[Air-l] An Internet Without Space

[Michele White]

Dear Colleagues,

I want to thank all of you for an interesting set of questions. I am
particularly touched by Charles' kind words and challenging remarks. I
like Charles' larger call for new methods and alternative languages for
viewing and experiencing. My project may attempt this in a very small way
but not, as Charles suggests, at the level of a total epistemology shift. 

Wouldn't it be interesting to do an AoIR pre-conference workshop or
journal issue that interrogates the ways that different disciplines and
academic practices read a specific Internet setting? What fun to talk
through how we come to understand sites and the implications of these
readings. Such a project might allow us to articulate, change, and rework
methodologies and question the implications of our academic practices.

I think that one of the ways that Charles' and my reading diverge is at
the level of understanding the term "space." While I certainly relate what
is understood as "three-dimensional space" to the expression of relational
arrangements between colors, forms, or other patterns, I also think there
may be a number of differences between saying "I enter the screen" and
"the 'enter' message in the middle of the web image suggests that the body
can enter the screen."

Charles' model might encourage us to question the term "middle" or such
art history designations as "lower quadrant" and "upper right corner." I
believe that these terms rely on a certain understanding of centered and
singular embodiment and yes arrangements and have interestingly remained
largely uninterrogated even with feminist and postmodern scholars. 

In writing about the web, such relational phrases as "middle" and "right
side" also suggest a stability and regularity of the image that is not
always reliable or present. We may be able to find some form of
alternative reading and system of knowledge in the work of net artists
like Mark Napier (http://potatoland.org/ see especially
http://www.potatoland.org/shredder/shredder.html) and Lisa Jevbratt
(http://www.whitney.org/artport/exhibitions/biennial2002/jevbratt.shtml).
Their works provide us with ways to look at web and other Internet content
differently. Napier's browsers indicate that images, texts, and viewing
are structured by software. They also provide a kind of shock to the
viewer. Is there a reason to think about chat without word spacing and
linewrap or a web sites without a translation of html tags and images into
a more "easily" readable arrangement?

I would agree with Nancy that the spatial metaphor is employed more often
in some Internet settings than others and is also more easily deployed
when critically writing about some settings. It seems to me that there may
also be an ever present convention that is conveyed by windows, browser
directional arrows and other menus, and is made present even when the user
chooses software that has rejected such conventions. 

I am not suggesting that we ignore the ways that users design, write, and
represent such settings with spatial terms. Instead, I would like to pay
more attention to the ways that the term "space" and an accompanying set
of ideas function. For instance, I would like to ask why varied gaming
settings render certain kinds of spaces and embodied experiences and to
consider the ways that these renderings affect the user's engagement with
the game, other sites, and society.

All my best,
Michele