On-Site/Out of Sight

Socially Engaged Practice Proposal
Slides

Concept

This project intends to extrade the structure difference between physical space and digital space. Every participant will launch practice solely following the action instruction that simulates digital socialization. While performing the designated action in a physical public space, they are also asked to identify fellow practitioners following the same instruction.

There are 3 different action instructions. Every participant receive one of three randomly with no further information. After the practice, participants will be asked to describe group activities they noticed. The essential point is whether they recognize fellows only through if someone mirror exact the same action pattern, or they realize the existence of other groups of fellow participants performing an unified act that differs from theirs.

This practice inspects people's awareness of adjacent covert communities under their nose. The blindness towards communities one do not belong to is common online. I hope to displace this phenomenon in a more familiar scene to call attention and evoke speculation about the new society structure emerging in the digital space.

Analysis

Practical spacial experience constructs an overview that space is evenly spread over the surface of the terrain. The awareness of the existence of surrounding space is intuitive. And randomly moving through the interconnected visible spaces is possible. The inventory of physical space is openly clarified by the geographical framework.

Digital spaces are discontinuous. The concept of distance is invalid. Hyperlinks transit the visitors between any sites. One can be on either this site or that site, but can never be on the way between two sites. The layout of digital spaces is not inspectable based on some terrain. Their existence has to be disclosed by Information and links.

Execution

Form: Collective performance

Location: Open public space with a looped path

Participants count: 20-50

Operation medium: SMS

Workflow: Every participant is privately informed of partial information about the whole practice. Each one launches their practice individually without knowing who among the crowd is also part of this practice. They are instructed to perform specific actions and detect who might be their fellow practitioners. There are 3 different action instruction notes. Each one receives one of the three randomly through SMS after they arrive at the location. People conducting the same action instruction are regarded as a community. After the performing phase ends, the participants will be asked to describe their observations of their fellow practitioners. The end-of-practice survey will focus on the level of awareness of the presence of other communities that they do not belong to.

Action Instruction: All Participants are asked to move along the looped path. Participants in different groups will blink twice and change direction in 3 different conditions.

Notice: To ensure the validity of the experiment, the practice agenda is designed to avoid participants to recognize fellow participants in advance. Possible gathering at the beginning will be prevented. Communication and instruction will be distributed through text messages (SMS). Participants are asked to arrive in a time period (ex. 9:00 am-9:15 am) and start sole practice as soon as they arrive. The practice location is ideally a high-traffic large space with a centered looped path and multiple entrances (ex. subway station), so participants will start from random spread points. The high traffic can provide enough distractions and merge participants into the crowd. The instructed action is designed to be normal and mild in the specific space. And the running time will be kept as close as possible to the average length of stay in the location.

Survey Sample Topics:

Your conduct of the actions
Talk about people around you
Talk about your investigation for fellow group members
Talk about your observation of the group(s)

Inspiration:

Walking Choreography Experiment, Nuntinee T & Mimi Yin