Abstract:

Introduction:
New communication technologies are fostering social spaces in visual realities [1] that are essentially participative and collaborative in nature. According to Peter Sloterdijk, 'this ever-changing socio-technological environment reveals the necessity of a new conception of the human as inherently relational and spatially determined: a being in spheres.' [2]
We are 150 humans in a digital Fishbowl where we can ‘see’ each other immersed in a textual reality.
Our paper presents a “reading strategy” and a "practice" that sets in motion experientially-felt human responses, thereby creating conditions for the objective study of topics usually regarded as subjective. In the Fishbowl, participants systematically contemplate ‘learning structures’ and the phenomena that appear in acts of conscious thought. According to Wolfgang Iser [3], ‘effective learning’ is an ongoing interaction between Author, Text and Reader, for it brings into play the imaginative and perceptive faculties of the reader. Reading sets in motion activities that depend both on the text and the exercise of basic human faculties. Wolfgang Iser posits that ‘effective learning’ and ‘aesthetic responses’ have characteristics that are neither of the text nor the reader, but instead, the text represents a ‘potential effect’ that is ‘realized’ in the ‘reading process.’ Only when we give a text the power to have meaning by realizing it, does it become effective.

Purpose:
To show a process of “reflexive” reading that facilitates experientially-felt responses and creates intersubjective ‘spaces’ of learning in a visual reality.

Method:
1. Conscious experience and self-reflexivity, rather than Cartesian method of analysis. Through a reflexive practice [4], participants discover the Self and others; how they differ and coalesce.
2. Redirect reading from prescribed text to seeking essential learning from each other’s text.
3. Using anecdotal felt-experiences, participants temporally and spatially zigzag with the text, filling-in new and unknown details.
4. Focus on learning structures created in the moment. The new does not exist before the initial act of reading and every subsequent reading produces newer realizations.
5. Meaning is assembled dialectically by reading multiple texts in the Fishbowl and arriving at an individual point-of-view.

Outcome:
1. The social space for effective learning in a visual reality was constituted by multi-layered text with flexible structures and interpretations.
2. Reading was not static but dynamic and evolving; an ongoing process of interaction between author, text and reader.
3. There was a verifiable rationale for each participant’s learning, grounded not in right or wrong but ideas, themes and images, held true at a moment in time.

References:
[1] Henri Lefebvre, 'The Production of Space,' Oxford: Basil Blackwell, (1974).
[2] Peter Sloterdijk, 'Bubbles: Spheres Volume I: Microspherology,' Trans. Wieland Hoban, Semiotext(e) (2011)
[3] Wolfgang Iser, 'The Act of Reading, A Theory of Aesthetic Response,' John Hopkins, (1980).
[4] Mats Alvesson and Kaj Skoldberg, 'Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research,' Sage, (2001).

Keywords:

Reading Strategy, Reflexive Methodology, Social Space, Visual Reality, Effective Learning, Aesthetic Response.