Media Use in the Bath House

Laurie Grove Bath House Research

Media Use: Official and Unofficial Media Use

Research Overview
I started the research with the ambitious objective of mapping all media use of the building both official and unofficial including, internet and network use. However, after inquiring with the Network services at the University I found that there isn’t sufficient equipment in the building to record this kind of information. So I have decided to focus the research on physical official and unofficial media in the building.

In a time of digital information and paperless communication, there is a surprising number of ‘physical’ forms of communication in the bath house, both official and unofficial media. I found it interesting how the occupants of the building choose to interact with the space through note postings and tagging. This research is an attempt to record and chart all the ‘physical’ media use in the building through pictures and note taking and also an attempt to see how all the media use connects to the social network in the building. A further step of the research would be to try and find a link between the social networks formed through all the physical media use in the building and the social networks formed through social net working websites on the internet by the users of the building.

To be able to create legible chart of all the date the first step would be to categorize all the raw information into two big groups: official and unofficial media. As the foundation of that process, first I need to define the term official and unofficial media. For the purpose of this research I would define all official media by these characteristics:
• Located on public bulletin boards or other official locations for information sharing
• Contains information from building or university authority
While I would define unofficial media use by these characteristics:
• Located in personal spaces
• Contains personal information from for specific recipient(s)

After looking through research findings, I found that the Official media can be divided into more categories, namely:
• Course Information
• Event Ads
• Building Info
• Other Info
While the unofficial media can be divided into these categories:
• Territorial Sign
• Appointments
• Personal Statements (directed towards the general public)
• Personal Notes (directed toward a specific member or group of the building user)
These categories might change along with the development of the research.