From
Dr. Sally R. Munt
Reader in Media and Communication Studies
School of Information Management,
University of Brighton
Watts Building,
Lewes Road
BRIGHTON
BN2 4GJ
UK
Telephone 01273 600900
Fax 01273 642405
***
Due to the unforseen withdrawal of 2 contributors to this volume to be
published by Cassell, I am looking for 2 additional chapters - the content
to concern the use of spatial paradigms/practices in technology.
Extended details below - email me if you are interested - or please pass
the message on,
Many thanks
NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND SPATIAL PRACTICES
(WORKING TITLE)
EDITED BY
SALLY R. MUNT
University of Brighton
School of Information Management
RATIONALE
Spatial theory has grown spectacularly in the 1990s from the pioneering
theory of Henri Lefebvre and its applications in art, architecture and
urban studies to one of the fundamental metaphors of critical thought. The
evolution of cultural geography involving conceptions of space, place and
belonging has occurred alongside a new evaluation of major paradigms such
as post-colonialism and psychoanalysis as spatially-based theories of Self
and Other. From the microcosm of personal identity to the exegesis of
nation, landscape and culture, spatial models have become intrinsic to
intellectual formations.
Within technologically-grounded disciplines such as Computer Science,
Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information Science, spatial models
are increasingly used to gain insight into the complex configurations of
people, information and representation made possible by new generations of
communication tools. Spatial notions are intrinsic to the use and
understanding of technologies such as computers, the Internet, mobile
phones, closed circuit television and cable and satellite broadcasting.
Spatial metaphors are now well established intellectual tools for
designing and analysing new systems, with the desktop metaphor and the
World Wide Web as prime examples. Technology users refer easily to
interfaces and knowledge bases as spaces in which they operate and even
exist, sophisticated games and virtual reality environments allow users
to experience alternative three dimensional worlds, and technological and
organisational developments such as portable computers, electronic village
halls, teleworking and hotdesking blur the traditional picture of the
worker in front of the office terminal, posing questions about
technologies in both work- and domestic spaces.
This collection attempts a creative synthesis between spatial concerns in
social and cultural theory and new information and communication
technologies. Although aspects of spatial theory have been implicit in
conceptualisations of technology use, they have not been coherently
identified and interpreted by current research. Each discipline brings its
own insights. In particular, HCI foregrounds the notion of technologies as
designed artefacts: not simply ready-made objects which people adopt and
adapt but products which themselves bear the mark of spatial thinking in
their very design. HCI researchers into collaborative computing bring a
body of research primarily from the world of work, which can be usefully
combined with the traditional Cultural Studies focus on theorising
experience in relation to daily praxis. Thus, the aim of this collection
is to identify and augment new intellectual developments in spatial
modalities when applied to the environment of new technologies.
Contributors have been encouraged to submit chapters which variously
explore the notions of space in and around new technologies. The
collection seeks to investigate how we use notions of space to appropriate
novel technologies and to translate them into extensions of ourselves and
our cultural life, through sequences of mental mapping which appropriate
often unconscious concepts such as here/there, public/private, home/work
and translate them into technological practices. At the intersection of
the human being and the machine there is spatial praxis.
The understanding of new technologies, especially computer-based
technologies, draws on notions of spatial configuration and location at
multiple levels.
One level is the purely physical and literal, in particular the siting and
use of the more visible/tangible instruments of new technologies in the
landscape. Some examples of new practices brought about by such
technological innovation include the ubiquity of the laptop and the
personal organiser which move the computer out of the office and into the
train, the meeting room and the home, the creation of cyberbars which
integrate computers into recreational spaces, the trend towards home
computers as toys and educational tools and the move to teleworking from
home. These new cultural practices raise questions about the changing
conventions surrounding attitudes to the spatial setting or place of
particular technologies. In an office context, we have seen the beginnings
of a reconceptualisation of the workplace which comes with the increasing
acceptance of new communication and information technologies. A related
aspect is the move to wearable and ubiquitous or ambient displays and
devices, which are designed to blend into conventional land/cityscapes.
At another level, the graphical user interface originally made popular by
the Apple Macintosh has given currency to the notion of the screen as a
place: interface developers, for instance, routinely speak of the screen
as "real estate". Spatial notions play an important role in the design and
use of software interfaces, as a means of allowing people to grasp
relationships between functions and objects which otherwise would remain
insubstantial and largely incomprehensible. The so-called "desktop
metaphor" is arguably the greatest advance ever in human computer
interaction, allowing a user to envisage programs and files, essentially
collections of bits and bytes, as objects laid out in a two dimensional
space which has features in common with an office desk. Spatial aspects of
two dimensional screen layout such as proximity, sequencing, orientation
and position are very often pressed into service by individual computer
users to bring order to their work artefacts. Three dimensional interfaces
can go further, offering conceptualisations of information of all kinds -
databases of stocks and shares, World Wide Web pages, design ideas - in
terms of constantly evolving stylised representations of real-world
landscapes.
