AN EXPLORATION INTO THE PHYSICAL CONVERSATION

ABIGAIL ROGERS

U N K N O W N CONVERSATIONS

The digital age has transformed how people relate to one another and their surroundings. A lot of people’s interactions and conversations have become digital, through the use of social networking, telephones and email. ‘Unknown Conversations’ is an exploration into the importance of physical conversations, with in our ever changing digital culture.

The publication is an edited collection of physical conversations, which have been categorised to promote positive aspects of conversations. It consists of photographs, film stills, interviews and exerts of theoretical texts.

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The computer has, along with television, altered the social and psychological experiences of space and time in an unprecedented and unexpected manner. The rise of a global communications network involving an avalanche of data in the form of image or voice, statistics or directives, pixels or hard copy has already defined concepts of commerce government, work, ad leisure; “the network nation,” one company advertises: “the great new way to meet people without ever leaving your home or office!” boasts another. The result is an intensification of the dissolution of the boundaries between public and private realms, physical and electronic spaces.

since most of us are not programmers, after all, we are denied that godlike status within this “armchair universe” of simulation and control and are, rather, excluded from this new space which remains foreign, decentering, and relentlessly other, its physical parameters reduced to the space of the terminal monitor while its electronic parameters seem literally boundless.

whether Baudrillard calls it telematics culture or science fiction writers call it the Web, the Net, the Grid, the Matrix, or, most pervasively, cyberspace, there exists the pervasive recognition that a new and decentered spatiality has arisen that exists parallel to, but outside of, the geographic topography of experiential reality. As vivian sobchack explains: “Television, video cassettes, video tape recorder/players, video games and personal computers all form an encompassing electronic system whose various forms ‘interface’ to constitute an alternative and absolute world that uniquely incorporates the spectator/user in a spatially decentered, weakly

excerpt taken from scott Bukatman’s Terminal Identity: The virtual subject in Postmodern science Fiction. (1993)

temporalized and quasi-disembodied state.” There are also the cybernetic systems which “incorporate” no “spectator/users” at all. The interfacing systems of banking computers forms a complex global structure which is very nearly self-regulating. Paris links new York which connects, in its turn, to Tokyo: the money, or data never sleeps and never stops its circulation within what Jameson has called “the bewildering world space of late multinational capital.” Jeremy rifkin has noted in his dolorous Time wars that the computer has also effectively superseded the human experience of temporality. “The new ‘computime’ represents the final abstraction of time and its complete separation from human experience and the rhythm of nature.” Of course, the blame for the financial “crash” of october 1987 was placed upon the global computer that exists effectively beyond human control.

In both spatial and temporal terms, then, the bodily experience of the human is absented from the new reality, precipitating a legitimate cultural crisis which has some precedent in the upheavals of the late nineteenth century. In this context the productions of postmodernism become comprehensible, even sensible: the labyrinthine and decentered forms, which respond to the loss of a readable cartography and the displacement of lived space; the withdrawal into an empty historicism, a simulacrum of the past, during a period in which the data bank has usurped historical analysis and in which the memory bank has usurped memory; the waning of ethical principles (indeed of subjectivity itself) as the possibilities of a moral center and the human as an agency of change seem to devolve to nothing; and the simultaneous over and undervaluation of sign systems at a time

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when the sign is everything but stands for nothing. Particularly important, and intimately connected, are two frequently noted phenomena: the decline of the master-narratives which structure our understanding of the social structure and the rise of simulation as a prevalent form.

narratives, those imaginary resolutions of real contradictions (as Levi-strauss described myth), are crucial conduits of ideological suppositions. Hayden white has demonstrated the importance of literary models of narration to the task of historical writing; it is the act of emplotment that permits “the real” to exist as a meaningful form of knowledge. what narrative offers is a structure that provides connectives in the form of causal relations, sequentiality, and most importantly the teleological satisfaction of an ending, a final “steady state” through which all other elements will retroactively assume a full significance. Social hegemony operates in and through the master-narratives which organize all the rest: the narrative of scientific progress, for example, or class struggle.

