A third space is a created ‘world’ where human connection can be made and felt without the need for any form of physical presence, where time can be bent and dilated, regardless of physical location. A third space, therefore allows for a collapse of boundaries between people who are not in the same physical space.

This is better described by Randall Packer, where a third space is “perhaps akin to the fourth dimension, a hyperspace where spatial trajectories have no boundaries, where temporal relations are amorphous, where wormholes reveal pathways that are instantaneous and geographically dispersed“. This is much like the movie Interstellar where the wormhole allowed for a bend in time, allowing for connection between Future Cooper and Present Cooper.

In my opinion, the way to intimacy is through a person’s five basic senses. With that, today, the most basic form of intimacy that can be created between people in different locations would be that of a phone call, since both parties are able to hear the voices of the the other. This is followed by a video call, since two senses are touched on – hear and sight. Of course, this was what Hole-in-Space by Kit Galloway & Sherrie Rabinowitz managed to achieve back in the 80s, where the project “suddenly severed the distance between both cities and created an outrageous pedestrian intersection”. Therefore, the ideal would be to increase the number of senses that are touched on between interaction of people in different locations, such as how Telematic Dreaming by Paul Sermon managed involve even the sense of touch – that, to me, is the closest form of intimacy.

Tying it back to micro-project 3 where Ying Hui and I created the first perspective of a “third” body in a third space by using half of ourselves, we were able to connect by literally trying to connect our two halves into one through a split screen, through non-verbal communication. Our main form of communication was then waiting for each other’s ‘cues’ of when the other should move next (e.g. she takes one step, I take the next). Therefore, by taking away our simplest form of communication (verbal) and forcing ourselves to still communicate in other forms to literally connect ourselves, we were then able to connect with each other in this third space.