Imagined materiality or material imaginations?
Making “noticeable”, “sense”, and “visible”, being able to inspect, see, observe and report upon activities lays at the heart of “tangible computing” particular when seen in contrast to approaches on abstraction through hiding. The readings of this week demonstrate that a “making visible” does not necessarily correlate with a physical re-representation of the unspoken and hidden. Instead a visibility of (physical, digital and imaginary) objects and artifacts is achieved through actions and activities by oneself and others in one’s spatial and social context. Heath et al. argue that “material features of objects and the ecology in which they lie, reflexively inform the production and intelligibility of conduct and interaction”. We are speaking of a materiality that does not necessarily relate to physical properties, but as Miller and Slater point out, to a rather Latourian notion of hybrid objects and actions. The action in a mediated space is interwoven with conduct in a physical space. In Heath et al., an art installation makes actions visible through incorporating them into an object (through digital mediation), whereas Miller and Slater define virtuality itself as a hybrid form, an assimilation of another medium into social practices, not less real than the physical object it requires to be accessed, both embedded in social spaces. Observations during the museum exhibition reveal that actions as language between conduct and objects can be found in gestures, pointing, and laughing (quite physical reactions). What people do, what kind of activities they perform makes taken-for-granted and invisible infrastructures visible. To embody these actions into objects can transform familiar into questionable, opaque into transparent. What remains unclear to me is how to balance tangible and virtual materiality, when shall we transform into hybrid spaces, when shall we keep a clear distinction? Seamfulness can raise awareness, but can also be disturbing, noise (as evident in Mainwaring et al.). There is no distinct line between appropriation, critical awareness, emotive interaction and automation, efficiency and qualm-ness, however dichotomies in everyday practice and language remain. Making sense through seeing others’ activities and actions with and through objects might work in an enclosed and experimental environment such as the museum exhibition, but is much more difficult to design for in a more complex social and spatial setting. What if the material imaginations of one group support margins to the group who can't share the imaginations because of a lack of resources, infrastructures, and money? - the imagined materiality on the one hand and the socially and spatially manifested, materially performed imaginations (becoming realities) construct boundaries that are translated into theoretical dichotomies.
Visibility and materiality do not imply “easier” appropriation, but maybe facilitate communication through material imaginaries? The visible action only exists in relationship to its complementary partner, the imagination of how action is (should be?) lived.
When actions link conduct and material realities, how does social order arise within or from shared practices? How do we act in transparent dichotomies, can we come with a new language that is based on a “new” materiality instead of vocabulary?