It used to be quite simple: You have a width, length and height and then somewhere inside would be the place 'where you are'. Today this concept of place is obsolete, or at least it has mutated. People used to ask 'Who are you?', but nowadays the more important question has become: 'Where are you?'.

The moment my phone rings and I answer the call, I socially displace myself with the speed of light to the location of my conversational partner. When watching a movie, you sometimes forget the cinema chair you were in; you are then fully engaged into the movie. We spend increasingly amounts of time behind a computer screen, roaming a virtual environment while our body is reduced to a pointing cursor arrow. At the same time our physical environment is steadily intensified with ringtones, TV screens and billboards. More and more often we travel hundreds of miles to end up in a place we already knew. Like with that holiday to the Caribbean Island, where I’ve spend two weeks feeling trapped inside some Bounty commercial. When paying for your groceries in the supermarket with your pin code or credit card you are not only acting within the physical space of the supermarket chain, but also within the post-geographical information space of the banking organization. [1] Fast food restaurants all look the same, even though they are located in different places. As a result of the ubiquitous presence of Starbucks, McDonalds and H&M franchises, cities around the world become increasingly similar and exchangeable. We see the same copy strategy at work in the design of airports, suburbs and even natural reservations. The feeling of recognition provides us with a trusted 'home'-like experience.

All throughout history, new media technologies have bended our awareness of space and time; from the invention of the wheel, the writing pen, the television, morse code, into today’s cellphone, Skype and augmented reality systems. You wonder where our desire to enhance reality stems from; As if we are longing to experience more in less time. That may sound modern and progressive, but there is also a conflict; experiencing more in less time isn’t really possible, because ‘experience’ is part of our human physique which – despite all the upgrades in our environment – is still the same as, lets say, 40.000 years ago. Have you ever heard of the Brevers law [2] of transportation? It states that the average time people are willing to travel on a day is fixed to about 75 minutes and hasn’t changed for centuries; more highways merely cause us to live further from work. It is common knowledge blind people have better hearing than people without visual disabilities. Something similar is valid for augmented realities: while we digitally enhanced our environment our sensibility for the older physical environment is numbed.

So where am I? Perhaps too difficult a question to ask, let’s start simpler: When am I present somewhere? Virtual reality researchers Lombard and Ditton [3] define presence as: “The perceptual illusion of non-mediation.” So, you are present whenever you have the illusion there is no medium between you and the subject/environment. Sometimes I go out for a bike ride with my best friend who lives 400 miles away. Together we bike through our own landscape, while describing the environment through a cellphone headset. A imaginative way of being together: As if we are doubling reality.

Breathe in. Breathe out. But when are you ever fully present? We seem to be constantly split, on the road, or wishing we were somewhere. Elsewhere runs in our blood.

Somewhere, sometime, I read an interview with the Dutch philosopher Katja Schuurman[4] in which she presented her definition of happiness: “Not wanting to be at some other place, than where you are right now.” While we seemingly effortless surf through various layers of reality, research learns us most people the feel best when they are fully engaged into something [5]. Reload. Refresh. Indeed, at sometimes an SMS from your lover can be the summit of happiness.

Written by Koert van Mensvoort, for Tag Magazine: Augmented Reality, Superimposing the Virtual. Tag004 (pdf) published by Tag 004.

References

1) de Mul, Jos(2002). Cyberspace Odyssee, Uitgeverij Klement, Kampen, isbn 90 77070 12 5
2) Priemus, H., Nijkamp, P., & Banister, D. (2001). Mobility and spatial dynamics: an uneasy relationship. Journal of Transport Geography, 9, 167-171
3) Lombard, M., Ditton, T., 1997. At the heart of it all: the concept of presence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3 (2), online journal.
4) Mei, Jeroen (2002). Katja Schuurman, Ik snak naar die ene waarheid die alles verklaart, Micro Gids Nr 36, 29e jaargang, KRO Omroep, Hilversum. (6-7)
5) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. HarperPerenial, ISBN 0-06-092043-2

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