FIELDS
12:00 - 12:30
Session Start: Sun Dec 19 12:00:00 1999
***Now talking in #Defib
***Topic is 'Field Theory with a l y r i c m a i l e r participants, Sun. Dec 19, 12pm PST (20:00 GMT)'
[12:03] Surd Welcome to Defib. Let's do introductions.
[12:03] Surd I'm Jim Andrews
[12:03] Inna I'm Inna Kouper
[12:03] Jim_R Jim Rosenberg
[12:03] Mike I'm Mike Kelleher
[12:03] [brick] Dan Waber
[12:03] Loss Loss Glazier
[12:03] PbN I'm Jim Andre... DOH! I'm PbN -- Ted Warnell
[12:04] tombell tom bell
[12:04] Surd And Pluto is anonymous
[12:04] Surd The field project...
[12:04] Surd how do we enter the field?
[12:04] Surd What is it?
[12:05] Inna The definition?
[12:05] Surd I'm just looking for a way in
[12:05] Surd to open up discussion
[12:05] Loss I think it's a range of possibilities within a given set of practices ...
[12:05] Surd into the field
[12:05] Mike When I first came to the web, I thought of it in spatial terms, ie field...
[12:06] Surd What sort of practices, Loss?
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[12:06] Inna probably, discursive practices...
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[12:06] Surd We can have multiple threads going on here too, folks, that's OK...
[12:07] tombell how many dimensions? mike
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[12:08] Surd What sort of practices, Loss?
[12:08] Loss Wow, even mIRC crashed on me!
[12:09] Inna Go on with your thought, Loss
[12:09] Surd Blip blat blot
[12:09] Mike Well, that's the problem, I don't think you can ask of web objects, where are they? Or not without many problems. Field is open to time I think. Thus, when are they also.
[12:09] Loss I think there are many ways to approach these media.
[12:09] Loss For all of us our understandings are different.
[12:09] Loss Jim_R and I, for example, often discuss different shades of ...
[12:09] Loss interpretation when it comes to hypertext.
[12:09] Loss But this field that Mike and Tom have opened ...
[12:10] Loss I see it as a place that we might be able to interweave ...
[12:10] Loss our ways of approaching these media.
[12:10] tombell i think the project opens up a number of directions
[12:10] Mike But "place" doesn't quite work as metaphor. Where are we?
[12:11] Surd Yes, I liked Jim R's essay about field theory being concerned with the way works can continue and thread or weave... is that accurate, Jim?
[12:11] Jim_R Sure, that works. I guess I have a kind of private axe to grind:
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[12:11] Loss We are "here".
[12:11] Mike We are now.
[12:12] Jim_R I've been interested for a long time in getting hypertext into the fine structure of language.
[12:12] Jim_R It just occurs to me that 'field' is a more fine-grained concept that something like 'lexia' ...
[12:12] Inna Lexia is inappropriate
[12:13] Loss Please expand on that, Jim.
[12:13] Jim_R I don't know if I agree with that, Inna. It has problems, but there has to be *something* you see when
[12:13] Surd mike, time=place?
[12:13] Jim_R the mouse is not moving, there's no keyboard input, etc.
[12:13] Loss In what sense do you mean "fine structure of language"
[12:13] Mike Time precedes place, Jim.
[12:13] Jim_R Inside the sentence.
[12:14] Jim_R Gosh, Mike, my idea is to throw time out of the picture altogether! :-)
[12:14] Mike Really! Why?
[12:14] Jim_R I want to put words into the same place, logically and physically. If you do that,
[12:15] Jim_R something has to be unconstrained, and for me that's time.
[12:15] tombell how does the visual dimension fit?
[12:16] Jim_R I see it as the "arena"
[12:16] Surd Jim, you want to put words into the same place as what?
[12:16] Jim_R As each other
[12:16] Loss You are thinking of that in the context of this field project?
[12:16] Jim_R (A cluster of words, one on top of another.)
[12:16] Inna Intergrams?
[12:17] Jim_R Hmm, that's how my writing works, but I haven't figured out how to do that in
[12:17] Jim_R discursive prose, alas.
[12:17] Jim_R Inna: Yeah, Intergrams, and the pieces that followed
[12:18] Surd Is Kac's hologram project related, Jim?
