MFA Computational Arts Blog Week 2

Nostalagia of Marc Augé’s anthropological non-places in liminal space imagery.

Images of “liminal spaces” have been proliferating online over the course of the coronavirus pandemic. These images are shared among online communities and edited into slideshows accompanied by eerie sound scores, such as float’s video, strangely familiar places with unnerving music. There have been many similar videos published on youtube during the pandemic, garnering millions of online views.

The often low-quality, grainy, blurry or otherwise obscured images depict spaces which seem recognisable, giving a haunting sense of a location visited in distant memory or in a past dream. The reason that these spaces are often recognisable is that they are generic — they often depict what Marc Augé describes as non-places: spaces such as shopping centres, airports, car parks, corridors — spaces that do not hold a cultural or significant reference point to people occupying it. Augé suggests that these non-places are one of the defining features of supermodernity. Non-places seem recognisable because they can be found across the Earth. They are usually devoid of personal meaning, designed functionally to move either product or people, part of the globalised economy in a post-capitalist world.

• discuss liminality — Arnold van Gennep
• discuss virtual liminal spaces, video game liminal spaces
• discuss original backrooms image on 4chan (https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/22661164/#22661164), the memeing and subsequent lore surrounding the backrooms
• question the rise of interest in liminal space during global lockdowns, is there a correlation between feelings of isolation and interest in imagery that evokes isolation, loneliness and nostalgia?

Marc Augé (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity

float (2020) strangely familiar places with unnerving music. (Youtube video) Availabe at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqZEfqoTA7M