Feeling space dynamically: variable interpersonal meanings in high-rise apartment complexes

Abstract

An all-embracing experience of a three-dimensional spatial text requires movement through various articulated spaces. Part of this experience is the emotional effect that the volume of the spaces has on its users. Since contiguous spaces may be of different dimensions, there is the potential for users moving through those spaces to experience fluctuations in feelings. This article develops Stenglin’s notion of Binding, a semiotic analytical tool which helps to understand the relationship between affect and space, by modeling, in a dynamic way, how spatial texts unfolds logogenetically as people move through, and are affected by, them. This article suggests a method of gathering dynamic data for analysis. Using a filmic representation of the experience of movement through, interaction with, and perception of, the foyers of two high-rise apartment complexes in Sydney, Australia, the article formalizes the fluctuations in Binding into diagrammatic representations referred to as Binding Contours, which explicitly demonstrate that space is felt dynamically.