PHOTOFILE | ESSAY
SHRUTI NAGPAL
ARCHITECTURAL SPACE IN ACADEMIA Techno-Regimes of Materiality
INTRODUCTION
Materialism gives significant importance to the physical world that defines spaces and matter. In this essay, I explore the different objects integrated into complex technical systems that make an academic space functional. Starting with the basic question about the meaning and relevance of material objects and physical matter, I document the architectural design and infrastructures within private academic spaces of higher education in New Delhi, India.
This documentation is co-curated with students for whom university and campus experience is much more than classroom and curriculum interaction alone. This experience is expressed and explored through various creative activities like photography and other artistic expressions like sketching, poetry and story telling. While negotiating through the physical infrastructure at college and different spaces like corridors, canteen, library and computer labs, students’ interactions are etched in the intersection of time and space. In those intersections, photographs taken by them through devices like camera and mobile phones serve as living testimonies of college lived experience that matters to them and that ultimately becomes a part of the archive.
I use these photographs taken by students and draw from the argument of Brian Larkin (2013) to discuss how university infrastructure constitutes the key parameters that defines the design, technical support, access of learning opportunities and the pedagogical practices. Networked technology and media infrastructures that constitute both material and discursive forms substantially define the navigation and modes of engagement within the academic spaces.
MATERIALITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Brian Larkin explains that infrastructure comprises of flows that are possible because of things as well as the relationship between things.[1] They enable the movement of objects and material things but when infrastructures work as organised systems, it becomes difficult to theorise objects alone. While we all notice the physical things that are visible, the underlying objects that make the infrastructure systems work are often invisible. For instance, when we refer to computer as an infrastructure system, there are many things apart from the desktop or the laptop that make that system functional. The cables connected to electricity, software algorithms, the connectivity between the various parts and the functional competency of the user together make that infrastructure work and perform. They are therefore not only the objects ‘that are out there’.[2]
Students use their photography skills and practice the art of documenting their surroundings by examining the academic architectural design and infrastructure of the campus they visit everyday. These photographic practices of students lie at the intersection of an ongoing material archive and everyday lived experience.
Materiality is often seen to be synonymous with physical matter that can be touched and felt and something that has a concrete shape. In other words while materiality deals with tangible objects or matter that can be given a concrete shape, immateriality is intangible and yet it concerns emotions and feelings that emanate from the body.[3] While fundamentally all objects can be broken down into smaller components like atoms, molecules and sub-atomic particles, absolute materiality has been refuted by many scholars like Jean Francois Lyotard (1984) who equate matter with energy.[4] Bill Brown has discussed objects and their association with materiality. Brown feels ‘objects mediate human relations’ and ‘humans mediate object relations’. There have always been discussions about the divisions between the material and the non-material.[5] However, anthropologist Susanne Kuchler suggests the need for ‘synthesis of the dichotomies, between the mind and the matter’, which perhaps could be the new way of understanding the world.[6]
Keeping some of these debates in the background, using the photographs captured by students and myself, I will now attempt to map the infrastructural space and various material devices within one of the private colleges in New Delhi.
Most of the private colleges in New Delhi have swanky buildings each of around 5-8 floors (Fig. 1); with each floor’s corridor looking like above (Fig 3). With white walls, ceilings and granite floorings, the corridors are flooded with lights and equidistant CCTV cameras. In contemporary academic spaces in the private colleges of Delhi NCR, the well- equipped classrooms in these colleges are defined by the presence of Projector screens, wires, podium installed with microphones and public address (PA) systems, speakers, CCTV cameras and smart boards. Technical devices have vastly transformed the modes of transmission of knowledge in such urban classrooms. (Fig 4). The photographs taken by students of their campus experience reflect the high end infrastructure as the highlight of the academic spaces.
In one of the collaborative workshops that I conducted with students for this project, the triggering point for discussion was- ‘the object that the students identified the most in their classroom’. Five out of seven participants mentioned the projector and screen. One participant mentioned the multimedia player and one participant identified the most with the marker and duster. When asked what their dream classroom looked like, majority students preferred a ‘single device classroom’ experience where they could connect everything via internet or Bluetooth. Several students during the course of this study shared their experiences of negotiating between these technical devices as an experiential journey. Their photographs also document these devices or narratives around them.
TECHNOLOGY AND INFRASTRUCTURE
For Hannah Arendt, an object has relevance through its mediation and positioning with other objects. For instance she uses the example of a ‘table’ as a tangible object that is defined and has relevance in context to the relationship of people surrounding and working around it.[7] She uses the table both as an object and as a metaphor to discuss the possibility of people interacting, negotiating and mediating their actions and conversations with. The table as an object helps people to come together in the political realm and have interaction with each other while it also helps them keep a safe space between them so that they don’t merge into each other.
Drawing inspiration from this theorization by Arendt, I suggest that the material infrastructure in an academic setup could be seen as an organised physical network that is constructed to allow a smooth transit of students, objects, ideas, knowledge and communication (Fig 4). The everyday life of students and faculty circulate around these structures and it defines their sensorial experience. These structures that have both technical and non-technical components are transforming the meaning and concept of materiality and are redefining the digital realm that operates through an interaction of data, codes, human beings, technique and experience (Fig. 5).
