Thesis Journal

This week I carefully reviewed the courses and projects I have learned in the half year since I came to IMA, and continued to try to think about my subject. I still want to set the theme as content related to space and social. But I haven’t figured out exactly what I want to do. This week I continued to explore the relationship between people in public spaces, and the relationship between VR and AR and social spaces last semester.

The distinction between the private space and the public space originated in ancient times and can be traced back to the distinction between the family (oikos) and the political arena (ecclesia) in Greece. The affairs of city members were handled and resolved in the political arena, but between the two space the Greeks also set up a field to communication. The main function of this field is not to distinguish between private and public, not to strictly enforce the integrity of their respective fields, but to ensure smoothness between the two. With frequent contacts, this third field is also an intermediary field, it is called Agora.

German thinker Jurgen Habermas emphasized the public nature of citizenship, and defined public space and public sphere as the domain that exists between the state system and private interests, and where citizens form public opinion through equal exchanges. He deeply realized that in the late capitalist society, the combination of state power and capital power forced the alienation of publicity to become the object of manipulation, leading to the colonization of the life world where the public sphere was located, and the control and oppression of civil society. To this end, he proposed the reconstruction of the public sphere, a major issue facing today’s society. Habermas’s public realm directly inherits the concept of Hannah Arendt’s public space. Based on a long-term critical study of political theory and a pluralist position, Arendt believes that politics is not produced among people but among people. The freedom and spontaneity of different people is the space between people. , That is, the premise of public space.

We live in a world of instant communication without geographical restrictions. In the previous generation, humans were mainly limited by the speed of postal services, but now we are mainly limited by the information transmission speed of the Internet. This has changed the way we connect with others.

As the cost of immersive devices continues to decrease, virtual reality social spaces will continue to be integrated into our daily lives, as well as our interactions with friends, family, and strangers. Social media enables rapid anonymous communication and can be oriented to individuals and groups. If social VR is the next evolution, what methods should we take to build a space that respects user identity and security?

Obviously, we need a space that reflects the way we interact with others in real life.

For social VR, people often think of descriptions of science fiction works, such as “Avalanche”, “Top Player” and “The Matrix” and so on. In today’s social VR ecosystem, most applications generally adopt such a method: the system often encourages (or forces) new users to establish relationships with strangers. This can lead to a more dynamic space, but its realization is different from our regular interactions in normal life.

This way does not reflect our daily experience. In most cases, we are not spending time with strangers, but interacting with people we know. Whether it is a private place, a semi-public place, or a public place, we tend to interact with acquaintances. We can define the privacy of the space, we can determine who has access to a certain location, and the degree of trust established with others here.

Cornell Box

-Phone

-Wine glass

-Macbook charger

-Kindle