[12:18] Loss In your sense the field would not be something that spreads out in front of you but
[12:18] Loss something that is superimposed?
[12:18] tombell Jim_R, how does the writer/reader perspective relate to that?
[12:18] Mike I guess I don't see the web as having dimensions, except metaphorically...
[12:19] Mike I see it as characterized by movement (forward), more like time..
[12:19] Jim_R Aargh, too much coming at me at once ... I wish I'd been able to see Eduaro's pieces, but all I've seen is
[12:19] Jim_R his writings about them.
[12:19] Surd I mean the simultaneity of different things together.
[12:19] Jim_R Loss, I don't see field as superimposed, but a granularity from inside. "Bonding strength".
[12:19] Inna Field is something that is compressed and stretches in the readers/writers mind
[12:20] tombell Ive been doing some work with popups and they can open simultaneity and another dimension
[12:20] Jim_R But Mike, why does it have to be linear?
[12:21] Mike It doesn't have to be linear, but progressive, I guess, cumulative
[12:21] Loss But Jim, how do you see its "dimensions"?
[12:21] Mike cumulative
[12:21] Inna If the web doesn't have dimensions, what has it?
[12:22] Mike Inter-
[12:22] tombell horizontal and vertical are dimensions that haven't been explored much in hypertext
[12:22] Mike connection
[12:22] Mike action
[12:22] PbN Inna, maybe it is potential
[12:22] Mike -penetration
[12:22] Jim_R Dimension is a slippery word. I think of dimensions as *independent*. Language space has a
[12:22] Jim_R lot of interdependencies.
[12:23] Inna PbN, you didn't finish...
[12:23] Jim_R Tom, you should look at a paper by Frank Shipman et al on spatial constraints in VIKI, he does talk about
[12:23] Jim_R horizontal and vertical alignments.
[12:23] PbN Yes, it is finished
[12:23] Surd So far we seem to have been examining notions of space in our discussion in relation to 'field'.
[12:23] Inna It seems as if we speak simultaneously
[12:24] tombell is the shipman on the web, jim_r?
[12:24] Surd Metaphorical space, dimensional, the question being what are the dimensions...
[12:24] Jim_R I'll have to find out, I'm not sure at the moment. It was given at Hypertext 99.
[12:24] Surd Yes, like here, now, Inna.
[12:25] Surd If this is a space, then there is a whole lotta simultaneity going on
[12:25] Surd yet various dimensions...
[12:25] Surd This is hard to capture in the canned transcript...
[12:25] Inna How all these dimensions might be percepted
[12:25] tombell right, jim, i'm getting overload again
[12:26] Surd think we have to let it flow, tom
[12:26] Loss The transcript should reflect the simultaneity, I'd think.
[12:26] [brick] and because there are different lag times between us, what each sees is slightly different
[12:26] Jim_R It's too bad we can't have "graphical chat"!
[12:26] Inna it is like Jim_R Intergrams
[12:26] [brick] on "bad" net days, it's possible to see an answer before a question
[12:26] PbN and this really kind of describes being in cyberspace
[12:26] Surd we cannot capture the whole discussion but enjoy it and focus in on what interests you...
[12:27] PbN time and space seem too obvious -- and dimension
[12:27] Mike Time is very difficult to talk about. The temptation is always to spatialize it....
[12:27] PbN field is a color
[12:27] PbN not green
[12:27] Inna time can not be separated from space
[12:27] Jim_R It seems hard to escape the idea that field is related to *locality*, but I wonder if it helps to be too
[12:28] Inna maybe multicolor
[12:28] Jim_R focused on dimensions.
[12:28] tombell PbN, say more about color, etc.
[12:28] Loss But it's also about our inter-relations, that's the simultaneity.
[12:28] PbN red, blue, FF8D33
[12:28] Mike Field to me is a set of relationships between sites, subjects, scripts determined in and by time..
[12:28] Loss In the project, that is.
[12:29] tombell color adds an emotional tone?
[12:29] PbN Tom, color or size or interface or something 'mind'...
[12:29] Inna absolutely
[12:29] Loss Mike, you mean time as in when people view the pages?
[12:29] Inna color means emotions
[12:29] Mike Or construct or reconstruct them, L
 


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