JANE MCGRATH MA DIGITAL MEDIA ARTS
I am participating in the Chameleon project as part of larger research for my MA dissertation. I can see so much potential material in the project, when you explore it on a micro level it’s so deep – such a rich area of knowledge embedded in one place. As I am typing away I’m thinking more and more of just how much learning will come out of the project for me. I am becoming more and more convinced that using just this one project as a basis for my dissertation question will be enough to write a PHD let alone an MA. I wasnt expecting that.
Firstly there is the excitement of a live Arts / Science Collaboration – just quickly running through the people whose work I have seen, whom I have personally met or simply heard talk on the project – Tina, MIT, UCL, Gordon from Solent Rapid Prototyping Lab, neuroscientists, Carl a sociologist, Helen Soane, Experientae Electricae not forgetting Lighthouse, Fabrica and Incubator. No wonder Im so excited – its like a term of study crammed into two weeks.
Also in view of my personal research I have been involved and so can be subjective as well as objective which is a great. But I need to keep asking my self – how does it relate to me question about using new technology to construct liminal spaces? And where does my question of powerlessness/emowerment come in, in fact I keep asking my self – does it?
After a really helpful chat with Carl on the train home, I need to define for me what exactly a liminal space is –I need to (re)read Victor Turner and Van Gennep, I do love the Betwixt and Between notion and the notion of pure potentiality. I find that betwixt and between situated in Tinas work – in human emotion, in technology. The potentiality is an area of further research and Natasha from EE was explaining to me the Deleuzian concept of potentiality. Very valuable and helpful.
Carl had a very important question when he asked me how constructing an experience where I wanted to control the outcome of an experience – ie powerlessness – to empowerment could create a liminal space because there was no option for pure potentiality because the outcome was predefined.
Thinking aout loud I had said that althouh the destination would be set – ie point A – B each person would have a different potential subjective experience, a different journey where emotionally and intellectually anything could happen. That the emotional end point could be a very different experience for the user.
Carl has some excellent advice that was that it would be beneficial to take the meaning of liminality back to its original meaning (Turner, Van Gennep) and use this as the structure on which to base the ‘liminal’ . So much could be seen as liminal and the question would always be are they ‘truly liminal’ spaces or just thresholds.
