Cyber Arcade

Arcades began as a project or an exercise in flaneurie when Walter Benjamin published his Arcades Project in which the term was used to describe someone who was adrift in the city, detached from what was happening in reality. Prouty (2009).

The construction of arcades in Paris offered a respite from the teeming masses outside and offered a space for displaying themselves and a dwelling place while providing a camouflage for their activities. The social position of the flaneur allowed them to have a kind of dual vision which meant that all traces of unique personality had become part of the commodity. Prouty (2009) The arcades for the flaneur was an alternative geography, in other words another Space and Place for them to remove themselves from the gritty reality of everyday and to immerse themselves in a secure, safe and free environment.

Image 1 Rob Bryanton image created using curved spaces

Kuttainen lecture 4 (2017) refers to varying dimensions of participation in the sense of cyberspace being an alternative geography but in this case the reference is to social geography. The use of Facebook could be construed as a substitute for the arcade in that the flaneur promenades the avenues of the virtual world via this medium. Tuan (1979) considers place is security, space is freedom. P3. Facebook provides the same sense of freedom and space which enables the active user to display an exaggerated persona that implies they are a member of certain societies. This in turn is empowering and disempowering and disconcertingly addictive.

In comparison to the arcades, Facebook allows users to aimlessly roam similarly to the flaneur. Facebook provides virtual travel but also in toxifies the viewer with an endless supply of spectacle. The image becomes more important than the reality. In cyberspace a map consist only as a cognitive aspect. The use requires an inner map or sense of self that allows them to navigate safely through the data. Outside of the element of virtual reality we need spatial cognition to explore this aspect. Facebook enables the users to have unbounded spaces with no apparent fixed boundaries in time or space and its design supports a view that it is an inclusive, universal and democratic community or users.

References

 Bryanton, R. (2010), [Image]. Retrieved from http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/our-universe-as-dodecahedron.html 

 Prouty, R. (2009). A Turtle on a leash. Retrieved from http://onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html 

Tuan, Y-F. (1977). In Space and place: The perspective of experience. London, England: Edward Arnold

Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 4 [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au