trees are people too

You will have to excuse my rather study-centric posts at the moment. I tend to put on my academic speak when I respond to course readings and assessments, and so feel like I lose my voice somewhat. It all gets very serious and formal :yawn:. This will hopefully be the last of these type of posts, as I reflect on a final prescribed reading, Walking in the City by Michel de Certeau.

Certeau’s piece, written in 1980, is a study of everyday life in the context of the city, and, more poignantly, the streets which we inhabit and traverse in our day to day existence. In examining the city from different viewpoints, angles and representations, Certeau demonstrates how its attributes – repetition, control, boundaries – become semiotics of this ‘everyday life’, a bureaucratic society of controlled consumption, one that is both extraordinary and extraordinary simultaneously. The modern street, as a representation of public space, develops social codes to manage social encounters and make the city function and create a ‘civil behaviour’.

In thinking about the city and its streets, we may recognise them as a ‘text’ that can be both read and practiced, but one that is only activated when this occurs – when it is inhabited, used, travelled. Space becomes a practiced place, one that is socially constructed by both physical and social boundaries, in which walking becomes a metaphor, a ‘spatial creation’ referring to an external environment. The very angle from which we view these streets defines our relationship with them. A view from above allows you to see all, a view of the whole that gives a sense of mastery, control over the space; it is a feeling of power. On the other hand, viewed from street level the representation of the city alters drastically, overflowing with the multiplicity of different individuals, a close up view of the millions of fragments that comprise the city. The very view itself allows for different types of production of social space, and this in turn activates the the urban space in different ways. How, we might ask when considering different representations of a city, is a space occupied, practiced, lived?

These themes are very interesting when contextualised in a spatial environment such as Second Life, one in which we have the power not only to view from a vast array of angles (literally a birdseye view or from street level) but also the power to produce, control and inhabit a social space. While Second Life is devoid of some of the limitations of normal space, so too does is it constrained by some of the same limitations. The most obvious of these is the need to be inhabited, practiced, in order to mean anything, to actually exist. Without participants, Second Life itself is quite literally non-existent, meaningless without social interaction to give it currency.

At the same time, other limitations still apply, although can be circumvented in the context of a virtual environment. Virtual reality = virtual rules, one might say, and so we have demonstrations of rebellion, anarchy even, that, while impossible in the real world, become quite feasible in a virtual world. The ability to steal, hack, modify and ‘grief‘ without retribution can only be accomplished in a constructed, carefully contained space such as virtual reality. In this way, Second Life itself becomes no more than a representation of social space – a birdseye view over which each user ultimately has control and power. It is a safe and wonderful place to be, and preferable to the comparitive wild uncontrollability of the real life city street.

Our very view of a space can define the way we feel about it. From afar, from above, we fulfill the role of voyeur allowing us to create a whole other definition of spatiality. In describing the viewer’s sensations, Certeau puts it beautifully:

It places him at a distance. It changes an enchanting world into text. It allows him to read it; to become a solar Eye, a god’s regard. The exaltation of a scopic or gnostic drive. Just to be this seeing point creates the fiction of knowledge.

The ability to utilise this voyeuristic power in Second Life – a secluded, separate, detached, alleviated view of the city – allows the empowerment of an objective perspective uninfluenced by the practices and processes of the ‘everyday’ of our real life streets. In Second Life we are able to create an ‘original spatial structure’, one influenced only by our own narrative and imagination.

Not only can we create our dream street, our ideal social space, but we can inhabit it too. The only limitations are ourselves. Oh, and in my case, the power of my CPU.

City from above (aka could I be god??)

Courtesy of Dom Dada

The qualities of space found in a virtual world such as Second Life are increasingly echoed in our everyday real life. If you consider the capabilities you have in Second Life – being able to fly and teleport, increase land space and terraform, and transcend cultural and political boundaries – we are seeing exactly these qualities mirrored in our own lives, through the process of rapid globalisation and technological advancement. Second Life essentially presents its world as one global village, and as Dalby discusses, parallels exist in the real world, in both a geographical, economical and social context:

“Given the accelerating links between the major urban centres of the world economy, the so-called global cities, it may now be more helpful to consider matters in the terms of one global city. …the degree of interconnection of global markets, the ubiquity of the cleverly named VISA cards, and the worldwide interconnection of airline schedules suggests at least an embryonic single system. …Understood as the global city, the whole planet becomes an interconnected hinterland.”

With its network capabilities and its very representation of space, this is exactly the situation that Second Life is emulating. And in turn, rapid globalisation means that real life is becoming more and more like Second Life, as barriers that previously divided and segregated social and physical spaces – barriers such as geography, communication and accessibility – are increasingly overcome. Second Life in a way presents a representation of a kind of utopian and ideological society, but one that is actually being realised. Dalby points out the potential use of science fiction as a tool for

“critical reflection on the cultural assumptions about nature that modern geography has taken for granted for so long…. Science fiction offers ways of reflecting on such possibilities precisely because it so effectively facilitates a critique of the ontological categories of modern culture and in the process raises questions of how to think rethink environmental geopolitics.”

