Labelling Fever

INTRODUCTION

Labelling the world is a primary need for human beings. Since we know it's simply an attempt to reduce complexity -with a high degree of arbitrariness-, let’s surrender to primitive urge and label compulsively, arbitrarily, freely, as a game aiming to reduce the complexity of this building, and maybe as a way to bring new complexity to it!

What are the variables that I believe influence the most the perception of the spaces I’m analysing? And what’s the relationship between these variables and the media ecology of the building?

I will focus on two spaces: The cubicle studios on the pools and the studios at the back of the building. For each of them I will consider the variables that I believe are more important in configuring the perceptions of the people (me being the subjective observer) creating as many concepts as I feel like to describe it. Hopefully those concepts can be used afterwards as data for the data jam.

For the studios at the back of the building I will examine the pathways that one needs to follow to get there, what I called the Labyrinth Effect. For the studios on the pools I will examine the influence of the structural architecture and what I called the Double Shape Effect and the Balcony of Abstraction.

THE LABYRINTH EFFECT

To begin with let’s introduce the concept that will describe the Bath House: The labyrinth effect. Walking inside the building one gets the impression that she won’t find her way out and this have a strong effect on the perception of the space. It gives it a whole aura of mysticism. However, a labyrinth looses all its suggestive power as soon as the wandering explorer learns his way around. Therefore this effect influences the perception of the space only before it becomes familiar. As soon as we learn our routes and we discover the secret pattern of the labyrinth, this effect vanishes. However, it can be revitalized if the wandering explorer recovers curiosity and wanders in amusement along the dark passages of this house.

The reader (say Graham) may want to know how these effects relate to media. Shouldn’t we consider architecture a medium? And while considering the media ecology of a building, isn’t it crucial to consider the architecture?

As I said in my first learning agreement plan, I believe the route to access influences the perception of the room. This route to access is at the same time depending on the architecture (the shape of the labyrinth), on more ephemeral questions of the architecture (such as cleanness, good/bad state of the furniture, etc.), and on the question of accessibility (swipings and passwords). A good example of a space affected by this variable in the building are the studios at the very back of the building. I believe one of the variables that is more powerful in the “construction”1 of those rooms is the route to access. (We will examine this example in detail later on).

The coded doors are a major agent in creating privacy (or exclusivity) feeling. Along the route to the studios one need to prove identification twice: swipe card at the entrance of the building and then enter a code at the gate of the pools. This has obviously a direct effect on the presences in the space. There is a little possibility that you run into someone unknown (although there is a possibility). This creates a strong feeling of privacy and ownership. However, as we will see later, this privacy has to be looked closer, since it is affected by another effect: The Double Shape Effect.

A consequence of the particular route to access to the studios at the back is the desecrating effect. This effect has a lot to do with the coded doors as well. As Interactive Media students we are not allowed into many of the spaces of this building. As students working on the project of the Bath House, though, we all manage to get at least to the studios. All my explorations were accompanied by a feeling of being desecrating a space. You are a non-allowed observer walking around and taking notes. (And for some reason this is a nice feeling.) The more you get to the back of the building the stronger this feeling gets. This doesn’t have to do with codes any more (since there are no more coded doors after the one at the entrance of the pools) but with the labyrinth shape. The more complicated it is for the explorer to get to the room the more mysterious or sacred the space is for her.

AN EXAMPLE. ROUTE TO ACCESS STUDIO G1.
Let’s consider this route closer. To get to the studio G1 -according to the blue prints- we will take at least seven decisions.

1.Right after the first door we'll decide to go straight instead of turning left to the security hall.
2.We will get to a 1nd hall and we will continue to the right to get to a 2rd hall.
3.Here we will take enter go through the door where is written Entrance Large Bath.
4.Once in the big pool we will decide -for example- to take the corridor on the right.
1.We could consider a decision also the fact that we won't take the door that we'll find on our right to get to the small pool but we will continue straight.
5.At the end of the corridor we will turn left.
6.We will make a right at the first chance.
7.We will enter the first room on the right.

