Last week, we immersed ourselves as a class into the third space with Adobe Connect. Our second spaces were relatively the same as we were all in the same classroom, but Adobe connect enabled us to see everyone at once, which was something we were previously not able to do due to our seating positions. It was also interesting to see how our virtual positions differed from physical reality, with our positions all mixed up on screen – the person to the left and right of me, for example, were at opposite ends of the classroom. I’ll discuss some of the key concepts we touched upon in class.

Image courtesy of Randall Packer

The million-dollar keyword Randall Packer emphasized on was “negotiation”. Be it aligning our arms together, or making a “pen train”, we wouldn’t have gotten the results we did without negotiating and compromising with one another and adjusting as when we saw fit. I felt that this exercise really exemplified the term “Do It With Others”.

Image courtesy of Randall Packer

It took a fair amount of time to get things perfectly aligned sometimes, especially because we couldn’t really talk to another considering our partners were on opposite sides of the room.

Speaking of which, it was fascinating to interact with each other through gestures from opposite sides of the class. It’s different from when we Skype with our friends, for example, or from the Social Broadcasting experiment from week one, because we are consciously aware that we are performing a collective action.

Image courtesy of Randall Packer

The scale of the project was also an important feature to take note of – I’d never been in such a large conference, and the possibilities that that number brought to the table reaped beautiful results. For example, we are able to appreciate the sheer variety of images here, and conjuring up a narrative for each image is a delightful task on its own.

Image courtesy of Randall Packer

This image was particularly beautiful to me – I would never have noticed everyone’s eyes in real life to this level of close-up. This collective action of putting our eyes close to the camera is all the more emphasized with the small screen – objects seem all the more bigger without all the objects that they would be surrounded with in real life. The eye here then becomes the most important thing as it encompasses all of the actuality in the third space.