Skype: Bodies, Screens, Space

Robyn Longhurst

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472434548
• eBook ISBN: 9781317054450
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Despite the popularity of Skype with video many of us are still figuring out how to 'do' it. Interviews reveal that we can now run the programme but we are less certain about how to 'perform' in front of the webcam. Seeing ourselves in the box on the side can feel strange. We are not quite sure which bits of our bodies to display on the screen, how much to move around the room, or move the device around the room. Is it acceptable to use Skype with video at a funeral, in crowded spaces or while in bed? This book addresses how people are emotionally and affectually connecting with others audio-synchronously on the screen in a variety of different spatial contexts. Topics include Skype with video being used by grandparents to connect with grandchildren, friends and family using it for special occasions, and partners using it for romance and sex. Theories addressing bodies, gender, queerness, phenomenology and orientation inform the research. It concludes that while Skype does not offer some kind of utopian future, it does open up possibilities for existing power relations to be filtered through new lines of sight/site which are shaping what bodies can do and where.

1 Why Skype, why now?

It’s 8 pm and I’m in a hotel room in Sydney, Australia having spent the day at a seminar on ‘blended learning’ (combining classroom and online learning). It’s long past dinner time but I’ve not yet managed to eat so have ordered room service – burger and fries. Hunger has led to calories trumping nutrition. The meal arrives just as I am Skyping my 18 year old son in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.¹ He recently moved out of home, into a university self-catering halls of residence. The middle-aged hotel worker sets the meal down on the desk beside my laptop. I comment: ‘I’m just talking to my son on Skype.’ My son calls out ‘Hi’ to the man delivering the meal. He doesn’t respond, seeming uncertain about the protocols surrounding greeting a stranger in a hotel room who exists only as an audio-visual presence on a laptop screen. After the hotel worker leaves the room I sit back down at the screen to pick up where I left off with my son. At the same time I crunch on a fry. ‘That’s just cruel’ he quips. ‘I might not be able to smell your dinner but I can see and hear you.’The hungry teenager in New Zealand is still learning to cook and budget constraints mean there is never very much in the pantry. The burger and fries is twice as much food as I can eat but to state the obvious, sharing via Skype is not an option (Author’s research notes, 25 April 2014).

Last night approximately 35 people gathered in a large staff tea-room at my University for a book launch. Seats were arranged in a series of semi-circles, beverages and snacks were available and at the front of the room was a large screen on a portable trolley. Present on the screen from Indiana, USA via Skype was a professor who was a co-author of one of three books being launched that evening. The other co-author was physically present in the room. The image of the on-screen author, a middle-aged man wearing glasses and a purple suit jacket, was crystal clear. There were no technical glitches or problems with placing the call, delays in audio or visual transmission, stilted or pixelated images, all of which I have grown accustomed to at events such as this where Skype is used. Tonight was different. In New Zealand it was early evening. In Indiana it was early hours of the morning. The professor on screen, however, did not appear tired, rather he was enjoying a glass of wine with the rest of us, displaying at one point to the camera the bottle he’d poured the wine from. It quickly became apparent that the author on screen was very comfortable with the technological interface. At the book launch the professor on Skype was given an opportunity to ‘hold the floor’ (via the screen) both with a speech about his new book and interjecting when appropriate often with humorous one-liners during others’ presentations. To help him engage the audience from afar the professor had, hidden from view until he required them, a number of props. He seemed to have a sense that being on a screen in a large room full of real people meant that it would be easy for him to become invisible. So, he showed us all a pink suit which he’d considered wearing (instead of the purple one). He changed into dark glasses at a couple of junctures during the evening and showed the audience a globe pointing to Fiji to highlight his narrative about the new book’s global circulation. When another ‘real’ speaker mentioned business ethics he pulled out a handful of fake US dollars displaying them to camera. The audience laughed at his numerous interjections. The professor felt present in the room, it felt like he and others were orientated in a way that was comfortable. This is so often not the case when people Skype in for events such as this (Author’s research notes, 1 August 2014).

These two stories highlight a number of points that are pertinent to this book. In the first story on the day in question I had spent many long hours discussing the merits of ‘blended learning’. There seemed to be general consensus amongst our group of approximately 40 that blending online with traditional face-to-face class activities in a planned, pedagogically valuable way has a great deal to offer learners. Over the past few years educators have discussed at length the potential pros and cons of using digital media, including Skype, especially with younger learners, to not just supplement but transform the learning process. Much less has been written about how using digital media might be transforming not just teaching and learning but also everyday interactions between bodies,² time and space are being reorientated. In Aotearoa New Zealand where I live and where this research took place, more than three quarters of the population use the Internet (Bell et al. 2008) including to make Skype calls with video. Having real-time audio and visual contact with my son but not being able to touch him, to share food or even the smell of food with him prompts a particular embodied experience that many of us who use Skype are still trying to fully comprehend.