Spatial metaphors have come into their own recently in the computer world
thanks to developments in networking, which have made possible on the one
hand the World Wide Web and on the other distributed communication and
computer supported co-operative working. Users of the Web have tended to
draw on familiar spatial concepts to cope with the millions of documents
available. The idea of the site or the Home page, the notion of "going to"
or "visiting" an HTML document (when in fact any movement is in the
inverse direction), the provision of site maps and exit signs and the idea
of being "lost in hyperspace" all point to the prevalence of the notion of
web pages as places in space, while on the producer side of the Web, the
notion of spatial constructs for presenting information and services has
been taken up enthusiastically by constructors of the Web equivalents of
shopping malls, museums, university auditoriums, laboratories, social
clubs and other relatively familiar settings, creating the possibility of
peopling these virtual spaces and forming virtual communities. The
possibility of connecting work colleagues via the Internet has created
interest in interfaces which would make it possible to work easily at a
distance. This effort has been informed by spatial concepts, with the
development of interfaces allowing images of people working apart to
appear on a single screen, even in a virtual reality setting. Here, rather
than the computer merging into the workplace as in the desktop metaphor
mentioned above, the entire workplace is reproduced inside the computer
itself.
New media technologies also function by appropriating space as a framing
metaphor to enable consumption and use. Visual technologies such as
cable, satellite and closed circuit television, and digital cinema
provide spaces of meaning for the consumer to occupy, in which s/he
interacts through processes of identification and subjection. Depth,
surface, liminality, transcendence, emplacement, positionality - these
spatial concepts are intrinsic to organising visual consumption, and thus
central to the way modern identities are formed. By making more visible
the parameters of spatial practices in new technologies, the collection
seeks to stimulate their more critical deployment. Spatial metaphors
suffuse our technological, social, and cultural environments; by analysing
these conceptual underpinnings we can further develop conscious modes for
technological interaction.
The book will be provisionally organised into four sections (subject to
final manuscripts): Conceptualising Virtual Space, Virtual Embodiment,
Virtual Communities, and Spatial Agency & New Technologies. Certain
themes overlap:
o how are spatial metaphors "deeply" implicated within innovation
technologies and user/consumer paradigms;
o are there "real" spaces of the body, of the city, which intersect
with conceptual spaces of "virtual" reality;
o how are virtual communities dependent upon grounded spatial
metaphors of near and far, us and them;
o how are the real and metaphorical spaces of electronic cultures
quantified, qualified, and regulated;
o how is information packaged according to spatial practices of
consumption?
There are many imaginative deployments to be considered, but by bringing
together such a range of international scholars, the editors are confident
that this collection will be of significant importance to the way we
consider space, and its technological practices.
Contents
INTRODUCTION NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND SPATIAL PRACTICES
Sally R. Munt
SECTION I CONCEPTUALISING VIRTUAL SPACE
Judith Roof
University of Indiana
Depth Technologies
Per Persson
S.I.C.S. Stockholm
A Comparative Study of Digital and Cinematic Space with Special
Focus on Navigational Issues (provisional title)
Radhika Gajjala
Bowling Green State University Feminist E-Spaces: (Dis)Embodied Ways of
Being
SECTION II VIRTUAL EMBODIMENT
Zoe Sofoulis
University of Western Sydney
Smart Spaces at the Final Frontier
Kate ORiordan
University of Brighton
Playing with Virtual Space: Rewriting the Rules in Computer Games
Kathleen LeBesco
Marymount Manhattan College A Space for the Fat Body: The Internet and
the Politics of Resignification
David Horner
University of Brighton
Cyborgs and Cyberspace: Personal Identity and Moral Agency
SECTION III VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
Jeffrey Fisher
Yale University A Place Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Liminality,
Transcendence, and Virtual Communities
Duncan Sanderson & Andre Fortin
Universit du Quebec/ Universit Laval
Social, Community, and Virtual Spaces: the Internet as a Medium
for Local Actions
SECTION IV SPATIAL AGENCY & NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Aylish Wood
University of Aberdeen
Fresh Kill: Information Technologies as Sites of Resistance
Irmi Karl
London School of Economics In the Company of Strangers: Mobile Phones
and the Conception of Space
Rosa Ainley
Independent Scholar CCTV:Keeping an Eye on Them: Control and the
Visual
Dr. Sally R. Munt
Reader in Media and Communication Studies
School of Information Management,
University of Brighton
Watts Building,
Lewes Road
BRIGHTON
BN2 4GJ
UK
Telephone 01273 600900
Fax 01273 642405
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