The Ambiguous Construction of Place and Space (original) (raw)
Related papers
2002
This paper explores the relationship between place, computation, and experience. In particular, it seeks to understand the zone that exists between the digital world on the one hand, and the physical world on the other. It is suggested that the ideal of "immersive ...
Due to recent developments at the area of communication and information technologies new possibilities are arising for production of space. Cyberspace is the key term argued currently regarding the production of the new space. The term cyberspace coming from two words cybernetics and space was first coined by William Gibson, a cyber punk novelist, in his book Neuromancer. This new realm providing “space” for real communication in virtual space, includes many new tools for the possibility of “new space” experience. The design problematic starts at this point. How does the physical space and cyberspace come together and within which possibilities they can co-exist. In another way, can the pattern of relationship of these two spaces (physical space and cyberspace) extract a new understanding of space? And in the context of this new understanding of space, can we develop a new point of view for the architectural design problematic. Aesthetic phenomenon can be explained through the means of experience, discovery, getting in to relation, production of sensation, rereading as text and hermeneutics. The authentic experience of a place, its multilayered and narrative structure and the pattern of relationships within this place accounts for the aesthetic phenomenon of space. The infinite layered structure of cyberspace, the patterns of relationships regardless of the geographic location, point out a new trans-aesthetic condition. But confronting this infinite layered structure can cyber space provide a new sense of place? The main goal of this article to discover the possibilities of a new space by overlapping physical space and cyberspace, and in this process of discovery, to understand the conditions one space dominating the other and to form a new understanding within a holistic point of view in the context of pattern of relationships between cyberspace and physical space to the aesthetic experience phenomena. Keywords: Space, Cyberspace, Aesthetic Experience, Actual, Virtual, Reality, Co-Existence, Sense of Place, Hermeneutics, Digital Culture.
THE DYNAMIC LANDSCAPE OF VIRTUAL SPACE EXPLORED THROUGH A MULTIDISCIPLINARY KALEIDOSCOPE
Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov , 2017
A social life disconnected from space it`s difficult to conceive. However, in sociology, the concept of space is still underdeveloped, missing from theories, dictionaries, or encyclopaedias. For more than a century, sociologists have assumed space as a passive scene for social actions, and implied as material, static, continuous and linearly travelled. In the new context of information society, economic globalisation, and postmodern hyper-reality, scholars question the conventional definitions of space. We believe sociologists will arrive at a more nuanced understanding of space, by taking an interdisciplinary approach, and focusing on how space is lived. We use virtual space as a proxy for understanding how complex space can be, and frame it through the concept of " cultural landscape " to capture its relational, dynamic, and socially constructed dimensions. Our aim is to illustrate the dynamism, versatility, and fluidity of virtual space by moving from one discipline and theoretical perspective to the other and interpreting the newly configured landscapes. We show that virtual space is a discontinuous imaginary process, organised in networks with multiple layers, experienced as a journey into a narrative text or as a " consensual hallucination " , where the evanescence of the body and the anonymity of the self boost the quest for authenticity, self-discovery, self-disclosure and intimacy. Nonetheless, virtual space, due to its potential to equalise statuses, minimise authority and multiply the audiences of messages, is becoming the enabler of Habermasian communicative rationality, rousing moral consciousness and triggering civic actions.
Towards re-definition of space-ness in the post-mechanical age: Methodological notes
The aim of this study is to describe a model of the dynamics of constituting a living place that is peculiar to the material condition of humanity today and that lends itself to empirical studies of meta-development and sustainability of the human-made environment. The empirical point of departure is the novel character of contemporary knowledge and knowing and the shift it leads to from the transparent, perspectival space to networked quasi-objects, from design to meta-design. It is argued that the self depends for its ability to recognise itself primarily on collisions that suspend the flow of spatialised complexity. The sites of such collisions are superpositions of virtual and material interactions – spatio-temporal instabilities or warps. The structure of such collisions mirrors the mechanisms characteristic of the functioning of our techno-scientific civilisation and associated with different levels of measurement, embodiment, and organisation that pattern the human unconscious, the material and knowledge systems, the 'lifeworlds'. This proposition expands the notion of the Schmarsow-Benjamin 'elbow room' (Spielraum) and gives a perceptual-empirical meaning to the self's ontology, to the 'living place' and its 'sustain-ability'. The 'elbow room' may be viewed as a dynamic impact parameter – an effective existence radius of the self – as an assemblage of the self, place and interactive narratives binding them dynamically together.
Edition Kulturwissenschaft, 2014
Increasingly, the virtual became reality by a hybridization of the world as we knew it: the process that went on in recent years is one of a technically assisted hybridization of both space and self, the »old« world is becoming virtualized and functionalized to a degree never experienced before. For the first time in human history, we have reached a threshold where we have not only to re-assert but to redefine ourselves, as regards our fundamental terms of understanding what world means for us, our base of existence and now an assemblage of mixed realities; and connected, what being human means. With a Preface by Gerd Stern.