Activity 2 Whats are the AFFORDANCES of Network Spaces?
DEADLINE TUESDAY SEP 8th Midnight 23:59 GMT.
Length of time you will need to complete the activity: at least 2.5 hour
Format: discussion thread
Thank you for your lively and thoughtful response, very inspiring.
Co-creation and learning are processes that are not linear...and it is like a network!
So, you can aways keep responding to others in other threads and keep developing the questions. The activities are interrelated threads, and these two first activities are geared to collectively enhance the knowledge context and framework for the further development of dialogue and creative interaction/collaboration.
The deadlines are suggested boundaries to keep a sustainable pace.
We have created a work Cloud visualisation with all the key words written by you until today the activity 1 and we have also extracted the keywords that appeared more than once. That may reflect the group research mind! Contemplate that!
- communication, encounter, framing, gender, meeting, movement, online, people, participation, performing, physical, practice, relationship, science, sex, share, technology, time, tools, understanding, virtual, visual
All of these terms imply a relation between embodied experience, context and conceptual constructs that are fundamentally linked to cognitive processes of situated perception and action specific to the kind of environments that we couple with .
How we create, experience and understand space and its potentials deployment of behaviours and agency in the different "designed spaces" or technological environments that we inhabit and perform within?
Our interaction with digital tolls and specially networked spaces makes us reconsider conventional, simplistic and dualistic notions about the on-line and off-line spaces.
For this activity, we would like to offer a theoretical perspective and the work of some artists as tool for understanding and facilitating further exploration of the networked AS SPACE that is created by your interaction. The examples are nor exhaustive are just to lead axis of thinking relevant to the questions.
Instructions:
READ the text and watch the videos about some of the artists works and place your responses speculating on the following questions:
WHAT DO NETWORKED SPACES AFFORDS?
DID YOU DISCOVER NEW AREAS OF INTERESTS?
DO YOU SEE ANY KIND OF SPECIFIC AFFORDANCE THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO EXPLORE?
SHARE SOME WORKS THAT INSPIRE YOU AND THAT YOU CONSIDER RELEVANT FOR TH GROUP?
WHAT ARE THE AFFORDANCES OF NETWORKED ENVIRONMENTS FOR CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICE?
In this process of understanding fundamental conditions on how humans co-create SPACE and ENVIRONMENTS as an interactive process: hence the notion of AFFORDANCES.
Please read the following text
Jenny Kennedy, in her paper Conceptualising social interactions in Networked Spaces writes:
"Networked spaces are spaces of converged contexts. Given this how can the cues for interactions be properly identified that allows for the relations between interaction-specific contexts? One such way might be to apply Miller and Johnson-Laird‘s concept of regions as de Certeau has done (Miller & Johnson-Laird, 1976, as cited in de Certeau, 1984, p. 126). Miller and Johnson-Laird refer to the space created by an interaction as a ̳region‘. The concept of regions identifies a boundary between interactions whilst still allowing for the relations between interactions to be examined. Each interaction-delineated region can be analysed for how it might shape or be shaped by the other interactions occurring within the same networked space thus acknowledging multi-modal behaviour, though breaking interactions into regions does little to breach the online/offline computer-mediated/non- computer mediated divide. There is some currency in Pierre Bourdieu‘s concept of fields where interactions are mediated by cultural, social and economic capital, and by which frameworks interactions are grounded, though this also does not sufficiently account for the relations between interactions (Bourdieu, 1984).
Consider the following scenario:
Clare is meeting a friend for mid-afternoon coffee. Clare arrives first at the coffee shop where they are meeting so she orders a coffee at the counter and takes a seat at one of the tables. While she waits she digs out her smart phone and starts to write a hurried email to a work colleague. Her phone beeps and she interrupts her email writing to check the message. It is from her friend who she is waiting for, to say that they have just left their office and will be five minutes later than planned. She texts back then resumes writing her email, now taking more time to consider the phrasing and include additional details. Having sent the email, Clare opens the Facebook app on her phone and ‘checks in’ to the coffee shop. She then checks the profile page of the friend she is waiting for then browses through the news feed looking at other status updates and posts. She comments on a photo and responds to two different conversations on people’s walls, one of whom is a mutual friend of the person she is waiting for. Her friend arrives at the coffee shop, they great each other with a hug and a kiss on each cheek.
Paul Dourish divides theories of contextualization into three groups: positivist, critical and phenomenological (Dourish, 2004). In a positivist framework context is informative, delineable and stable and is separate from activity (p.5). In the scenario described above where Clare is sitting in a coffee shop but is also on Facebook and engaging in asynchronous interactions by both SMS and email, a positivist contextualization might be that the setting is a public commercial place, the relationship between Clare and the person she is meeting with is friendship-based and the relationship between Clare and the person she is emailing is business-related. It might count how many profiles she views on Facebook or how many posts she reads and which networks those people are from in relation to Clare.
