INVESTIGATE 1: LIFEWORLD TERMINALS
By understanding, scrutinising and deconstructing the perceived ‘norms’ associated with a space we inhabit as a part of our daily lives, it becomes possible to not only deepen our awareness of the spaces themselves, but the ways in which they subliminally and openly influence our behaviour.
There is value in extending this interrogation to digital ‘spaces’. In the systems, interfaces and processes — sets of highly designed ‘rules’ by which we live out many of the computerised aspects of our lives — there is much to uncover with regards to aspects of being that transcend physical presence.
I have selected the computer ‘Downloads’ folder as the focus of my investigation.
On a technical level, the Downloads folder exists as a ‘directory’ within a larger hierarchy, in which information is contained and organised. A default directory of the computer ‘operating system’, the Downloads folder is designated as a location intended to hold data received from outside of the ‘local’ structure of the computer.
The Downloads folder acts as a transitional space that plays host to unique behaviours. A local entry point for much of the information we organise and consume, it serves as something of a ‘terminal’ space at the forefront of the individual’s digital lifeworld.
Like a gateway or a port, much of what enters the larger digital hierarchy passes through this space, lingering temporarily before being redistributed to a more suitable location in the hierarchy through manual or automatic means.
However, the Downloads folder is a place of activity both ephemeral and immutable. Simultaneously, data remains in the folder perpetually; through error, indecision or other means, files lose their organic context but maintain their artificial minutiae permanently until the individual user intervenes.
Much of this activity can be attributed to the actions of the user as the unspoken mechanical rules of the space. As such, it provides a fitting case study for the examination of space itself, as well as its impression on our actions. As a structural system that exists within the realms of the everyday for many, I feel there is value in examining the Downloads folder as part of a responsibility to critically understand, process and scrutinise that which is widely considered ‘commonplace’.
DISRUPTION / AWARENESS
Disruption serves as a means through which to attain a heightened sense of awareness of space and its qualities.
This approach to modifying perception can take on an almost architectural quality when used in a physical context; in several of the works of Californian conceptual artist Robert Irwin, the use of a physical “defocusing element” (Weschler, 1982:152) serves as such a disruption, drastically altering the awareness of inhabitants of particular locations.
In Black Line Volume, a 1975 installation at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Irwin made use of a single physical impression in a traditional gallery space; a five inch wide strip of black tape across the gallery floor, joining the black skirting boards lining a white-walled room to form a kind of rectangular border. This physically minimal change sought to simply draw attention to one, otherwise unremarkable aspect of the room’s architecture, elevating viewers to a state through which further details could attain aesthetic or intellectual prominence.
Art critic Roberta Smith said of the installation: “The resultant black rectangle was not what you ‘looked at’… but soon brought the space into focus with a distinct visual snap. From inside, the light in the area seemed different, more substantial, and the wall colour began to shift ambiguously. From outside the area, the tape seemed to lift the plane of the floor upward in your field of vision… It is hard to know whether the tape was actually doing all of this or whether, having become visually conscious enough to see the black rectangle, you simply continued to experience the room with this heightened awareness” (Smith, 1976:68-73).
By introducing, removing or modifying elements of a space, a tension between two realities — that of the individual’s assumptions of the properties of said space and one of its actual material qualities — provide suitable conditions to draw out a deeper recognition of its component parts. This can be considered a manner of conduct an insightful investigation of that which would otherwise go unseen.
DESIGNED TRUTHS
An ongoing record of the visible details of digital space becomes necessary in order to create efficient means — a bespoke ‘defocusing element’ — through which to transition towards disruption and, in turn, heightened awareness.
However, we do not physically inhabit the ‘spaces’ inherent to our computer usage. They are bound on a fundamental level to the rules and mechanics of the systems that enable them to exist; in turn, our interactions must conform to these same ‘truths’ of what is and is not possible within each space.
Whereas the means through which we exist in the physical world are under constant scrutiny through acts such as moving, touching and looking, a pre-designed digital space in which the rules of a wider system are imposed as a condition of use requires a more methodical approach.
The knowledge required to technically deconstruct or modify the properties of digital space is highly specialist and often inaccessible. As such, the disruption of digital space must occur not as a challenge to the design of the space itself, but to our way of thinking concerning the space and its use.
Such an attitude to investigating benefits a larger ongoing effort to attain a more thoughtful critical perspective towards what is considered ‘commonplace’.
CONTINUED: 1.2
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Weschler, Lawrence (1982)
Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
Berkley: University of California Press
Smith, Roberta (1976)
Robert Irwin: The Subject is Sight
in Art in America (March 1976) pp.68-73