Re: <documenta X><blast> imagined communities

lefeuvre@ndirect.co.uk
Thu, 26 Jun 1997 22:57:54 +0100

To return to the question of the Virtual Mood.......It is for me hard to define
as it is still such an experience so different from "normal" interactions. In
attempting to descibe the experience for me, the use of spatial metaphors
comes into play.

Perhaps this kind of email discourse could be described in terms of
abstrated space. But rather than the novel - as I suggested recently - I am
thinking of Underground (or Subway) travel. Moving around on London
Underground I know where I have been and where I have come from but not
where I am - everything is defined in relation to each other. This network
of intersecting points that defines my underanding of this kind of travel
system bears no relation to the "Real World" and spatial geography, yet my
sense of place and imaginary conception of space makes complete sense. It
is understood in terms of the priority of proximities. In typing in these
words into a screen I feel far closer to the people involved in this discourse
than to my computer. This is of course nothing new - talking on the phone
we feel closer to the person on the end of the line than to the receiver.

I wonder how this internal( or Imagined ) space has come to be the means
of conceptulising on line activity.

Lisa Le Feuvre