Social Space theory

article 1: Space and Perspective in VR article 2: World Design in VR: Setting the Stage

I am .... in space

I have .... physical dimensions and a dynamics of places
I am .... an amorphous, untenanted, non-tangible areas, generalised as ‘space’ (e.g. the space on a website; spaces of desert…)
I am .... external, global networks that interact with place (the spaces of the internet; the spaces of global finance…)
I am .... a descriptive term for an area of thought and action (e.g. safe spaces; creative spaces)
I can .... be set as a foreground, middle ground and background elements.

I feel .... at home in this place

The place offers people a space that empowers their identity, where they can meet other people with whom they share social references. Non-places, on the contrary, are not meeting spaces and do not build common references to a group. A non-place is a place where we do not live in, in which the individual remains anonymous and lonely. The perception of a space like a non-place, is strictly subjective: each of us in his or her own way can see the same place as a non-place, or as a crossroads of human relations.

"Non-places are distances. They are the super highways that by-pass the real places. They are the supermarkets and power outlets that move to where it is easy. The Art Galleries that move to where it is edgy, to transform raw space into white cubes." - Non-Place Narratives

Example What kind of space of place is the poetry museum? Het Poëzie Museum is een virtueel museum op het Museumplein in Amsterdam, 24 / 7 gratis te bezoeken via een app. Een innovatieve cross-over tussen literatuur, vormgeving, typografie, architectuur en Augmented Reality: Het Poëzie Museum

1. Gutai Movement

Founded by artist, critic, and teacher Yoshihara Jirō, the Gutai group was legendary in its own time. Its members explored new art forms combining performance, painting, and interactive environments and created an international common ground of experimental art through the worldwide reach of their exhibition and publication activities. Over its eighteen-year existence, Gutai forged an ethics of authenticity and individualism to create a ferociously new art.The word gutai means “concreteness” and captures the direct engagement with materials its members were experimenting with around the time of its founding.

Gutai movement, 60s The Alchemical Art Innovators of Postwar Japan

NASAKA Senkichirō and YOSHIHARA Michio, Work, 1970 The zigzagging structure of gleaming aluminum pipes serves as a giant armature for other members’ works. Mirrorlike pipes distort visitors’ reflections and alter their sense of space, and an electronic sound recording broadcast along its length and emitted through numerous holes adds a sonic dimension. With this work, Nasaka transforms the entire exhibition into a fully sensorial environment, making the exhibition design and the artwork indistinguishable. As the centerpiece of what became the group’s final collaboration, Nasaka’s armature becomes the collective’s literal form. Originally part of a Gutai installation at Osaka’s Expo ’70.

2. Pataphysics

Pataphysics is a system in which there are no rules, only exceptions (or, more properly, where each exception creates its own rule), and where everything is equivalent—nothing is more important than anything else.

Pataphysics

Ubu Roi (1896) is considered a wild, bizarre and comic play, significant for the way it overturns cultural rules, norms, and conventions. It is a precursor to Dada, Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd. The title is sometimes translated as King Turd; however, the word "Ubu" is actually merely a nonsense word that evolved from the French pronunciation of the name "Herbert.

Ubu Roi animation from 1978

Allan Kaprow's Happenings of the late 1950s to early 1970s, though inherently temporary, were defined as “A game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by participants for the sake of playing” and some of these, in vintage photos, can still be read as playgrounds or something like.

