Having finished reading Thomas and seeing the picture of Al Gore’s desk I thought I’d share the photos that were orignally going form the basis of my week 4 visual artefact.
All of the shots are of desks in my office, taken after hours when most people have gone home. Each desk has multiple screens, suggesting the primacy of digital over analogue in our working lives, but each of them has personal and work-related artefacts and suggests the transliterate way in which we are working. Many of the articles present suggest different messages about the desk’s main user – whether non-digital text plays a part in their work, how connected their work lives are to their personal lives (presence (or not) or personal artefacts), links to family, links to hobbies and interests etc.
What can you tell about each of the desks’ usual inhabitants by the articles placed there? The lifeworlds are all interconnected as the desks are in an open plan office – are there any links between occupants, or are they only present when the people are there? Are the links more digital than real-world, mediated by the unseen networks connecting the multitude of screens?
#1 by jen on October 29th, 2009
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hey – a puzzle! I like the contrast between the homogeneity of the monitors and the glimpses of individuality around the edges. I wonder if the overall impression would have been quite different had the monitors been on and displaying what people were looking at as well. Nice secondary visual artefact, Ali.