"Tumbling through Space in a Gold Box" Reconceptualizing New Communication Technologies as Atmospheric

New communication technologies have undoubtedly altered the ways in which persons interact and have had a profound impact on public life. Engaging this impact, much of the scholarly literature has focused on how these interfaces mediate interaction however, less is known about technology's modulating effects. The current project moves beyond mediation, underscoring how social relations are not only activated by technology, but are actuated by these interfaces. Through an extended case study of Portals, gold shipping containers equipped with audio-visual technology that put persons in digital face-to-face interaction with others around the globe, the current project engages such actuation, highlighting how the co-mingling of affect and technology generate new ways of noticing, living and thinking through the complex relationships of public life. The human/technology relations mediated/modulated by the Portal produce unique atmospheres that activate/actuate public space and blur the boundaries between public and private. Additionally, the atmospheres of the Portal generate a digital co-presence that allows for user/participants to feel with their interlocutors. This “feeling with” suspends user/participants in atmospheres of human connection through the emergence of an imaginative dialogue, and the curating of such atmospheres leads to dialogic transformation. As such, the Portal operates as an atmospheric interface. Engaging the concept of atmosphere attunes those interested in new communication technologies to the complex gatherings these technologies create, and the potentialities and pitfalls of these emerging interfaces on public life.