Oaxaca, Oaxaca (Mexico)

Oaxaca, Oaxaca (Mexico)

Oaxaca, Oaxaca (Mexico)

San Cristobal, Chiapas(Mexico)

Oaxaca, Oaxaca (Mexico)

Oaxaca, Oaxaca (Mexico)

San Cristobal, Chiapas(Mexico)

all images by
giorgia aiello and irina gendelman

In physical public space text (words and images) serves three main functions:
1) communicating the location or the appropriate use of a specific space (e.g. street signs);
2) selling a product or indicating a business (e.g. billboards);
3) demonstrating an act of self- or community-based expression or resistance (e.g. public art, graffiti).

As Lefebvre suggests (1991), space itself can be read as a three dimensional text, in which words and images are used not only as a means of representation, but also as action and agency.
In the streets and markets of Oaxaca and San Cristobal de las Casas these three functions also overlap literally, as they appear on the same walls with similar modalities. Graffiti tags occupy the same space as painted wall signs indicating commerce (a barber shop) or appropriate use (keeping your distance from a dangerous high voltage area) associated with a certain place. Likewise, the resistant and the institutional text share a common support (the bare wall) and medium (paint). While the texts' respective functions are still distinguishable, the formal boundaries between them are minimal. In other words, institutional and resistant voices share the same space on what appears to be the same terms.

At Pike Place Market, on the other hand, text is actively used to define and control different areas and their appropriate use. As mentioned earlier, musical notes containing a number are painted on the curb to indicate the spots where buskers are allowed to perform and how many buskers are allowed to perform there.

Text is also used at Pike Place to define the space's identity to the public (e.g. the famous neon market sign), both in functional and aesthetic terms (e.g. old-fashioned clock). Textual forms such as public art and graffiti are included in specified areas (designated walls). Thus, text in this market is used a means for compartmentalization. In addition, being an "old-school" market by North-American standards, Pike Place Market as a public space is also controlled by verbal and visual literature (again, text) promoting it as a tourist attraction (Aiello & Gendelman, 2003).

Literature about a place defines the "reality" of that place (Adams, 1991). The authority of the text can construct a reality that becomes more "real" than the place itself (Said, 1979).
In this sense, we can also consider how dominant discourses of space in (audio)visual space work as an authoritative text controlling the activity and the hierarchy of cyber space experiences. In cyberspace, text can be seen as serving the same three functions mentioned above in relation to physical public space. However, these three dimensions are rarely integrated and are usually seen together only when compartmentalized.

A good example is the dominance of the English language in combination with the commodification of text as determined by search engines. Search engine robots, or spiders, scour HTML code for keywords to compile hierarchies of relevancy. Frequency of certain words in a page will thus rank a web page as more or less relevant in a search engine. A higher relevancy will place a page in a higher order of pages found by the engine. This gives the page a higher visibility based on text. In addition, one the most popular engines Google bases its ranking on the frequency of visits to a site. This again gives English texts an authority as English is the official and most prominent language of the web. Therefore, sites most commonly visited are those in English. Thus, the search engines' compartmentalization and delineated hierarchy define cyberspace as an apparently monolingual reality.

In addition, in cyberspace, the term "wall" is used to describe the function that protects against undesirable textual interventions in a system. A firewall is supposed to bounce back texts that are not wanted or sanctioned. The use of this term points to how the spatialization of online environments is described, and therefore constructed, according to a certain model of control over physical public space. The virtual wall is used to keep out visitors who are outsiders, such as hackers or those who haven't paid to be on the other side of the wall. A wall, however, does not have to have these connotations. In contrast, physical space walls in Mexico display a standard of control where doors are often open or missing.

In cyberspace, text has the potential to define a space's openness to or conduciveness for interaction in different ways. These definitions can range from highly structured to negotiable. In one online lesbian café (Correll, 1995), space is described in detail by the users of the network. In communicating with one another, the users of the café use text to describe the look and experience of the café. Such uses of text to describe a visual and physical experience can also determine the normative formation of cyberspace as a space. When Dutch scholar Frank Schaap (2002) chose his MUD of a post-apocalyptic city as the subject of his research, he had to choose an American MUD because of it allowed for the easiest access. Thus his scholarly research on this textual space was defined within the constructions and constraints of an American-dominant cyberculture.

a project for
COM 538 Theories and Criticism of Communication Technologies
Professor David Silver

University of Washington
Spring 2003