space

Despite the burgeoning interest in the creation of imaginative spaces in AR and VR, very little focus has been given to sound. This paper borrows aspects of cinema studies and cultural geography to argue that sound can create a discursive environment and a queer space in Augmented Reality (AR). Referring to Michel Chion’s Audio-vision (1990), and Steven Shaviro’s Post-cinematic affect (2010), I explore how the assemblage of aural, visual and haptic in AR pieces, such as Caitlin Fisher’s ‘Chez moi’ (2014), create what Lev Manovich (2001) calls ‘hybrid spaces’, spaces visually disjointed but semantically connected. In ‘Chez moi’, Fisher invites the viewer to put on their headphones and watch the video on their smartphone while walking down Hayden street in Toronto, where the lesbian bar Chez moi was located when Fisher was a teenager. The audiovisual piece augment the physical reality of the viewer through a montage of various media forms, such as Fisher’s voice over, images of news reports, and fictitious audio and images. While the rhythm of Fisher’s voice dictates the pace of the viewer as they walk, her words build an affective past, a queer space. The voice over and ambient sounds enact a multilayered space that accommodates marginalised bodies and redefines the limits of centreperiphery. Although sound is often situated at the peripheries of the visual in the viewer’s experience and in analytical work, sound immerses the viewer in a new (virtual) space, and imprints meaning on the viewer’s both physical and virtual environments. The multilayered reality of ‘Chez moi’ in this way recalls Janet Cardiff’s AR-vanguardist photographic audio walk ‘Her long black hair’ (2004) ten years prior. The aural, visual and haptic assemblage of Fisher’s and Cardiff’s pieces disturb the ‘conceived space’ of Toronto’s streets, and produce queer ‘lived spaces’ (in Henri Lefebvre’s terms, 1981) by generating resonances between past and present space-times. This paper shows how Fisher’s assemblage transforms the established ‘powergeometry’ of space (Doreen Massey, 1994), as it creates an affirmative queer space ELO2019 University College Cork #ELOcork 52 accommodating the ‘[fragile] women’s culture’ that Fisher at once praises and bemoans. At the intersection of cultural geography, cinema studies, and digital culture, this paper attempts to understand how digital media call to the imagination to invoke possible futures (Appadurai 1996; Braidotti 1996), and to constantly (re-)make space.

This paper explores the concept of narrativity throughout space by analyzing the distributed novel Implementation (Rettberg and Montfort 2012). Distributed narratives are literary texts that are distributed across different spaces and times to create divergence rather than unity (Walker 1). Implementation consists of 240 stickers with text fragments and people are invited to put up stickers in a place of their choice on public surfaces. The stickers could then be photographed and added to the project website.The practice of putting up the stickers highly influences the way in which the actor views the space, connecting elements in the text fragment to elements in their surroundings. The actor who places the sticker might not have noticed certain elements if it hadn't been for the text on the sticker. Once the sticker is placed in its context, the opposite occurs: the surroundings influences the reading of the narrative.This diffraction between narrative and space is highlighted by the act of photography and online collection, as the digital interface shows the immediate context of the sticker but makes the city as a whole invisible. For the 'analog' reader, however, the context of the whole city is highly visible as the sticker has to be found inside the city.  The combination of analog and digital practices of Implementation thus highlights the representation of the city as a visual practice. In this way, the city becomes part of the work and vice versa in both physical and digital settings.

This paper analyses the work by means of a new materialist "diffractive reading" (Barad and Haraway) between the narrative and its urban context. I propose to regard the urban space as a ‘text’ and read how this (con)text interacts with the narrative stickers. My paper will also outline future plans for empirical experiments Implementation. 

When the contemporary pedestrian travels from home to work, campus, or coffee shop wearing earphones and listening to a mobile device, he is not trying to find silent refuge from the noise of modern life, rather, he is striving to replace one sonic overwhelm with another of his own choosing. Sound is unique in its ease of subversion and the degree of experiential immersion that can be achieved through such an act. The nature of listening that the author will discuss is one that by way of design takes the quotidian act of mobile listening to a much more structured level of auditory experience with the hope of eliciting an event that is both multi-sensory and potent. 

As defined by Adriana de Souza de Silva, hybrid space is characterized as “social spaces created by the combination of physical space with digital information and the mobility of user equipped with location-aware interfaces.” (DeSouza 2006: 179) While this definition explicitly defines hybrid space as one that requires location aware technology, the author will explore a broader definition of the term that explores the notions of space, place, private public space, and virtual embodiment. While his exploration of hybrid space is concerned with the split between the real and the virtual, dynamic hybrid space introduces observations of the ways in which temporality exerts a very strong influence upon the experience. 

The creative work of the author, with locative listening, has involved GPS-enabled storytelling (Strathroy Stories, The CHEZ) as well as QR Code-activated listening experiences (The Other Side of OZ) and has raised questions about the potency of this type of listening as not only entertainment and heritage/archival documentation, but also as pieces of virtual embodiment and performative listening.