Social Sculpture – Playgrounds formed by Players

Culture and Emotion, June Gruber A modelling framework for collective emotions in online communities. David Garcia. The Psychology of (Cyber)Emotions. Arvid Kappas. Social web sentiment strength detection: methods and issues. Mike Thelwall. Collective Emotions in Cyberspace, Janusz Holyst How Emotional Are Users' Needs? Emotion in Query Logs. Marina Santini.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a 1956 sociology book by Erving Goffman, in which the author uses the imagery of the theatre in order to portray the importance of human social interaction. Goffman's purpose is in showing how roles, selves, and negotiations create social order.

article 5: Erving Goffman Presentation of Self, 'there is no true self', short video article 6: Social Interaction & Performance: Crash Course Sociology Erving Goffman: Presentation of Self (long excerpt)

Short summary of Goffman's Classic Sociology Book:

MESSAGES are embedded in interaction, conditions, policies, and
physical surroundings.
LANGUAGE refers to the social product of both the faculty of
communication itself (e.g., speech) and a collection of necessary
conventions allowing individuals to exercise that faculty.
SPEECH is the specific act of articulating a
message through the exchange of symbols as required by the rules
of language.
SETTING THE STAGE is done by (1) physical layout, (2) "social" layout (norms, etc).
REGIONS are marked by places where information is controlled by display or concealment.
A "FRONT REGION" is that part of our performance that regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance.
The BACKSTAGE REGION is the place, relative to a given performance,
a) where the impression fostered by the performance is
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 knowingly contradicted as a matter of course.
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b) That is demarcated by some barrier
c) Usually designated as a place for "work control" or
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 performance preparation or maintenance
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A third, RESIDUAL REGION (p. 134) is all places other than the
two identified. The "outside" can include "reality intrusions"
when a non-audience member wanders in.
The concept of "teams" is important for Goffman because he sees INTERACTION AS A DIALOGUE between two teams. One team is the PERFORMER, the other is the AUDIENCE. A "performance team" or just "team" refers to any set of individuals who cooperate in staging a single routine (1959: 79). It involves complicity and a mutual/shared understandings of def of situation.
A TEAMMATE Is "someone whose dramaturgical cooperation one is dependent upon in fostering a given definition of the situation; if such a person comes to be beyond the pale of informal sanctions and insists on giving the show away or forcing it to take a particular turn, he is none the less part of the team.
PERFORMANCES require "INFORMATION" (ie, cues, facts, knowledge of social norms and rituals, "interpretive frameworks", manipulating DEFINITIONS OF THE SITUATION) ; Performances refer to all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by continuous presence before a particular set of (clothes, posture, expression, gestures)

The goal of any team is to sustain the definition of the situation that its performance fosters. This requires INFORMATION CONTROL: the AUDIENCE must not acquire destructive information about the situation that is being defined for them, which requires that "secrets" must be kept.

Information control becomes important for teams,and one goal is to protect "damaging information" from leaking out. "Damaging information" thus becomes a type of secret. A secret is simply "protected information." Goffman lists several types:

1) "Dark Secrets"
2) "Strategic secrets"
3) "Inside secrets" 
4) "Entrusted secrets"
5) "Free Secrets"

This suggests several types of "discrepant roles," or roles in which a team member's interests or performance violates the performance:

1) Informants (betrays the team)
2) Shills (betrays the audience)
3) Mediator (goes between the teams, keeps secrets, etc)

COOLING OUT: Is a process of adjustment or readjustment to an "impossible" situation arising from the "mark" being in a situation that the social facts seem to contradict. Cooling out entails providing the mark with a new set of apologies to him/herself to redefine the situation, and a new framework in wich to see one's self and judge/redefine the self along defensible lines. This the job of the "cooler."

Three general ways:

1) Distancing of social status (ie, give the task to someone, or assume the status of someone, in a superior position--(eg, firings, "beaten by an 'expert'") 2) Offering a new status that differs from the one lost, but provides something to ease transition (eg, offering a released employee help with another job or offering a different job) 3) Offering a "second chance" 4) Allowing "explosion" time 5) Stalling--feelings or outcome not brought to a head 6) Collusion--appearance of leaving or losing on one's own accord 7) Bribery

technological spaces (social VR, messaging, team productivity, scheduling, marketplaces),
organisational processes (meeting styles, org and reporting structures, team operations),
social service environments (schools, employment centers), or
entire social structures (basic income, currencies, voting systems)