To argue, then, that the master-narratives have ceased to operate as privileged forms is thus to locate a potential upheaval in societal self-regulation. This is precisely what Jameson and Jean-Francois Lyotard once proposed as the case in postmodern culture. “I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives,” the latter wrote in The Postmodern Condition, noting that legitimation is no longer an automatic consequence of either narrative or linguistic acts. The failure of the master-narrative is the result of the profound experiential and epistemological shift undergone by an increasingly

technocratic and cybernetic culture: the regulation of the imploded society has passed beyond the spatio-temporal experience of its citizens. Baudrillard is also engaged with the demise of master-narratives: “if it is possible at least to talk with such definitive understanding about power, sexuality, the body and discipline … it is because at some point all this here and now over with”

Referentiality and legitimation are finished within Baudrillard’s terminal fiction: there is no longer an unproblematic and empirically verifiable “real” to refer to. As a consequence, “the whole system becomes weightless” –a crucial metaphor which echoes sobchack’s “disembodied” electronic space. Quoting Debord, sobchack notes that, “when ‘everything that has been directly lived has moved away into a representation,’ referentiality becomes intertextuality”: the age of simulation has arrived. simulation becomes a function of telematics culture and the expansion of new technologies that substitute for experiential reality-the digital has replaced the tactile.

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‘WE USED TO LIVE IN THE IMAGINARY WORLD OF THE MIRROR, OF THE DIVIDED SELF AND THE STAGE, OF OTHERNESS AND ALIENATION. TODAY WE LIVE IN THE IMAGINARY WORLD OF THE SCREEN, OF THE INTERFACE AND THE REDUPLICATION OF CONTIGUITY AND NETWORKS. ALL OUR MACHINES ARE SCREENS. WE TO HAVE BECOME SCREENS, AND THE INTERACTIVITY OF MEN HAS BECOME THE INTERACTIVITY OF SCREENS.’

‘WE USED TO LIVE IN THE IMAGINARY WORLD OF THE MIRROR, OF THE DIVIDED SELF AND THE STAGE, OF OTHERNESS AND ALIENATION. TODAY WE LIVE IN THE IMAGINARY WORLD OF THE SCREEN, OF THE INTERFACE AND THE REDUPLICATION OF CONTIGUITY AND NETWORKS. ALL OUR MACHINES ARE SCREENS. WE TO HAVE BECOME SCREENS, AND THE INTERACTIVITY OF MEN HAS BECOME THE INTERACTIVITY OF SCREENS.’

Jean Baudrillard

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‘WE USED TO LIVE IN THE IMAGINARY WORLD OF THE MIRROR, OF THE DIVIDED SELF AND THE STAGE, OF OTHERNESS AND ALIENATION. TODAY WE LIVE IN THE IMAGINARY WORLD OF THE SCREEN, OF THE INTERFACE AND THE REDUPLICATION OF CONTIGUITY AND NETWORKS. ALL OUR MACHINES ARE SCREENS. WE TO HAVE BECOME SCREENS, AND THE INTERACTIVITY OF MEN HAS BECOME THE INTERACTIVITY OF SCREENS.’

02 speech

The spoken language is invisible, yet enables complex ideas to be shared. our patterns with in speech are unique to each person. People have different dialects; repetitions, as well as sayings or idioms to communicate words poetically, these traits of conversation are lost and edited out when talking digitally.01 visual Behaviour

non-verbal communication is just as important as what is said. visual behaviour is referring to facial expression and body movements; these convey a lot of information about a person’s emotion. visual behaviour can be sent and received on both conscious and unconscious levels. It can contradict what someone is saying, showing their true feelings towards a particular situation. visual behaviour is also important, as it is universal, being interpreted by everyone.

ConsTrUCTeleMenTs oF phYsical conversaTion

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04 engaging characTer

Through conversation people’s character can be seen. In engaging with people you don’t know interesting characteristics can be found, different to the people you would normally be around. Conversation becomes playful and given life by those talking.

03 suBJecT

The subject of a conversation can be split into areas of content, although many conversations overlap these areas. Conversations can be made from subjective ideas, objective facts, along with being about other people or yourself. The subject of conversation is what can create bonds between people allowing for engaging conversation.

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vIsUAL BeHAvIoUr

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Analysing expression and body language can tell us a lot, looking in detail at how and when people’s visual behaviour changes, looking at what we usually observe unconsciously.

eYe ConTACTeye contact engages the other person in conversation, breaking of eye contact can suggest the person is distracted or uncomfortable. Looking up to a corner suggests the person is thinking or trying to remember something specific.

