"In a social situation, the number of people involved in a conversation or other symbolic exchange is the 'space' in which learning occurs."

"A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognised, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing. That is why the concept is that of horismos, that is, the horizon, the boundary. Space is in essence that for which room has been made, that which is let into its bounds. That for which room is made is always granted and hence is joined, that is gathered, by virtue of location, that is by such a thing as the bridge. Accordingly spaces received their being from locations and not from 'space'."

The network diagrams below try to illustrate the expected interactions and structures to be explored through out the transmissions.

The physical structures have been broken down into the transient and the static.

Transient:

Green disks represent the reception sites;

Purple balls the ISDN asynchronous tutorials;

Red disks the studio transmissions.

Static:

Blue disks the permanent sites of the World Wide Web site and the First Class server.

Of course the reception sites and the studio are static, however for the purposes of the MEDIASPACE they only exist for the duration of the transmission.

"There is not only this sharpening and refinement of the brain going on, but there has been what our great grandparents would have considered an immense increase in the amount, the quality and the accessibility of knowledge. As the individual brain quickens and becomes more skilful, there also appears a collective brain, the encyclopaedia, the Fundamental Knowledge System, which accumulates, sorts, keeps in order and renders available everything that is known."

(The Shape of Things to Come,

H.G. Wells, 1933)

A train ticket represents a journey from A to B whilst at the same time representing a location (the train seat or carriage) for a duration (the time of the journey from beginning to end). In a similar way the MEDIASPACE transmissions are a broadcast from A to B, whilst at the same time evoking an extended location for the duration of each broadcast (stretching out, through networks, across the boundaries defining the space of each site), a new kind of space, hopefully a landscape of interactivity.

In defining the MEDIASPACE for these satellite/ISDN experiments we have attempted to develop a geographical metaphor and sense of location for each transmission. These mythical planets will act as a focus for discussion and at the same time extend the MEDIASPACE defined by the sum of the locations, into a virtual/digital 3D space defined by a computer generated model.