Second Life, as a virtual world with its capabilities of networked technology, can be used in a similar fashion to science fiction to allow us this rethinking of space. Just in the way we are able to redesign our environment, our cultural and social limitations in Second Life, we are witnessing exactly this in the modern world. A space like Second Life, the concepts it provides, can therefore be a powerful reflective tool when considering social, cultural and geographical issues. Then translating it to a very product of the networked world – mobile phones – adds a whole new element of transcending spatial limitations. Mobility, immediacy and reach must all be considered, and again echo conceptual elements seen in Second Life. But more on the translation to mobile content another time.

Second Life:
…and Real Life:
Note the uncanny resemblance?? Except that the possibility of me buying a Mercedes Benz is much much higher in one of these locations. I’ll let you guess which one.

After examining my real life street a little more carefully, I have been considering the differences and similarities between my real life and Second Life environments. As I mentioned in my previous post, both are constructed spaces (i.e not wild nature), and both show the relationship between space and power, the defining of public and private space and the increasing relevance of geopolitics. As Dalby points out in his paper, Environmental Geopolitics – Nature, Culture, Urbanity, by understanding the cultural categories which are defined by geopolitics, we can then garner more understanding about the culture and politics of an area. Definition, shaping and usage of space can give vital clues into understanding other cultural aspects of a community.

In real life we have worked hard to subdivide, control and shape the wildness of nature into spaces we can maintain, access and utilise for our own purposes. This in turn has aided the division between nature and our own artificially created spaces, and this application of orderliness has been applied consistently by humans to their real life environment over history. As Dalby notes, ‘the urban aesthetic of orderliness and the necessity to civilise wilderness have had…powerful manifestations in recent history’, even at the cost of the natural environment. As humans, we seem intent on recreating our environment to adhere to our cultural and spatial desires.

Nowhere better to do this, then, than in a virtual world. But with the ability to terraform, shape and build, potentially without the limitations imposed by real life such as cost, building permits, time and expertise, geopolitics in Second Life seems to evolve in a completely different way – almost backwards. Every individual has the opportunity to shape and define their space to their liking, starting from scratch. Hence we have a whole lot of incredibly messy, unrefined, unplanned (dare I say) environments, but also some outstanding ones, possible only in a virtual world free from the contstraints listed above.

One might consider the effects of globalisation in real life, the merging of spaces and spatial identities, as a reflection of the happenings of Second Life. Second Life creates an environment devoid of ‘the obvious distinctions between local and distant, large and small, us and them’ (Dalby, pg 501). The conventional physical and economical spatial boundaries we are accustomed to dissapear in a virtual world where land is essentially limitless and its value is not determined by the resources it houses or how developed it is. Globalisation points towards the idea of a global village, and this exactly the concept we are witnessing in SL.

So if space equates to power in Real Life, what does space mean in Second Life? As culture and nature become more matters of geopolitics and spatiality, Second Life provides the perfect place to play out a kind of spatial democracy. While in Real Life the powerful – i.e. those that make the political and economic decisions – are effectively redesigning the planet, Second Life allows us all to.

So… what does this mean for my laneway? It can be whatever I want, hold whatever I want and be shaped in the space exactly as I see fit. I can control virtually any aspect of it, including who can enter it, what time of day it is and what might be lying around. It allows me to reflect on the urban culture of my street and redefine it, increasingly understanding the environment and space as I go. And, as again noted by Dalby in reference to science fiction, this make-believe environment is extremely effective in facilitating a ‘critique of the ontological categories of modern culture, and in the process raises questions of how to rethink environmental geopolitics’.

I am starting to realise just how isolated our lives, contained within these constructed spaces, really are.


Photo: Lonely street, courtesy of Bondidwhat on Flickr.

This entry is a bit belated, as I wanted to attempt these ‘tests’ before our set was completed. Still, more ideas may be applicable, and it also gives a little background on the concept behind my set – how I saw it in my head.

The light was extremely bright, and I also ran out of batteries almost immediately (being the prepared media practitioner I am) so I haven’t captured possible angles yet, but this is a good idea of space and shape of my street, and also of how it might appear on small screen.

I am trying to explore the space, find a definition for it. Is it urban? Suburban? Industrial? It represents to me an interesting separation between nature and our modern lives. While the lane is composed of concrete and tar, and is mostly devoid of life, it also represents the intersection between our private lives and the common social space of the neighbourhood, as small elements of people’s lives spill out of the back of their homes onto the laneway.

This careful construction of closely aligned spaces was what inspired me to build an inner city laneway as my Second Life set. The construction of space as seen in cities represents an urban culture which, as Dalby points out in Environmental Geopolitics – Nature, Culture, Urbanity,

‘usually specifies itself as separate from wild, untamed nature…[and] is one that has a long colonial history of drawing boundaries and dividing nature into spaces which can be administered and altered to make them orderly.’

This urban culture, that inevitably shapes social and cultural spaces, has interesting ties to our real life identities and relationships with public and private spaces. Echoes of the construction of space is obvious in a space like Second Life – land is controlled, terraformed, built – but what this means for the identities of the inhabitants of a virtual space is much more complex. But as Dalby notes in his discussion of geopolitcs, the themes of space and power and the relationship between the two is recurring. Just as the cultural spaces are shaped and constructed in real life, they will provide an important understanding into social construction in virtual worlds.

And a short film, exploring this space yet again. (I needed practice please).