In the second story I had not been expecting to be so thoroughly engaged by the professor on the screen. In fact, although I had used Skype with video many times before both in a personal and professional capacity I had never thought to use it in this way – exaggerating expressions and producing props – to engage with others. The professor used his body, consciously and carefully orientating it towards the camera in ways that I had not been expecting and as a result he made the event ‘work’. Up until that point many of my experiences of using Skype at work to connect with colleagues, job applicants and students could be described at worst as failures (technology did not work, one or both parties were disengaged, the link dropped) and at best as okay (we managed to connect although the sound and picture quality were poor). This time was different and made me think about bodies on-screen and off-screen, their orientation to the camera and to the spaces in which they reside.

I start with these personal stories because the process of constructing knowledge is always embodied (Butler 1993; Grosz 1994). Readers will note that throughout the book I draw on my own experiences, personally and professionally. I connect back to research I’ve conducted in the past. This is in an attempt to breathe life into the theoretical points being made. Feminists have long argued that our subjectivities are made and remade through our research (Rose 1997) and that the personal and professional, past and present, private and public are not easy to separate. As I sat at the kitchen table typing this manuscript I had Skype turned on and occasionally received alerts when particular family members or colleagues were online. At times I simultaneously wrote about Skype on one screen while I talked with someone using Skype visible on another screen. Research and researchers are not easily separable. This does not mean that we can all assume to somehow easily know and represent ourselves but reflecting on our own complex and shifting embodied practices can help materialize the notion that our subjectivities are gendered, sexed, raced, that we are a particular body size and shape and so on both online and offline.

I am sure that it will not come as news to anyone who reads this book that this materiality of our lives and bodies over the past few years has come to be increasingly filtered through screens (e.g. in relation to gender see Fluri 2006; Fortunati and Taipale 2012; Friedman and Calixte 2009; Frizzo-Barker and Chow-White 2012; Wajcman 2004, 2007). Skype does not have inherent capacities or qualities as a digital media that prompts particular interactions but it does orientate us in particular directions, it mediates our corporeality, emotions and affects (Davidson and Bondi 2004; Davidson and Milligan 2004; Thien 2005, 2011, Thrift 2004) and therefore makes a difference to our interactions in the same way that offline space makes a difference to our interactions. How exactly, and in what ways, though remains uncertain.

There are many examples on the internet including in blogs, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram of the many ways in which people are using Skype (e.g. see #SkypeSavvy set up by Skype in 2015 for people to share the numerous ways in which they are using Skype) but still little is known about some of the orientations, feelings, emotions and affects which accompany this use (Davidson, Bondi and Smith 2005) including the ways in which they are embedded in power relations or power ‘geometries’ (Tolia-Kelly 2006). This book aims to make some headway on these issues. I am interested in how bodies, through Skype with video, are orientated in space and how their materiality is filtered through the screen in real time.

I chose to focus on Skype because of its pervasiveness in the digital market and because it enables people to not just hear but see each other. I am aware that Skype is certainly not the only programme available. There are currently a range of other synchronous audio-visual software technologies which people are also currently using and which are mentioned as part of this research. Some examples include Facetime, Scopia, Google Hangouts and Snapchat. I am interested in this range of audio-visual conferencing opportunities and so therefore have not excluded these from discussion but at the time of writing this book Skype was the preferred platform for video chat in Aotearoa New Zealand and in many other places. Indeed it is telling that Microsoft Skype has dominated the video chat world for so long that the name ‘Skype’ has morphed into a verb used in sentences such as ‘When do you want to Skype?’ and ‘Will we be Skyping when you are overseas?’

Despite the popularity of Skype many of us are still learning how to ‘do’ it. I do not mean simply how to run the programme (although there is that too) but how to ‘perform’ (Butler 1990) in front of the webcam, how to emotionally and affectually connect with people on the screen, which bits of our bodies to display, highlight or hide on the screen, how much we can move around the room, or move the device around the room or further afield, whether it is ‘appropriate’ to live-stream Skype at a funeral or whether we ought to communicate audio-visually on our mobile devices in crowded trains, when in bed and so on. One of the participants in this study, who is aged in his early twenties, commented to me that if someone is ‘old’ Skype might be ‘a bit weird’ but if they have grown up with the internet being around them all the time then ‘it should be pretty natural’. The participant makes a useful point about different generations’ engagement with digital media but this research indicates that much more is going on in relation to Skype than can be explained by a generation gap.

This book examines bodies, screens and space in relation to Skype. It addresses questions such as, is space acquiring a new shape and feel through Skype? Are the contours of the spaces we know and inhabit changing as we spend more time interacting audio-visually and synchronously with family, friends, colleagues and lovers? Is Skype reorientating bodies in new directions? At times we may, for example, feel orientated and comforted by being able to see our loved ones on the screen but at other times we may feel disorientated and uncomfortable about not being able to reach out and touch them or smell the familiar scent of their body. How are the interactions through the medium of Skype – through screens – framing our bodies and spaces differently? Is it reorientating them in ways that most of us are not yet used to and if so what might be some of the implications of this? These are all questions that it seems timely to pause and reflect upon.

