Know Your Place

When my daughter received an award with other students in in her elementary school, the ceremony was held in the high school auditorium down the road from her school. There were a few reasons for the change in venue, but the effect was subtle and noticeable. I was impressed.

The high school auditorium had seats that were attached to the floor. They were permanent. And it had a stage. Students sat in a section together, and when it was time, they had to ascend the stairs on one side of the stage, shake hands with the dignitaries there. Next, they were photographed as a group by the proud parents as well as by the school photographer. Then the students descended the stairs at the other end of the stage and returned to their seats. 

This was very different from meeting in the elementary school cafetorium--the combination cafeteria and auditorium. We were all impressed. 

There are some places that seem charged with power. They have an impact on people. We experience these impacts when we enter universities, libraries, churches, stadiums, government buildings, and theaters. Their rooms don't just shape the acoustics, they are visually stimulating, meaningful. There are many places that have differing effects in terms of lighting, temperature, openness, spaciousness, or as a result of what is in the room, like the quantity and quality of furnishings and decorative art. Going to the high school for the award ceremony gave the ceremony a meaning that was hard to describe. The high school wasn't a sacred place exactly, but it was a meaningful change of venue. 

Marshall McLuan

In his Wikipedia entry states "Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian professor of English, philosopher of communication theory and a public intellectual. His work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory, as well as having practical applications in the advertising and television industries." Marshall McLuan famously said, "The media is the message." This was a powerful insight of many powerful insights recognizing that the medium does things to the intended message, altering the message despite its content: "McLuhan observes that any medium "amplifies or accelerates existing processes", introduces a "change of scale or pace or shape or pattern into human association, affairs, and action", resulting in "psychic, and social consequences";[2][3] this is the real "meaning or message" brought by a medium, a social and psychic message, and it depends solely on the medium itself, regardless of the 'content' emitted by it.[2] This is basically the meaning of "the medium is the message".

There is more to communication though than "the medium is the message"; it can also be true that the space for the forum is the message. When you want to communicate certain ideas and messages, it isn't just how you say something. It's where. 

The space shapes the message. Depending on our expertise as storytellers and technologists, we have control over that message.

This can be achieved in different ways. We may do more showing and less telling; do the thinking for our audience or challenge our audience to engage with this virtual artifact surfacing thoughts and feelings, adding those responses to the intersubjective experience. The more fully we can engage our audience members, the greater the dimensions of meaning we can engender as a whole.

This engendering effect is not just dependent on discussions in analog; it is dependent on what came before the discussion, memory and priming. Hamlet becomes a meditation on different kinds of knowledge and truths; the Age of Ultron becomes an homage to Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus; a Rube Goldberg machine cartoon becomes a question about the necessity of innovations in the industrial age. But the medium is not all there is to conveying a message. The space is the message as well.

Architecture comes to mind immediately. Not the architecture where great buildings cut into space and alter skylines. Instead, it's the architecture of the insides of buildings--it's called interior design--which is concerned with the creation and shaping of space. Our society creates spaces where forums can take place. There are different kinds of spaces, and within these spaces, leaders/teachers/artists perform, they present ideas with or without media.

Place is important. Since it is created, it is a kind of technology.

Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire

Interior design is well known as an art, and it does give a nod towards engineering as a design field, but not so much as a science. This is unfortunate. There are possibilities in the contributions to interior design with the science of ethnography. It is clear that interior design is beginning to contribute to the sciences and benefit from the sciences. One science in particular, ethnography, is related to anthropology. "Ethnography is the best route to understanding how people relate to their environments, and from that understanding, designers can custom-fit spaces. Ethnography can improve interior design."

In the article "Anthropology by Design," David Whitemyer writes, "Ethnographic findings, at their best, provide inspirational materials for designers, supplying unexpected details and pertinent reminders of how places are organized," Eric Laurier says. "Designers then use their skills and imagination to produce buildings that may variously support, enhance, augment or radically alter those places." This is similar to McLuan's insight about media. the connection isn't too far fetched.

If you consider the ancient campfire as a technology, you can appreciate the space this technology creates. The campfire is just a circle of rocks with a shallow pit in the ground. A stack of wood is arranged at the pit's center. And then there's the fire. The fire creates a room without walls. The walls are the darkness that the fire light does not illuminate. When people are seated in a circle around the fire, it's almost as if the people and their faces emerge from the wall of darkness. It is the fire room. It is an illusion created from negative space.

 You appreciate the quality of this illusion watching The Walking Dead. It might help you appreciate this quality even more to go camping with a small group out in the woods, away from all forms of artificial light, because real walls might keep out the wild animals--bears, raccoons, wolves, and zombies. The light will not. Without real walls, the campers are exposed. 

But at night, around the campfire, people talk. They share stories. A sense of mystery might emerge and encourage the telling of certain kinds of stories. Or people might be more intimate, sharing personal experiences, thoughts, imaginings. 

The telling raises the teller's status. It shifts hierarchies so that the teller takes the "head" of the pyramid and the listeners are subjugated during the telling. 

That is, if everyone takes turns sharing stories. Sometimes, this isn't what happens. 

Knowing Your Place

 There are stories about difficult meetings taking place in the boss's office. The boss sits behind the big, heavy desk, while the employee enters to sit in a less comfortable chair. The boss's desk and chair appears to be higher than the employee's seating. The message is clear about your relationship, about the boss's status compared to yours, and about what kind of talk this will be, more like a command-obey message rather than a conversational dialogue.

The message is very different in a presentation. Seating is usually equal. Everyone's chairs are of the same quality, everyone sits at the same level, but still some meetings may have an "honored" place. A presenter may have displays arranged at one end or a chair is set at a head of the table. The audience may receive less of the command-obey message, but it's not really an arrangement that conveys equality nor encourages a dialogue where everyone can have a say and where participation is valued and expected. Yet, that's what these presentations are supposed to encourage. Of course, there are presentations where questions and answers are encouraged, but it doesn't feel as natural. Maybe it's conditioning from lecture halls where the professor speaks and the students listen.

You get a different feeling though from a perfect circle of chairs where each person can see the others. Conversation does happen. People do feel more comfortable contributing. Not that attitudes and personalities can't shut down open dialogue, but when people aren't getting in the way, dialogue happens. 

Escape

Walls or no walls, roof or no roof, we have many different kinds of places. Travel to different countries to learn about different cultures also has an impact on us and on the way we think. It makes some of us see home differently. Often, it makes you appreciate home more than you had ever before. The change in place can be good.

Walking in the woods, out in nature, is said to have benefits you won't experience by walking the same distance along city blocks. According to an Atlantic article, "exposure to nature has been shown repeatedly to reduce stress and boost well-being." The walk may be meant as recreation, but being out in the sunlight and the open air has other transformative effects. Imagine how teachers have exploited this place for its effects on their students and on how they relate to each other, or imagine having a business conversation with one or two colleagues while walking in a woodsy park.

Place is powerful. Just as you can place a can of soup on a pedestal and call it art, you can also ask two people to stand on a stage, have a regular conversation about a restaurant they had both visited and the audience will have difficulty thinking it is a real conversation. Instead they will think it was an improvisation or a restaurant critique or something else entirely. That is because place transforms what it encloses. Places have a special kind of magic.

The place is the message.