MoUTHAs well as eye contact the mouth can also indicate certain points about a person’s fear, worry or insecurities.

GesTUresPeople can gesture more to explain stories or to get their points across. It can also show their emotion for example, crossed arms and legs can suggest the person is feeling closed off or defensive.

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‘ONLY 7% OF YOUR COMMUNICATION WILL BE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH YOUR WORDS. ROUGHLY 55% WILL BE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH YOUR BODY LANGUAGE AND 38% THROUGH YOUR TONE OF VOICE.’

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‘ONLY 7% OF YOUR COMMUNICATION WILL BE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH YOUR WORDS. ROUGHLY 55% WILL BE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH YOUR BODY LANGUAGE AND 38% THROUGH YOUR TONE OF VOICE.’

‘ONLY 7% OF YOUR COMMUNICATION WILL BE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH YOUR WORDS. ROUGHLY 55% WILL BE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH YOUR BODY LANGUAGE AND 38% THROUGH YOUR TONE OF VOICE.’

alBerT MehraBian

‘ONLY 7% OF YOUR COMMUNICATION WILL BE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH YOUR WORDS. ROUGHLY 55% WILL BE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH YOUR BODY LANGUAGE AND 38% THROUGH YOUR TONE OF VOICE.’

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‘I feel a great deal of passion when I sing, um you feel passion when you make love, you feel passion when you when you um see something really beautiful do you know, so um I kinda reckon the definition of passion is things that sort of er give you pleasure but err you can also feel passion when you’re angry as well you can be passionate about that as well so things that sort of make to you sad and angry to so passion is just a feeling that is evoked by how your feeling at the time.’

‘I have known my wife for over 30 years and we love each other as much as the day we first met so I’m a bit passionate about that, so and my grand, well my family basically my grandchildren my daughter you know what I mean, so thinks that make me feel good.’

unknown:

when talking about his wife and family, along with explaining what passion meant to him, his body language become more animated reflecting what he was saying.

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unknown:

she discussed her boat throughout talking she looked up a lot to remember stories which she could add to the conversation. she went on to talk about a new boyfriend in which she become quite jokey and giggly.

errrm unbridled hormones yeah er yeah pretty much just strong strong feelings mainly endorsed by hormones

er at the moment er my boat I like my boat a lot and a new boy I guess that’s were the hormones come in

Yeah I spend a lot of time on my boat, that’s my thing

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repetition: stumbling and repeating words in some cases of who you are talking to

pause: pauses in between speaking to collect thought or letting someone else speak

idioms: a form of expression to a certain person or group of people to show a meaning

Analysing parts of conversation looking at the way they speak which may not be noticed at the time.

sPeeCH

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Me: Do you have your own collection of stamps then?

David: I have a collection but when I came in here I stopped actively taking things for my collection, its a bit of a busman’s holiday. If I go home and play with stamps, I would rather do something else in the evening as I am doing stamps all day.

Me: How did you get interested in stamps?

David: I have collected since I was knee high to a grasshopper.

Me: So was that influenced by someone?

David: My father collected so I got interested in that and then in to the buying and selling.

Me: Yep

David: which I have been doing part time since I was twenty, so I got interested in the buying and selling.

Me: so what makes a good stamp collection?

David: rare stamps I su, uncommon stamps in good condition from countries that people are interested in which is British Common wealth, France, Germany, Scandinavia, China. Its difficult to say exactly theres people who collect everywhere

Me: Yep

David: But the British Common wealth is probably most interesting

Me: Do you collect or would you collect anything else?

David: I don’t no, I do trade in cigarette cards, if you know what they are.

Me: Yep, Yeah. so is there a certain way you organise the shop here?

keith: well that depends who you ask

David: Hopefully, yes. well all these albums around the shelves here, are from auctions so if you were to pick any stamp out of my catalogues I can go to the shelf and pull that out.

Me: oh okay.

David: so if you want some stamps from Australia I know I go into that box here or on to that stand.

Me: oh okay, okay

David: Yes there’s a lot of order despite what keith is saying, if it wasn’t well organised I wouldn’t be in business for 10 minutes.

David: I suppose perhaps going on from that everything is organised by country where the stamps come from.

Me: Is that what people come with?

David: That’s how I choose to do it, there are other dealers who arrange by subject, otherwise they will have albums of space stamps, albums of sports stamps, albums of cats on stamps, albums of insects on stamps and they will arrange it like that I arrange it by country.

excerpt of conversation with David about his auction shop and stamp collecting.

