Ambiguous Devices as an example of a networked relational encounter.

Abstract

This article uses the author’s collaborative environment for networked music performance, Ambiguous Devices (developed with Paul Stapleton), as a case study for illustrating a shift in thinking from a transactional to a relational understanding of networked encounters. It draws on Gill’s notions of relational interfaces and Buber’s understanding of dialogic relations as a way of understanding ways that people might communicate with others at a distance. It looks at an embodied theory of interaction that relates to intersubjective and intercorporeal ways of knowing the other and then looks at ways that these relationships can be facilitated over spatially separate sites of interaction such as found in networked performance scenarios. Finally, it puts forward a notion of relational encounters as a way thinking about these kinds of affective interactions at a distance and discusses the designed properties of Ambiguous Devices that support and facilitate this kind of interaction.