Live interaction, presentation, and dialogue in the third space creates opportunities for creative forms of exchange, performance, and collaborative projects. Just as an instructor might organize exercises for interaction in the physical classroom, the online medium is an avenue for new forms that critique and explore qualities of engagement via remote access. For example, the close proximity of webcams, in which each participant is facing one another, opens up creative pathways for “collective body” exercises, which explore social connectedness via the Net. The following composite below was created by students at NTU.

In the example below, a class at the California Institute of the Arts Center for Integrated Media involved the London-based alternative arts organization Furtherfield.org, directed by Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow, well known internationally for hosting networked exhibitions, projects, collaborations, and performances. The event brought together a group of new media artists who are actively part of the Furtherfield family of net practitioners, including Annie Abrahams, whose work is focused on cyber-performance. Abrahams led the class in a spontaneous cyber-happening via Adobe Connect, once again exploring the dynamics of intimacy, social relations, and collective activity in the third space.

Creative dialogue in the third space functions as a thread for weaving global trajectories of human exchange, technology as a great enabler, a source of empowerment, and a force of creative thinking. Adobe Connect (or other Web-conferencing software) when pushed to its potential, can be a powerful platform for learning and play: geographical separation is no longer a constrain, it is an opportunity to bridge the distances to open up new forms of inter-cultural dialogue.