was drawn around the space rather than just fixed on a single point. While the educational practitioner moved between the four computers shared by ten learners it was the objects that brought the groups into discussion. The objects provided the educator with a focus for questions and statements to each of the learners individually. All statements that the educator made during the workshop session were inquiring or questioning and were directed towards the learners. These included “It works well, but tell me what it does.” Or “is it what I wanted?” and “It turns the motor on but is that all it should do?” The use of rhetorical questions becomes much easier and feels more natural when there is a subject for the question that is not a learner (i.e. “What do you think about it?”). The focus for questions from the workshop was not the learners, but on the objects they were dealing with. In a more humanistic subject setting, as was the case with both the classroom and lecture hall contexts, the objects of discussion could be supplied by technology. Working with objects to explain concepts I think has great possibilities in learning. Visual images, primary texts and even artefacts could be used to provoke discussion and the involvement and engagement of learners.

Performance

The performance of the educational practitioner created the situations for learning in each of the sessions observed. In the classroom session the educator seemed to have planned very well, but the contact made with the learners suffered from a number of performance issues. By standing in one position in the room or sitting on the ‘educator’s desk’ at the front of the room the educator did not move into the learner’s space at any point in the classroom session. The physical position adopted by the educator was reinforced by the use of language and the failure to take advantage of the technology. By reading out from printed material contact was lost with the learners. Eye contact and speech directed towards a present addressee is more likely to be excluded from educator’s performance if it includes reading from a printed primary text. Finally, by eating during part of the session, the educator distorted the focus, removing it from the subject of the session and from the learners. These examples are each elements within the performance of the educator. In the lecture hall session, the educator also remained in a single area of the space, but the design of the amphitheater prevents any real movement between the two defined spaces. Instead, the educator attempted at several times to project out into the learners portion of the space. By addressing questions to the group and asking for questions (“It is so boring when I just talk”), the performance of the educator attempts to break down the barriers created by the physical space and cross over into the learner’s area. The crossing over into the space and attention of the learners was not really achieved in either the classroom or the lecture hall sessions. At the centre of this failure was the performance of the educator in each.

I contrast the classroom and lecture hall sessions with the workshop in the computer lab in the performance of the educator. A sense of enthusiasm, which is not excessive but is evident, was a strong element in the performance of the educator in the computer lab session. The session was divided into five stages:

1. Learners sit in rows and listen to a short presentation by educator

2. Learners move to the computer stations in small groups. Begin planning

3. Learners move to work table were materials are needed to complete tasks set in stage

4. Learners return to stations complete programming of artefacts assembled in stage

5. Learners demonstrate projects

The variation of formats represented by each of these five stages provided a shift in focus for the learners that had continuity but sufficient variation to be interesting. Between stages 2 and 3 coffee and cookies were made available to the learners and the educator joined them in chatting. The social pause for the group provides a contrast to the educator eating the apple alone in front of the group while continuing with the learning session from the classroom situation. The experience is shared in the workshop situation, while in the classroom it becomes a barrier to communication.

Conclusions

I draw a number of conclusions from my observations of three learning sessions. The use of technology has great potential in learning, but it is necessary for it to be well integrated into the experience to be useful. Technical support should accessible at all times when technology is used in the learning space. The technology should also be integrated into the learning experience rather than simply added on. If a piece of machinery or a printed hand out is to be used in the session it should serve a purpose other than being an object. It should be referred to in the broader contexts of the session. Any item of technology that is mechanical should be tested before it is used in the session. Related to technology are the levels of participation and engagement generated in the learning experience. The learners are not the only ones who should be sharing in a participative and engaged environment. It is necessary for the educator to show signs of engagement and enthusiasm in the experience. If the spaces for each of the learning sessions I observed are to be thought of as broken up into particular zones, where a single definition of use dominates a single area, then the position of the educator and the learners become influential. I think the educator should use the ways portions of the space are defined by the design and layout of the site of learning. Each educator I observed made attempts to breach the space between themselves and the learners, but not all attempts were successful. In the workshop example which I observed, the division of the session into five separate zones, where activities were combined with themes in their own areas, with their own objects, forced a total integration of the educator and the learners in the space. Once the space has been defined by the educator it should be the source of strategies for integration of learners and educators into a single space. Accompanying such strategies is the use of verbal techniques for addressing learners in direct ways, encouraging conversation and questions. A break and the sharing of food with the learners in the workshop situation created a shared space with the educator. By doing so hierarchies can be resisted and more effective channels opened in learning.

