Distructive Reading on Digital Image Space and its Placeness
Rather than belonging to the conventional definition of 'space', the Digital Space belongs to media. It is however, should also be noted that the limitless and incessant expansion of digita...
Distructive Reading on Digital Image Space and its Placeness
Rather than belonging to the conventional definition of 'space', the Digital Space belongs to media. It is however, should also be noted that the limitless and incessant expansion of digital space has now invaded deeply into our everyday life, replacing and omitting our traditional concept of space, to the degree that it had rendered meaningless to draw a fine line between space and media. In such context, the concept of 'non-place' proposed by french anthropologist Marc Augé serves as a useful perspective of inquiry. Augé defines the modern society as 'super-modernity', characterized by surplus of time and space. Here, he points out the absence of relationship, of historicity, of authentic identity risen due to super-modernity among those who utilize space, and continues on to suggesting that we classify such spaces that are absent of anthropological placeness as 'non-place': sharing somewhat similar problematic with recent discourses surrounding Digital Space.
Studies on Digital Space, however, are usually focused on mediational functions and communication format of Digital Space as 'digital media', still being anchored on traditional physical-digital space dichotomy. Such tendency might excuse itself as respect or nostalgia for spaces that had long been considered 'authentic' or 'real'. Indeed, discourses on space and place had been a center piece of modern philosophy for the last four decades, dealing with subject matters ranging from society and capital, to modern subjectivity. Still, it is vital what we face the fact that aforementioned epistemological boundary is the primary obstacle that is hindering the combination of theories on placeness and space with discussions regarding Digital Space.
Boring on such points, this study aims to 1) confirm spaceness of Digital Space(non-space), 2) analyze and critically discuss today's Digital Space via theory on non-place that had developed from traditional urban space, 3) and lastly, to inquire possibilities of spacial practice of Digital Space and of formulating its own placeness.
Keywords: digital space, image space, placeness, non-place, sense of place, everyday life, representation of space, practice of space.