“I can’t wait until we’re allowed to get together and dance our hearts out to nurture, but raving in my living room has certainly sustained me for the time being.”
last week i saw porter robinson perform in-person. the last time i saw him was mid-pandemic, on my computer screen as he live-streamed his set and released the song something comforting. there was indeed something comforting about hearing the song live, amongst the hund.reds of fellow fans swaying to the music in GA.
during the pandemic, there was no way to connect in person - but artists got creative with their performances, porter especially. in his vr set he worked with video game company active theory to develop a mini MMO to replicate the sense of spatiality and being surrounded by other people.
the pandemic seems like a distant memory now — but i think it only accelerated the hard truth you learn in adulthood: once you leave college, it’s easy to feel alone in the real world. i’m still chasing the same spatial companionship that i lacked all those years ago. maggie appleton describes the idea of ambient copresence: the “sense of ambiently sharing space - of being co-present - while engaged in other activities” which serves as a staple of shared public spaces.
it’s a type of social interaction that cuts different than meeting up with a friend 1:1 to hang out, or going to a party. it’s a soft blanket, some shared air amongst a group of people that acknowledges that we are all in this together.
i’m yearning to capture that feeling in real life. so much of my life is decentralized — i work fully remotely, without roommates, and it’s far too tempting to go off the grid for a couple of days. there’s a solitude that slips into loneliness if i’m not over-cautious. as a result, i have to be highly intentional and proactive about the community i try to craft.
co-presence irl
there are ways i chase this in my daily life. coworking in cafes and hotel lobbies is one way —
another idea is parallel play,
i love the idea of silent discos: people experiencing their own separate worlds in parallel with each other. what is it like to work remotely? Ambient Co-Presence | Hacker News (ycombinator.com)
ambient: this diffused energy that
https://markcarrigan.net/2015/01/03/social-media-and-ambient-intimacy/
ambient copresence <> culture
- take this concept one step futher and you have culture
- what is the relationship between content, culture, and people
- i think it rlly depends on who you ask
- wtf is culture?
- it’s far too easy to get overstimulated in the city. this chaos intensifies when i am alone: navigating the barrage of tourists at times square on the way to work, hurtling past an obstacle of bodies on my morning run by the hudson. i am a people person and for the most part, people please me.
in a book on cinematography, it comments that good directors treat the setting as another character. in this personal movie, treat the city as another beast. hear the low rumble underneath your feet that threatens to swallow you whole.
maybe this is a vague statement: culture feels visceral in nyc. aesthetic sensibilities pop out on the street even the way passerby carry themselves is distinct
but crowds can feel constricting, especially when you are untethered from a companion or a purpose. i mytholize it; the open jaws of a subway swallowing commuters whole,
tattoeed with words, pockets of vulnerability on your morning commute.
ambient intimacy
in a way, this substack is a way to solve this the lack of shared air i feel with my friends. Margaret Archer calls contextual continuity. The continuity that such circumstances made possible provided a reliable stock of common reference points, taken for granted understandings and modes of self-expression: a shared mental furniture. This facilitates forms of self-disclosure that are otherwise unreliable. When we share this common mental furniture, it becomes easier to externally communicate our internal conversations: the other is much more likely to understand what we mean when we disclose our inner life to them. They understand where we’re coming from. This general experience finds it apotheosis in the development of intimacy: a general understanding of where we’re coming from develops into a refined sense of who we are. With such people, we don’t need to explain why we experienced something as a slight or a joy. They get us. In romantic relationships and close friendships this is something elective: we work at sustaining continuities because we value the relationship. Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight.
this dependence on the digital aspect has made me feel isolated in my real life. life is just ambient co-presence “The sensation of being in the quiet companionship of someone else, like reading next to them in a cafe, is what we’re missing. The sense of ambiently sharing space – of being co-present – while engaged in other activities is a staple of shared public spaces that we’re still figuring out how to design in the digital realm.”
- copresence irl lets break down ambeince:
i think al of this is backwards engineering a culture for myself. in ace hotel
- dull noise in a cafe, surrounded by conversations around you
- lots of space (especially personal space)
- i enjoy being able to occupy my personal world, privvy to the worlds around me
discord
-
- there was a period where i thought voice was the future — clubhouse, discord calls, twitter spaces, all a comforting ambience.
- used to hop on a voice call with friends to do work together
working remotely
- its hard to recapture this ambient copresence
- this si why i like cafes
- comfort of — even if were not directly interacting, theres a secret level of trust
on third places
- when i first moved here i was intent on the appeal of third places
- they emphasize a city’s transient nature
ambient co presence
in 2020, look at the sky https://youtu.be/4KGsgpFiswQ?si=jnvcKkLa02qHh5XY
Porter Robinson’s Secret Sky recreated the most meaningful parts of a physical festival (nme.com)
i love coffee shops and concerts
Porter Robinson’s Secret Sky recreated the most meaningful parts of a physical festival (nme.com)
minecraft and stardew valley
humans crave feeling like they are a part of something
quotes: “did you get your wish” “someone tell me something comforting”
co-presence today:
- cursor (seeing who else has bookmarked something — async)
- Ambient Presence and Virtual Social Capital (ribbonfarm.com)