--------------------------------*--------------------------------------

Jet Junk and Speculative Architecture

Fanzine for Electronics and Aesthetics Junk Jet just released their second issue, which examines "Speculative Architecture." Published out of Stuttgart, Germany, each installment of Junk Jet pulls together a chaotic assortment of collage, text, art projects, lists, photographs, and much more. The term "speculative" is used to group "works of unpredictable architectures and volatile spaces within real and virtual environments." One such space could be the empty bedrooms found in booty dancing demos on YouTube minutes before the dancer enters the frame. Olia Lialina writes on Dennis Knopf's Bootyclipse which compiles fuzzy, webcam footage of these domestic interiors, while maintaining their original soundtrack. (This article also appeared as a section in her essay Infinite Seance 2.) The confused comments from non-art seeking YouTube users posted in response to Knopf's video entries draw out a sense of speculation in their attempts to understand what it is they're viewing. 0100101110101101.org's An Ordinary Building also toys with the viewer's expectations. They contribute documentation of this project, in which they placed a plaque on a nondescript building in Viterbo, Italy declaring that the structure "...was designed by an unknown architect in an irrelevant epoch and never belonged to an important person." The sign stands in contrast to others found throughout Italy which detail the history and importance of specific buildings. While Junk Jet's themes are generally quite open (JODI contribute a recipe to this issue), one salient strand seems to be the confusion and suspension which follow speculation, regardless of its architecture.

Space and Place in Architexture

I gave a lecture yesterday on Space and Place in Architexture for the Museum Studies course I have been working with. I made a long blog entry for the session on my teaching blog Augmented Reality. Accessible from the link are such gems as

"The power a place such as a mere room possesses determines not only where I am in the limited sense of cartographic location but how I am together with others (i.e. how I commingle and communicate with them) and even who we shall become together. the "how" and the "who" are intimately tied to the "where", which gives to them a special content and a coloration not available form any other source. Place bestows upon them "a local habitation and a name" by establishing a concrete situatedness in the common world. This emplacement is as social as it is personal. The ideolocal is not merely idiosyncratic or individual; it is also collective in character." Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Towards a New Understanding of the Place-World. (23)

Over on Augmented Reality there are images, a couple of videos, lots of quotes and a great map:

Remixidity: Hybrid Spaces for Exploration

"Space is at once result and cause, product and producer; it is also at stake, the locus of projects and the actions deployed as part of specific strategies and hence also the object of wagers on the future - wagers which are articulated, if never completed" Henri Lefebvre, The Production on Space (1991)

"In these moments of heterogeneous entanglements of the social, political and technological space the meaning of the game as an entertainment tool transformed into a tool for public opinion expression and reflection." S. Lidtner, B Nardi et. al. A Hybrid Cultural Ecology: World of Warcraft in China (Forthcoming)

Hybrid, mixed or augmented space is produced by physical and mediated means. While anchored in representative technologies, the mediated elements of a hybrid space can be experienced in an immediate and fully embodied physical sense.

Perhaps the public face of augmented space at the moment could be assigned to the Nintendo Wii game console:


"Wii sounds like 'we', which emphasizes that the console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii." Nintendo anticipates worldwide sales of the Wii to reach 50 million units by March 2009.

My intention with referencing the Wii is to present a relatively established, although recent, concept as indicative of augmented or mixed reality space. From the fairly linear and demarcated system which defines the Wii I hope to move into more complex, nuanced, distributed and fragmentary examples of such hybrid spaces.


The Ping Body by Stelarc
Primary to space is the body. Inhabiting space as embodied is explored by the Australian artist Stelarc, whose work raises questions concerned with the body.


Players streaming into Astor Hall at the New York Public Library on Friday to play video games on the Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and other systems.(New York Times)

Museums, libraries and teaching spaces are in themselves examples of 'mixed reality' space based on the concept of information spaces. How augmented reality can be developed in such environments is just beginning to unfold in the present time.

