Everytime We Touch, I Get This Feeling.

|| This week during class, we all got on Adobe Connect (it was my first time using this software ever), and immersed ourselves into the Third Space together.

 

We discussed about how the emotional bandwidth (the quality of emotional exchange between two individuals) of texting is significantly different from that of video calling or social broadcasting since we are able to view the voice and expression of the other party to fully gauge their responses, compared to simply communicating via words.

 

This experience was very new to me since previously we only broadcasted live together as a class but did not really attempt to make any interactions across screens (although this was attempted in the Telestroll microproject). As a class, we were present in both our local space (the first space), and the digitalised platform of Adobe Connect (the third space). Since we were all in the classroom, our remote spaces (second spaces) were all the same relative to each other. It was not possible to see everyone in the room at once in the physical world, but Adobe Connect sure made it much easier. It was also super cool to see how although we were in the same room at different positions, our minds were all in the same place.

 

We attempted to accomplish various collective tasks together, such as putting our fingers together with a partner beside us (not physically but onscreen), putting our faces really close to the camera and making a cross across the screen.

E.T. touch with our fellow classmates beside us on Adobe Connect. Photo credits: Randall Packer
Pen Alignment. Photo credits: Randall Packer
Onscreen Cross. Photo credits: Randall Packer

For these tasks to be completed successfully, it was vital that we negotiated and compromised to achieve our goal. From the simplest initial task of getting a pen out, to aligning the positions/scale of our objects/hands, every part of the job required some form of give-and-take. Even with the Onscreen Cross, if we were not involved in making the actual cross with our arm, we needed to know our job and do it, even if it meant doing absolutely nothing with our arm, lest there be an extra stroke coming out of the cross.

 

While we see negotiation on a smaller scale here in a onscreen microproject, these skills are definitely applicable to real life whenever we need to communicate with others and get our ideas through in order to get a job done successfully.

Author: Tan Yue Ling

Moving is hard but stagnation is harder!

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