EXCEPRTS FROM CLOSENESS DINNER DISCUSSIONS

AXEL STOCKBURGER

First of all i have to say that i really enjoyed the show. The interview piece develops two very strong aspects that i am interested in -
1) The clever use of mobile phones as image devices that reverberate with the the collection of singular perspectives/individual narratives.
2) I am specifically interested in the relationship between space and spatial experience and personal narrative. Tiny grammatical shifts can hold a lot of
information about the complex issues of human interaction with space.

I was intrigued to find different approaches to the task of describing space - some following the modus that George Perec has demonstrated in “La Vie mode d’emploi” or “Especes d’espaces” where he meticulously describes the contents of a house down to the last cigarette butt. Others seemed to echo what Michel de Certeau has described in the practice of everyday life as descriptions of the map type (“you see …next to this object, there is that … ). However, it seems that spatial memory emerges from spatialising actions - or, to paraphrase de Certeau, the city is made into a space by walking. In the same manner one remembers relations between objects in a “container-spa ce” because they are part of a ritual or a set of actions (perfect example: Perec’s description of the objects on his workdesk and how they are moved/used). At a conference about neuroaesthetics at goldsmith’s last year, there was a clinical neurologist who spoke about certain cases of loss of memory: the striking thing was that, seemingly people who had lost their legs, also lost a large amout of space-related memories that they had gained while they were walking. (sorry can’t remember the name of the neurologist now - maybe i’ll dig)This curious fact seems to underline the fact that spatial memory is actively gained and depends on full bodily involvement, rather than vision and hearing alone.
Or literally: your feet remember the streets. I am quite curious what happens to spatial memory if people are using parts of this body image system - as in computer games, which generate strong senso-motoric and kinaesthetic links between
the simulation and the player’s body. in other words: do people who play a game remember the spaces it represents differently than those who watch a film or other media representation?

My own experience leads to a yes (but how) - i remember walking across the red square in Moscow for the first time in my life 2 years ago, and i had the strange sensation of revisiting a place i knew intimately. I had been there, in the game Medal of Honor, defending the square against fictional 2nd WW german soldiers (who obviously never made it there in reality). Moreover, it was not necessarily a “visual memory” (as one knows the place from a myriad of films) - but rather one of those curious body memories - i knew where to walk in and out of the square, and what would be around the corner.
[so much for now - please excuse typos :)]



HANNAH JONES

Thank you all for a lovely dinner party discussion and thank you especially to Annja for sharing your creative and culinary talents.

I have been thinking about spaces in the built environment that are a by-product of speed culture.

‘Fast flowing streams result in the loss of intermediate surfaces – in other words, the spaces that do not lie directly on the path of forward movement, of progress. These spaces are being forgotten and overlooked, and ultimately abandoned to dereliction. As the precondition for a better quality of life, more attention must be devoted to these intermediate spaces, the spaces of slow motion, of reflection, of dreaming, of story telling.’ (Ezio Manzini, 2002)

MATT WADE

First of all, thanks for the great food, the discussion and to Annja for giving us something interesting to talk about.

Of the many topics we discussed, I am particularly interested in the discussions into security - both in the street and online, and find some interesting parallels with Annja’s work. Historically, as banks and eCommerce have lead the charge into encrypted data transfer an element of trust has developed for users into sites beginning with “https”. But new social networks are emerging from everyday users through comment and the [url=http://technol ogy.guardian.co.uk/ news/story/0,16559, 1586891,00.html/] rise of the Blog [/url] to judging legitimacy of trade, and by making connections through folksonomy . Thus, new spaces are being defined by users, which have new elements of trust shaped by the cohort. Here I see the relationship to Annja’s work, in the idea of how personal perspectives and their relationship to technology can shape space.