The Second House of Sweden
In July 2007 the Second House of Sweden, the Swedish embassy in the online virtual world of Second Life opened to the public. The Second House of Sweden functions as an information portal for those living outside the country to access real-time information and events. Guides have been employed at different times to answer questions and promote discussion around things 'Swedish'.

In January 2008 a event with the title “House of Sweden goes Virtu-Real” was staged. A function was held at the actual Swedish embassy in Washington DC, The House of Sweden. At the same time the Second House of Sweden (an exact scale model of the Washington House) held a function. Linking the two where two interactive video walls
in each location and a telephone link allowing for conversation between the two.


Installation of the video wall in Washington's House of Sweden.


Looking through the video wall, with telephone, from the Second House of Sweden.

The Second House of Sweden is an innovative project exploring concepts of branding on the global scale, hybrid space, presence and representation.

Tagging
The concept of tagging, attaching a word or key phrase to a web page or blog entry is well established on the contemporary internet. The use of Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFIDs) to tag objects and places is a way of creating augmented spaces. The use of RFIDs for education, information distribution and storage and art has only just begun to be explored.


Presentation of the Augmented Reality installation at the Open Day of the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague, The Netherlands - January 27, 2007

Alternate Reality Games (AGRs)
An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.
The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real-time and evolves according to participants' responses, and characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and often work together with a community to analyse the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimedia, such as telephones, email and mail but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium.

The production of space in an ARG can blend the physical with the virtual, or enmesh a mediated space with the familiar physical space of a neighbourhood or work environment. ARGs are geo-spatial, multi-modal, mobile and intermediated. One of the most recent ARGs is Traces of Hope, commissioned by the British Red Cross:

Vicious war in Northern Uganda has destroyed Joseph’s home and torn his family apart. He has one goal, to find out from the Red Cross if his mother is alive or dead.
Now he has arrived in the dangerous refugee camp they call Hopetown, he has 24 hours to track down the Red Cross messenger and he needs you to be his guide.
He has a satellite phone, you have the web – together you’ll make a great team. Time is running out; guide Joseph through sickness, fire and violence as together you follow his traces of hope.
Register to Play

Art as Augmented Reality
Art has long been a source of experimentation and investigation in regards to the potentials and boundaries of reality. In the field of augmented reality art is at the forefront of experimentation with the technologies available for blending and creating new forms of space.

Sheldon Brown (Director of the Centre for Research in Computing and the Arts at UCSD) is in my opinion one of the more interesting artists working in the area of augmented reality. Such projects as Mi Casa es Tu Casa result in a production of space that is hybrid, distributed and networked.


Mi Casa es tu Casa uses the contextual apparatus of museums with adjacent mission scopes to the art world, for bringing avant-garde strategies to engage ranges of social issues to venues that often use more pedantic forms of discourse." (Wikipedia)

Finally I would like to name a large scale project which problematise generally conception of space as physical and static. The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse (AOM) uses augmented reality technologies to articulate subjects as distributed in mixed or hybrid space.


The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse

The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse is a large group of new media artists and musicians which use Second Life as a space for coordinating and staging multimedia performances in real time over distance. These performances are achieved through the use of fast broadband internet connections and HUDs (Head Up Display) devices which allow for the running of samples from a central server. The effect created by the AOM performance creates an impression of shared space and immediacy.

Live Webcast: Trends and Technologies in Where 2.0

For Europeans: Tuesday 23 September 2008 19:00
Europe Daylight Time (GMT +02:00, Paris)

Tuesday 23 September 2008 13:00
Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -04:00, New York)

Duration: 1 hour

Description: In this live webcast, geospatial web expert Andrew Turner will discuss the current evolution of Where 2.0 and how it is affecting the entire landscape of Web 2.0 and next generation applications. Open standards such as GeoRSS, KML, and Microformats provide a huge wealth of information for mashups and applications, and libraries such as Mapstraction can be used for cartographic visualization. To illustrate the power of these tools, Andrew will talk about some interesting applications and hacks that have pushed the boundaries of the GeoWeb.

We'll also take a look at the future of location-enabled applications and services that developers can use today to provide users with better contextualized and localized information. Mobile sensors, augmented and immersive reality, and geo-games are just a few of the next generation Where 2.0 domain.

Andrew will also give a short demo of the just-launched GeoCommons Maker.