Feeling my way

I begin this section with how Skype feels³ – some of the emotions (Parr 2005) and affects (Anderson 2006) that surround Skype – because it is this that has driven so much of the enquiry over the past few years. In referring to emotions and affects I am not meaning to separate out emotion (as an expression of individual subjectivity) and affect (as a collective expression) but instead see them as intertwined (Ahmed 2004; Lalibertè and Schurr 2015; Sharp 2009; Wright 2010). For me, Skype generates emotions and affects that at times feel very ordinary – mundane. Skyping is something that millions of people across the world do for a variety of reasons on a daily basis. At other times it feels utterly strange – queer – the person on the screen is both present and absent. I marvel at the technology that can connect me to others, both aurally and visually in real time. It might be with the neighbour next door or it might be with my sibling on the other side of the world.

Bruno Latour (1999) argues the more refined a technology becomes, the more it tends to disappear into the everyday, become unnoticeable. Skype at this particular historical juncture is not new but neither has it (yet) disappeared into the everyday becoming unnoticeable. To me, and I suspect to many of the participants in this research, it seems simultaneously both ordinary and extraordinary, old and new, orientating and disorientating. This makes it a good time to examine Skype.

Skype is currently just one of many media⁴ which are reorientating bodies and spaces. Madianou and Miller (2012, 3) argue it is important to acknowledge ‘that most people use a constellation of different media as an integrated environment in which each medium finds its niche in relation to others’ and that we need to move attention away from the individual technical propensities of any particular medium to think instead about the way they work together as ‘polymedia’ (also see Nayar 2010). While this is a valid point Nancy Baym (2010, 17) notes that it is not necessary to always or only look at new media as a whole because ‘Each of these media … offers unique affordances, or packages of potentials and constraints, for communication.’ She continues that it is important to consider them both holistically and separately.

This book focuses mainly on one media, that is, on Skype, while acknowledging that in most cases it is used alongside and in conjunction with other media. Also, for the purposes of this research I am most interested in Skype’s free service of calling with video (approximately half of all Skype calls employ video). Previous research I conducted on mothers’ use of multiple media (Longhurst 2016) revealed that this was the form of communication that they were most excited about and keen to use.⁵ It appears to be capturing people’s (and not just mothers’) interest hence my decision to pay it more detailed attention.

On their website Skype.com (2014, no page number) claim:

Skype is for doing things together, whenever you’re apart. Skype’s text, voice and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are. With Skype, you can share a story, celebrate a birthday, learn a language, hold a meeting, work with colleagues – just about anything you need to do together every day. You can use Skype on whatever works best for you – on your phone or computer or a TV with Skype on it.

Skype promotes itself as a platform for ‘doing things together’ except this ‘doing’ is a new kind of ‘doing’ – doing that involves bodies sharing images, objects and experiences online. The promoters of Skype claim that it is ‘simple to share experiences’. Participants in this study, however, report that sharing via Skype is often anything but simple. For some their stories sit in sharp relief to those posted on the Skype website, for example, by enthusiastic stay-at-home dad Jeff Bogle in a blog titled ‘Time and space are no big deal, thanks to Skype’. Bogle (2014, no page number) writes that the only thing that has stopped people ‘from being the loving son or daughter’ who are available when a family member needs to cry on someone’s shoulder is distance. It is not that people do not want to show love and affection but that physical distance has separated them. Bogle continues: ‘We are fortunate to be alive in a modern age where time zones are nothing, technology is king, and what can happen in a movie, can in fact happen.’ Like a number of other proponents of Skype, Bogle sees it as offering the future that many have long dreamed of. Skype opens up a new world that enables family members to chat over a cup of tea, share stories, laugh and feel connected even though they are separated by physical distance.

In fact, many bloggers, like Bogle, are quick to ‘sing Skype’s praises’, for example, The Skype Team in Skype Moments of the Month note:

By bringing people together, Skype is making the world a more open and cultured place. No matter if it’s reuniting refugees with loved ones, sharing a new perspective at a film festival or a global collaboration between classrooms on different sides of the world, Skype acts as the uniting force (Skype.com 2015, no page number).

Again, this utopian reading of Skype simplifies things. Is the world really becoming ‘more open and cultured’ and if so, how exactly? Maybe Skype is uniting people but the emotions and affects produced by and through Skype are complex. As the participants’ narratives will illustrate communicating through Skype does not necessarily simply erase physical distance and different time zones. It does not always unite people. It offers some a way of being together but this is a specific kind of being together, a specific kind of ‘doing’, a specific kind of communication which involves sharing not all, but some of the bodily senses. It is a new kind of communication, of ‘intimate sensing’ (Porteous 1986) that is governed by an emerging set of unwritten rules of social conduct and etiquette. Many of us are still learning ‘Skype etiquette’ – when and how to connect, whether to message someone first (a bit like knocking on the door before entering), how to show our bodies on the screen, which bits to conceal and which bits t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Why Skype, why now?
• 2. Queer phenomenology: from writing tables to digital screens
• 3. Interviewing: face-to-face and on Skype
• 4. Selves, others, objects and space
• 5. Families, friends and loved ones
• 6. Skype for work: ‘A bit weird’
• 7. Skype sex: ‘Queer effects’?
• 8. Reorientating bodies and spaces
• Bibliography
• Index