Students’ classroom benches have specific space for laptop cables and wires (Fig. 4, Fig. 5) as the meeting point of his technical devices. They know exactly where on their desk, they keep their laptop, where the charger cable comes from and where the electric charging lunch box usually fits in. Students use many technical devices daily and their movement and interactions are worked out around them. There are some students though who believe in carrying only a notebook and pen apart from their mobile device. They don’t prefer using their phone for taking pictures or accessing internet in the classroom and opine that too many technical devices are a distraction and prevent them from focusing on what the teacher says and what they want to write. Many students participating in the workshop felt that no matter how much of technical equipment they used and carried to the college, their access and usage defined their interpersonal communication and on campus mobility. For instance, students often run and grab the table nearest to the charging point in the canteen during lunch hour every day. The same is the case to find a comfortable spot amidst the heightened crowd in the free WIFI zone on campus.
The photographs in glossy brochures of academic institutions (including private, government and deemed institutions), have high rise buildings, state of the art infrastructures, technologically well-equipped classrooms as their main selling point. These modern architectural setups are redefining knowledge systems and educational practices.
One of the key technological devices are the mobile phone on campus. It is ironical to note that the private colleges have sign boards on multiple floors that read ‘Mobile use not allowed anywhere inside this building’ (Fig. 8). While the above sign boards are placed strategically at different locations, no one takes them seriously. Everyone carries phones to their classrooms, faculty rooms, labs and everywhere else. The photographs used in this essay are taken by students and are all captured on mobile phones.
The transformations taking place in the classrooms and students’ life could be interpreted as a part of wide reaching social, technical and digital transformations. One of the ways to look at this is that the technology and infrastructure are radically transforming the work, culture and academic outlook of the urban spaces. The redesigned academic arrangements with emerging and evolving technological interventions and mobile devices are being used extensively by students for interactions, personalised content sharing, social media, texts and calls.
CONCLUSION
The essay suggests that photography can shed light on different aspects of academic spaces. Students narrate their own stories through photographs while documenting themselves, their surroundings and fellow learners at college. These mobile phone photographic practices of students are an important characteristic of the university space that offers free speech, creative expression and self representation through visual arts. These photographs highlight material compositions while also giving artistic expression to the metaphorical sensorial experiences around the objects. There is no one theoretical approach to study these photographs. These practices of documentation and self surveillance, reflect a complex relationship with material infrastructure and represents education cultures through students eyes.
Classroom infrastructure includes the configuration of desks, projectors, panel displays, screen arrangement, seating options and cabling mechanisms. This is not only limited to the physical classroom but also the online digital rooms that help students’ learning process. However, in the digital world, that embraces both the hardware and the programming language and soft codes as operating protocols, there could be different ways to address the notions of materiality. There are complex layers of the material structures and designs that influence the mobility of students and their performance in academia both in physical classrooms and online platforms.
There is however another paradigm that access to technology in the classroom brings. Cyber bullying and threats, intellectual property rights, virus and malware, digital footprints and location tracking are real and their impact on academic spaces must also be considered in order to assess the complexities of technology in academic spaces.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Admission Brochure 2022-2023,(n.d.), Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University. Retrieved June 19, 2022, from http://www.ipu.ac.in/Pubinfo2022/adm22brgen030322.pdf
Arendt, H. (1998). The Human Condition (2nd ed). University of Chicago Press.
Brown, B. (2010). “Objects, Others, and Us (The Refabrication of Things).” Critical Inquiry, 36(2), 183–217. https://doi.org/10.1086/648523
Küchler, S. (2008).” Technological Materiality: Beyond the Dualist Paradigm.” Theory, Culture & Society, 25(1), 101–120. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276407085159
Larkin, B. (2013). “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1), 327–343. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522
Lyon, D. (2001). Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life. Open University Press.
Lyotard, J.F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.
[1] Larkin, B. (2013). “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1), 329. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522
[2] Ibid, 330.
[3] Brown, B. (2010). “Objects, Others, and Us (The Refabrication of Things).” Critical Inquiry, 36(2), 183–217. https://doi.org/10.1086/648523
[4] Lyotard, J.F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.
[5] Brown, B. (2010). “Objects, Others, and Us (The Refabrication of Things).” Critical Inquiry, 36(2), 188. https://doi.org/10.1086/648523
[6] Küchler, S. (2008). Technological materiality: Beyond the dualist paradigm. Theory, Culture & Society, 25(1), 101. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276407085159
[7] Arendt, H. (1998). The Human Condition (2nd ed). University of Chicago Press, 52.
How to cite
Nagpal, S. "Architectural Space in Academia: Techno-Regimes of Materiality," Archivo Photofile, 13 November 2024. https://www.archivoplatform.com/post/essay-nagpal-24 DOI 10.5281/zenodo.14137063.
About the author