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Unknown : Yeah, yeah the glass is actually a polymer.. Photographic plate, so glass and emulsion, old fashion emulsion not the one .. we don’t use that now. Then it records information from the ambient combined with er a beam of light creates a reaction and then when you shine the real light the light from the object. You can control the light and the light, we we perceive something we see it with our eyes, you can’t see that one thing is closer than another the plate is able to do that so the information is that’s actually the light hitting the background is further away than the middle. You can notice the difference, there’s a difference in the properties of the light that’s why because only density of the light is moving the photograph, also that persistent of the photograph fills the plate. It records it in every single spot every spot on the plate then can see from every angle.

Unknown : This part here is seeing the medal from that point, so every point of view of the plate is what you see as you move around

Unknown : The only limitation is the distance from the object to the plate at some point you start to lose it like here at a 180 degrees it distorts the view.

Unknown : Have you seen that one, you can look down close at it

Unknown : That is that’s just the light you mix the three laser into one white spot.

Unknown : That’s that’s that’s what that’s yes that’s

what creates the light.

Unknown : The only problem is we need to get the light.. the laser light properly and .. er .. to the same size and we need to use lasers to make the same size, um each layer has got a different spot size and if you mix a big one with a small one the centre will be one colour and the outer will be another colour .. er different colour so it wont show up white so we need to combine the sizes er mix them up all of them for this white light um and er mirrors there let us er us reflect red and green reflects blue and plus the red reflects the green then all of them go up and then come out here, this is just a diffuser, you have the diffuser element here and it’s shining the light onto here. with this size of thing you see how small it is the white spot is errm the best in er the light to view it in very detail like that.

Unknown : Yeah, you see in this one oh wait it’s moved

Unknown : There right if you put this one here you see hundreds hundreds suffering the closer, see this one the size of the LeDs compare to the size of the laser spots, its much closer to the set up we use shoot it with lasers. its also the wave length, single wave lengths of single colours, bands of band of red band of green band of blue it is only one line that hits one single colour

Unknown : Yeah there was some people the other day here from errm.. who want to make the real red laser we use for shooting um with their company and they said they reckon they can do it that size, cause cause

excerpt of conversation with a european man about creating holograms through the use of lasers.

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those boxes have fans in it and all the housing of the lasers can be reduced put down together, cause the lasers are no bigger than that its all the heat seeking cooling it down. yeah its a small unit in a place where they can put it all together they say.

Unknown : And mix it up and that will make a real step cause something like that in a museum or gallery as very expensive pieces

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oh boy just being totally bonkers over something, yeah. Oh boy um I fly yeah I’m a pilot I’v been a pilot for about 20 years. I’ve been all around the world but I mainly now do flights across the US.

unknown:

excerpt of a conversation with a American man.

aMerican

coMparisonComparison of dialect between a British and American man.

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I’ve reached that age where I like a day off now and again so I really look to my sunday lie-in, I’m pretty passionate about that. I mean its about having a vitality for something, a love for something.

unknown:

excerpt of a conversation with a British man.

BriTish

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enGAGInG CHArACTer &

sUBJeCT

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Talking to a wide variety of people of different age groups, careers and gender can affect the subjects and stories, which arise with in a conversation, letting new perspectives to be heard. The location where you have conversations with people also affects this. Talking to people in places where you go often or places of personal interest already link you to them. This could then be the subject of your conversation or at least a starter to it. In creating a common interest this allows the other person to engage easily with you.

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DAvIDAUCTIoneer Conversation about his personal stamp collection and selling stamps at auction.

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Mr BInGoILLUsTrATor

Conversation about his recent work and projects he is doing at the moment.

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‘THe AGe oF sIMULATIon HAs ArrIveD. sIMULATIon BeCoMes A FUnCTIon oF TeLeMATIC CULTUre AnD THe exPAnsIon oF new TeCHnoLoGIes THAT sUBsTITUTe For exPerIenTIAL reALITY-THe DIGITAL HAs rePLACeD THe TACTILe.’

scoTT BukaTMan

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excerpt taken from David Holmes’s virtual Identity: Communities of Broadcast, Communities of Interactivity.

