For this blog – I am asking different people who have been involved to add to the blog. Karl has been invaluable over the last week, to discuss ideas, and help build the work. I have had to cut this blog into four parts, as with the a-n blog you are only allowed to write 500 words at a time
Dr Karl Broome Is currently a research fellow in the sociology department working on the project ‘Supporting Shy Users in Pervasive Computing’, an EPSRC funded research project on the WINES programme, undertaken by the departments of Informatics and Sociology at the University of Sussex
Working within the space as the team construct and fine-tune the
‘exhibit’ one cannot but help occasionally quiver with the affective
energy that reconfigures what is simply a rectangular white walled
basement room into a socio-sensual space of affective intensity. The
room exhibits an intense expressivity even before the lights go off and
Chameleon, Prototype 8 is in full operation. Throughout the day we hear
the repetition of certain ‘emotive’ phrases as the Chameleon films are
playing in the background as we work– emotionality is fore grounded
within the space across both audio and visual registers…
“Fuck..Fuck”, I can hear sound of the emotional expletives being made by
a man crying as I walk around the computer monitor, this makes me feel
for lack of a better word ‘uncomfortable’. Tina explains “he has just
lost his wife, poor man” … when I hear that the man crying on the
screen has genuinely experienced the traumatic loss of a loved one, I
instantly feel sadness in the pit of my stomach…` in retrospect the
feeling I experienced must have been a strong sense of sympathy,
empathy.. I suppose I felt his loss. Or rather, what started out as an
uncomfortable feeling was translated into a painful sense of loss when
accompanied with Tina’s account. Initially it was just the sound of the
man’s voice making me feel that way…Tina’s account intensified the
feeling, provided it with meaning, gave it shape, made it semiotically
ordered.