REGISTER

Paper submitted for a Pedegogy Course

The Classroom as Dialogic Space:
Questioning How Space Effects Learning

The spatial arrangement of physical learning and teaching environments is an important part of how behavior and attitudes are negotiated in it. Outcomes from teaching and learning sessions are argued here as having degrees of relation to the space the session is conducted in. Following Bakhtin (1982) it is possible to build a relationship between discourse and dialogism, whereby the centrifugal (hierarchical, ordered, centralized) and centripetal (dispersed, horizontal) forces at work in a communicative act or assemblage (i.e. a classroom) are made apparent through analysis of the exchanges which take place in such a textual and discursive environment. The ‘authoring of space’ can be a way of discussing architecture and design in relation to teaching and learning practice and it is upon this premise that the paper is grounded. The paper discusses a small action research based study comparing spatial arrangements and dialogic interaction in learning and teaching environments where heightened dialogic learning is seen as the optimal state for all participants.

Introduction
The dialogic classroom (Galin and Latchaw 1998) is a space where teachers and students dedicate themselves to re-seeing their situations by “disbanding their habitual orientations” and learning to “restructure and re-examine” conflicting sets of “perception and understanding”. Dialogic teaching and learning involve, in part, openness to the unknown and a rejection of stale or habitual approaches to education, especially within contexts that involve technology. (Galin and Latchaw xi) In relation to dialogic learning Koschmann (1999) describes it “as the process of multiple voices coming into contact, both within and across speaker-produced utterances”. It is reasonable to equate the classroom with the spatial arrangement implied by Koschmann in that voices are situated spatially (“coming into contact”, “within and across”) in relation to each other.
Over a time period of one week research was conducted in four learning sessions within particularly defined spaces on the campus of Umeå University. An overall assessment of each session was undertaken using criteria from Taylor et al (1997) regarding constructivist learning environments that exhibit dialogic qualities. In these environments students are able to

* Negotiate with the teacher about the nature of their learning activities
* Participate in the determination of assessment criteria and undertake self assessment and peer-assessment.
* Engage in collaborative and open-ended inquiry with fellow students.
* Participate in reconstructing the social norms of the classroom.

The criteria from Taylor et. al. in conjunction with those of the dialogic classroom listed by Galin and Latchaw ( “disbanding their habitual orientations”, “restructure and re-examine”, and “perception and understanding”), were used to evaluate the dialogic qualities of four learning spaces at Umeå University where the design of the physical space is questioned.

_____________________________________________________________

First pages of a paper presented as part of a pedegogy course I have taken in the last months or so.

'The World'

I just watched a documentary on Dubai. Perhaps the most outragous feature of the tiny kingdom is The World:

The World Islands, are a collection of man-made islands shaped into the continents of the world, located off the coast of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. It will consist of 300 small private artificial islands divided into four categories - private homes, estate homes, dream resorts, and community islands.

Each island costs between 10-45 million US dollars to buy (without building, just the land). Of course it reminded me of Second Life´(in principle anyway...if not in magnitude).

Reflexive Architecture, Second Life Machinima

Reflexive Architecture, by Keystone Bouchard, Jon Brouchoud http://www.archsl.wordpress.com

Installation on Architecture Island and exhibition on Info Island for artslib, September 2007. Scripted by Fumon Kubo. Music by gurdonark, Restless Sleep.

The Production of Space

Tribute to Henri Lefebvre

I had to return to the undergrad library today The Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre. I only managed to read 312 pages of the 430 pages but it was a week overdue and I could not extend the loan as there is a waiting list to borrow it (I will buy it when I get the money and finish it). It was not an easy read, requiring much concentration and I took pages of notes from it, but what a book. I have not been so impressed by a text for a long time. First published in French in 1974, The Production of Space is a tour de force of enormous intellectual proportions. Lefebrve dissects the western evolution of conceptualised and representational space, beginning with Ancient Greece and going up to the point of the alignments leading to our present global capital ascendancy ('globalization'). Architectural space, dramatic space, the fictionalized space of novels, avant garde art, urban planning, the body, and nation states are united under the canopy of critical spatial practice by Lefebvre. His analysis is dialogic and intense. I have gained many insights into my own work on the spatial elements and assumptions present in digital literary texts from The Production of Space. For this I am very appreciative.