Critical definitions of context are somewhat broader and tend towards the view that context is produced socio-economically reflecting relations of power and control (Dourish, 2004). Critical definitions would include the relationship between Clare and the work colleague, such as whether one is in a superior position to the other, the reciprocity of the relationships between Clare and the contacts on Facebook as well at the reciprocity of the relationship between her and the person she is waiting for. That she is waiting might also be of significance to the critical context.
A phenomenological framework defines context as relational and dynamic. Context is particular to setting or occasion and arises from activity. An example of phenomenological definition based on the scenario above could relate to the reason Clare is meeting her friend, if it is to share news, to console or celebrate or if it is a routine that they act upon each week at the same time. This understanding of the meeting will be negotiated between Clare and her friend. Likewise, the setting is a place chosen and agreed upon by the subjects for subjective reasons, perhaps because of its proximity to another place, its ambience or the perceived privacy of its tables. Clare may write the email to her work colleague because it is an urgent matter or because she does not like to sit in a public place alone and unoccupied. Also a phenomenological contextualization of Clare‘s checking Facebook would consider her subjective interpretation of what she views there.
A phenomenological paradigm, rather than positivist or critical, best allows for the consideration of converged contexts and the dialogue that occurs as a result of such convergence. There are many distinct relations within the scenario described above which may each have bearing on the subject‘s experience of that space. Rather than consider each contextual element in singularity (and thereby potentially perpetuating the online and offline divide), the dynamic between contextual elements can be analyzed as intertwining narratives that produce social space (Massey, 2005). These spaces are referred to in this work as networked spaces. Networked spaces are dynamic, the contexts or narratives within them relational. It is through the lived experiences of interactions in these spaces that the contexts of social interactions are suggested to be best examined.
Applying a phenomenological framework considers the negotiations subjects make in social practices which enables their interactions to be examined in a way that is relational and dynamic. This approach to contextualization is most appropriate for networked spaces for it allows for the consideration of converged contexts that change over time and the dialogue that occurs as a result of these convergences.
Affordances
Meaning is negotiated not only across interactions but also within interactions. When negotiating meaning in interactions subjects act on cues. These cues are relational to the social structure in which the interaction occurs. Subjects perceive these cues as affordances that can be acted upon. Affordances are relational and can be seen as the perception of features that infer structure (Hogan, 2009). Perception of these features is relative to one‘s being-in-the world.
James Gibson defines affordances as available features that provide potential for action, perceived or not (Gibson, 1986). A less positivist definition is that affordances are perceived, actual or not and that affordances indicate properties of use which are dependent on a subject‘s positioning (Norman, 1988). Social affordances are the properties or features that are perceived as enabling social action. To give an example, if I am sitting at a bar with friends and we each have our mobile phones on the table in front of us we may each perceive a feature of those phones as enabling us to make calls (ignoring for the moment the many other features phones with smart capabilities may have). Though each subject may perceive the feature of a telephone, the type of interaction that the telephone affords may differ from subject to subject. While we may each perceive the feature of the phone as functioning to make or receive calls, we will each perceive the affordances of that feature differently depending on what numbers we have access to, who has access to our number that they might call us, whether it is a business phone used only for professional purposes, a personal phone used reluctantly under duress of a family member to remain contactable or whether we have sufficient credit to make a call. Though each of us may perceive the features of the phone similarly, the social affordances of those features to enable interactions may be experienced differently.
Hogan identifies informational, relational, temporal and spatial cues which mediate interactions by suggesting affordances of action to subjects (Hogan, 2009, pp. 30-40). Information cues are the content or context of interactions, they include gestures, expressions, language, text, symbols or objects coded with significance. Informational cues might be the name on the screen, indicating who is calling or being called or the sound, sight, vibration of the phone ringing. There is a distinction between potential information that may (not) be accessible and information that is available to the subject and that can be accessed or interpreted in a meaningful way (p. 32). Relational cues are similar to informational cues in that they are semiotic by nature though relational cues are based around the relationship between subjects rather than content or context. Relational cues are the relationship between subjects such as whether everyone knows each other or if there are people from different networks present. Temporal cues structure time and mark the occurrence of events. Temporal cues also provide information regarding access such as when someone might be available to contact or how an interaction might occur. From a socially-orientated perspective, spatial cues apply to place and distance (p. 38). Spatial cues suggest what relations are possible within a given setting. Temporal cues in the examples above might be indicated by the time of day. If it is evening then a phone call is likely to be personal whereas if the above scenario is set at lunch on a weekday, then it could be that we are all taking a break from work and may be interrupted at any moment by a business- related phone call. Spatial cues might be the placement of each phone to the subjects indicating probable ownership or spatial relations between subjects might indicate that should one subject‘s phone start to ring it is not likely to be another person sat at the same
table who is calling them. ""
Read or download paper here:
Jenny Kennedy is a Research Fellow in Computing and Information Systems a PhD in Media Studies at Swinburne University of Technology.
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