During the 1980s theorists of information capitalism pointed to the decline of geographical settings of community and attachment as opening onto a period of profound crisis for experiences of a sense of place and a sense of history. several analyses explored the rise in information form and transnational culture as reasons for the decline of geographical community. Increasing migration and tourism, and the spread of global media culture across nation-states, as well as the creation of open-ended practices of communication via unevenly developing means of telecommunication, were said to contribute to a less grounded experience of culture and subjectivity. At the same time, the fusion of the market with information form extended the reach of commodity culture in ways that began more comprehensively to subsume national and ethnic boundaries. The geographical, economic and cultural movements that produced the canonizing of ‘globalization’ as a discourse in its own right opened up an array of substantive ethical and political questions about power relations, the status of emancipation, identity and historical experience. whatever answers might have been offered to such questions, it became a general understanding that the newer political and social agencies were to be cut adrift from community as a lived reality. In recent times, however, there has been a significant revival of the idea of community in terms which have seemingly bypassed the confrontation with technologically extended alienation. we are increasingly witnessing accounts of the possibility of liberated and emancipated ‘virtual communities’ on a scale which is somehow adequate to the globalization of information.

An alternative view of virtual and abstract communities accepts that extended forms of interaction are not simply supplementary to existing

forms of face-to-face communication but constitute, at the level of social dynamics, their own sealed realities. They are self-contained, self-referential and constitute within themselves the substance of the social relationship, with declining reference to the social event that they simulate at the level of relation and form. extended communication technologies and agencies cannot be viewed as instruments serving pre-given bodies and communities; they are instead contexts which bring about new ways of being, new chains of values and new sensibilities about time and the events of culture. As Carolyn Marvin suggests, new communication technologies ‘intended to streamline, simplify, or otherwise enhance the conduct of familiar social routines may so re organise them that they become new events’.

david aucTioneer

Me : what do you think makes a good conversation?

David : A interesting subject and um yeah someone who looks interested in what your talking about. Me : Do you become influenced by having conversations? David : every conversation you have, so yes you just learn that every conversation teaches you something, I can’t think of a specific example I should say but yes. Me : Do you think physical conversations are more influential then? David : I find it much easier talking to someone face to face, you er there’s a lot of communication in how they look at you and how they speak to you that you can’t pick up on a phone Me : Yeah David : And even less can you pick up on email, so yes face-to-face conversation is much better. Me : Do you think phone and email is more of a generational thing? David : Yes definitely, I don’t have a mobile; if you want to talk you can come see me in person, the internet to me is for collecting information not conversations.

inTerviews aBouT conversaTion

roBerToFFice worker

Me : what do you think makes a good conversation?

robert : A good conversation is one that’s engaging with good input from both sides.

Me : Are you influenced by conversations?

Robert : I can be influenced by conversation, if the person can put their point of view well and convincingly.

Me : Do you think physical conversations are more influential than digital?

Robert : Physical conversations are definitely more influential, it’s easier to get your point across and understand the other persons point. Also body language play a big role and there is no miss communication

Me : Do you think digital conversations are generational?

robert : I think digital conversations are generational at the moment, over time I think they will become less so.

Me : Do you enjoy conversations?

robert : I do enjoy conversations. new interesting topics and points of view maybe brought up

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laurasTudenT

Me : what do you think makes a good conversation?

Laura : I think in order to have a good conversation you need to be interesting, and be interested in the topic of conversation. Being comfortable around the person you are talking to allows you to be able to naturally talk to one another.

Me : Are you influenced by conversations?

Laura : I think we are influenced by conversations, and by understanding other peoples points of view.

Me : Do you think physical conversations are more influential than digital?

Laura : Yes, in a physical conversation there is no chance of miscommunication, you can see the person expression and hear their tone of voice. online you say I love you and I hate you in the same tone and it’s hard to naturally respond to someone online, there is a need to think about what you write before you send it. In a physical conversation it’s just what comes out.

Me : Do you think digital conversations are generational?

Laura : Yes the older generation much prefer to call someone than get an instant response like the younger generation who will text/message online.

our generation has grown up online and it is natural for us to converse through several different forums, other than face to face.

Me : Do you enjoy conversations?

Laura : Yes finding new things out about someone and new conversations are exciting.

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AN EXPLORATION INTO THE PHYSICAL CONVERSATION

ABIGAIL ROGERS

U N K N O W N CONVERSATIONS