Day 4

Getting it together

Workshop: Nadia EL-Imam


Multiple Spaces, Multiple Selves

We have any number of social networking applications up an running at any one time, each with a different profile representing our presence in that online space, and It is safe to say that the variations in how we choose to present ourselves in the different online spaces are in some way connected to our personalities and to our ”self”. As the overlap between online and physical real-worlds grows, the question of what constitutes the self is brought to surface ( as indeed it always is). On the one hand we have the embodiment debate with its proponents arguing against dismbodied thought in combination with the common sense notion of the individual as a center of action and consciousness. On the other we have Shannon´s linear theory of communication and the AI communities attempts to create intelligent systems by infusing them with data assumed to be unadultered by interaction with the physical material transmitting it, thus extracting them from the very physical real-world, within which they are designed to function as intelligent agents.


Analysis and Synthesis



Our discussion today moved seamlessly between the issues of identity, the self, ownership and embodiment theory. It seems that contrasts between the experiences in Second Life and the immersive environment presented by Bertrand Gondouin gave rise to many ideas and insights central to the course topic. We approached the communicating of embodied knowledge, understanding, emotions, thoughts and mental states to others in both hybrid and traditionally "physical real world" environmens and contexts. It seems that the students found conversation a discussion a useful method for narrowing down the many thoughts and ideas that they have been battling to synthesize into a coherent basis for thier future work within their respective disciplines. We came to the conclusion that these issues are in fact existential ones, and that the questions posed are the ones we always return to in som form or another; it is the differences in context- and discipline specific code and discourse that make it difficult to identify them and apply our aggregated bodies of knowledge when attempting to answer them.

People exist in multiple spaces simultaneously, in multiple worlds. It is not obvious what the ”self” is or where one person ends and another begins in this context. How do we meet these challenges when the design paramenters are too many to mention and growing? We know that immersive field studies offer the designer unparalled insight into contextually relevant challenges posed and opporunities offered by and in certain situations (immersive field studies report). In this course we use a mish-mash of technologies and materials in order to find personal strategies aimed at immersing designers and artists in the problem-space or ”inside the head” of the recipients of their ideas or solutions. Today we discussed how one would go about creating an environment where the designer or artist is immersed in the same physical space in which abstract multiple worlds coexist as is the user/viewer . This is a space where the relationships between the whats, whens and wheres of designing, experiencing, participating, observing and being observed are obscure, dynamic and difficult to verbalise …


On Interaction Design

In designing interaction, our understanding of the interface (what it is, what it does and how it can be engineered to improve our lives) rests on our having knowledge about how human beings relate to people, things and the world outside of their bodily or material selves. We have aggregated, and are continuously gathering, information about the relational basis of selfhood or our selves as formed by our social and societal relations. Our selves as being driven by the needs of bodies acting as machines, as transportation for genes and as the source of ever changing wills and desires have have been explored by the Evolutionary biologists and Marquis de Sades of our times. My interest, as does those of the neuroscientists, cognitive psychologsts and surrealistic art movements lies in exploring the dynamic of the multidimentional accounts of the self in situations where we are relfectively both embodied and disembodied simultaneously.


You, and me and everyone we know...

I believe that in order to help human beings meet, understand and respond to the challenges that new modes of being, communicating and interacing bring, we need to being by understanding them. Perhaps a good place to start is from within ourselves, by understanding how they change what being our ”self” actually involves. I for one am very much pleased by the students having taken on this challenge in such an open-minded manner and I very much look forward to the coming two weeks. Also, although they will be re-joining us throughout the duration of the course, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Palle and Bertrand for highly engaging presentations and workshops.



Nadia El-Imam