The higher the number of decision is the more labyrinthic is the experience. There are however, other things to look at when considering the route to access. We could examine now the characteristic of the segments. Frequently we will consider a segment each of the parts in between decisions. However, in some cases, either the place where the decision is made can be seen as a independent segment (such is the case of the 2rd hall for example) or a decision can be found in the middle of a segment (such is the case of the corridor after decision 4). Let's describe the 6 segments of the route to access to the studio G1.

Segment 1. From the door to the 1st hall.
Segment 2. The 1st hall.
Segment 3. The 2nd hall.
Segment 4. The right side corridor of the big pool.
Segment 5. The back corridor of the big pool.
Segment 6. The hall at the back.

Let's consider length, width, light, cleanness.

Segment 1 is 13 steps long and 2 steps wide. It has natural and artificial light. Natural light comes from the main door and from a lantern located above segment 2. Reasonably clean.

Segment 2 is 4 steps long and 7 steps wide. Light is both natural and artificial. Natural comes from the door and from the lantern. Artificial comes from 4 lamps. Reasonably clean.

Segment 3. 7 x 6 steps. Artificial and natural light. Lantern plus lamps. Pencil drawings on the walls affect cleanness.

Segment 4. 46 x 1 steps. Natural light coming from a huge lantern on the sealing is partly obscured by the architecture (the balcony of abstraction). Dirty (artistic dirt turns dirtiness into a positive aspect).

Segment 5. 7 x 1 steps. Light and cleanness follows the same pattern than segment 4.

Segment 6. 7 x 4 steps. Faint light, mixture of natural and artificial. Dirty (artistic dirt).

There is a progression in this route to artistic dirt.

THE POOLS: THE DOUBLE SHAPE EFFECT AND THE BALCONY OF ABSTRACTION

The double shape effect
From the balcony that used to be above the pool now you can see the division in cubicles. I thought that that space must be influenced by the fact that there are two shapes involved in a relation. There has to be some kind of tension between the shape of the pool and the cubicles. The shape of the pool includes the cubicles but we can’t think of it as we think of the shape of a building including its rooms. Since the cubicles have no sealing they participate on the bigger shape directly, but at the same time they are a closed small shape. I thought this could be called the Double Shape Effect. And that balcony would be the Balcony of Abstraction since is the elevated place from where one can create a whole that includes and explains the parts and their relations.

But this balcony of abstraction has also a different function: visual control. From that balcony all privacy is perverted. Balcony of privacy perversion. Although a balcony crowns both pools, the effect is much stronger in the bigger pool. The balcony of the small pool doesn’t even go all around and it’s hardly accessible. The big one, on the other hand, it’s not just accessible but it’s occupied by university staff. They have their desks up there. So it turns out that the small private cubicle shared only by three people is revealed to the bigger shape (that remains in the shape of the balcony) and their ‘inhabitants’.

Now perhaps we should look closer to the idea of privacy. We come from the street, the public space, and we keep going through boundaries that assure that every time we manage to get through one of them we belong to a more reduced group of people. The final boundary would be the door to the cubicle (in the case of an MFA student). However, here we see how the balcony of privacy perversion alters these boundaries.

Now, if we go to the ground floor then other relations arise from this Double Shape Effect (DSE). To prove the importance of these effects we just have to compare it with the rooms at the back of the building that are not affected by them.

Sound and Vision DSE
The sound and the vision are very much affected by the DSE. Since the cubicles don’t have a sealing, sound is shared among the students occupying them more than vision. Sound occupies the bigger shape. That means that being in the first cubicle (the one closer to the entrance) I can hear the bubbling water and the question: ‘Do you want some tea? I’m making tea… Do you want some tea?’ This has also an effect on the feeling of privacy. While your vision is restricted to a room where there is no kettle, you are participating on that other space through the sound, and at the same time (remember it or not) the inhabitants of the balcony of privacy perversion could be watching you! So all this creates a complex fabric of public/private -shared/not shared- tensions worthy looking at.