/ Spatial Arrangement and the Use of Language in Digital Space
To facilitate seamless integration into this idealised ‘reality’ of digital space discussed above, the role of spatial arrangement becomes crucial, particularly in its interconnection with communication media. Digital space uniquely merges print and visual media, further enriched by the dimension of user participation. Examining the evolution of technology, three pivotal developments in communication emerge. Firstly, the advent of the telephone established a non-physical space through linguistic communication. Secondly, television introduced a medium for passive consumption of the 'space behind the screen.' Lastly, the development of computer technology, coupled with a sophisticated internet infrastructure, successfully integrated print and visual media, offering users interactive communication that incorporates a visual component. Digital space, in contrast to film and television, creates a reality which is constantly being updated and programmed. While television and film often replicate an existing world, occasionally incorporating elements of fictional locations, they retain a level of recognisability that enables viewers to perceive the images on screen as a form of reality. Digital film operates on similar principles to digital space, employing coding and algorithmic systematisation. The final output of digital film shares analogous characteristics with traditional film or television, maintaining comparable parameters in terms of viewer perception and engagement. In contrast, digital space does not inherently provide users with a recognisable or familiar environment. Instead, it constructs its own unique space through the utilisation of computer interfaces, folders, websites, text windows, and search engines. While the processed information within this space can be presented in user-friendly formats like images and videos, the underlying programming that drives these elements is fundamentally abstract and often lacks direct correlation to real-world environments. This observation naturally leads to an important inquiry: what defines the parameters of digital space, and what factors contribute to making it an accessible and navigable virtual environment?
Gretchen Barbatsis proposed to understand the digital space from the spatial arrangement point, including both the representational features of the screen and the specialised use of words (Barbatsis, 2005; Barbatsis, Fegan and Hansen, 2006). 1 In this framework, language serves as a conduit between the abstract nature of digital space and its ascribed symbolic meanings, thereby rendering it more tangible and relatable.
Digital space “figuratively implicates a spatial phenomenology, which allows it to be conceptualized “as if” it actually had the characteristics of its figurative ‘windows’, ‘rooms’, ‘sites’, and ‘desktops’ with ‘files’ and ‘folders.’ With media that rely primarily on words, then, the logic of spatial arrangement responds to an overload of abstraction and generates meaning by making the abstraction function more like a concrete space ” (Barbatsis, Fegan and Hansen, 2006, p.12). 2 In her subsequent work, The Performance of Cyberspace: An Exploration Into Computer‐Mediated Reality, Barbatsis (2005) further develops these concepts, exploring the metaphorical dimensions of digital space. She delves into how these aspects are also constructed through the prism of text-based messages, enriching her analysis of the interplay between language, representation, and the experience of digital environments.
The design of the digital space, in other words, the positioning of the menu on webpages, the size of the folders and the ability to move ‘windows’ creates a second aspect of spatial arrangement, giving the interface its depth and the sense of perspective. “In sum, while the logic of spatial arrangement with words is used to make concrete what is abstract, the logic of spatial arrangement with images is used to make abstract what is concrete” (Barbatsis, Fegan and Hansen, 2006, p.14). 3 This method of applying spatial arrangement, both from the linguistic and design point of view, gives some clarity on the parameters of digital space.
Instead of tracing the historical development of this spatial logic, a topic addressed in previous chapters through concepts of interface transparency and symbolic language, this analysis focuses on its deliberate disruption. Examining such counterexamples reveals how deeply normative interface conventions become embedded in user experience and how fragile this integration proves when those conventions are subverted. To illustrate this, I will present two examples: one drawn from my direct observation of media students encountering an abnormal interface, and another from the artistic project Napkin Fold (2024), part of The Wrong Biennale No. 6. The first example demonstrates the disruption of navigational expectations, while the second explores the disruption of aesthetic and functional norms.
My teaching practice provides a pertinent case study. As part of the Digital Realities course at the University of Greenwich, I task students, a cohort proficient in standard digital environments, with navigating and presenting a pavilion from The Wrong Biennale. In its 2024 iteration, the Biennale’s primary interface was radically simplified to a centralised block of plain blue hyperlinks, with pavilion names presented in a randomised, non-hierarchical order. This deliberate departure from expected design paradigms, such as hierarchical menus, visual cues, or search functions, proved immediately disorienting. Observations from the classroom revealed that students defaulted to inefficient, random clicking, experienced palpable frustration, and struggled to complete the basic task of relocating a specific link. This confusion underscores a critical point: the seamlessness of digital space is not inherent but is carefully constructed through a learned, subconscious logic of spatial arrangement. When this logic is absent, the interface ceases to be a transparent portal and instead becomes a conspicuous barrier, highlighting that intuitive navigation is a product of convention, not intuition. The second example, the project Napkin Fold, extends this analysis from navigation to the aesthetics of the interface itself. By manipulating familiar visual metaphors and interactive behaviours, it challenges the normalised "look and feel" of digital environments, further exposing the constructed nature of our engagement with curated digital space.
This examination of spatial logic, from its theoretical framing by Barbatsis to its practical disruption in pedagogical and artistic contexts, culminates in a reaffirmation of the interface as the fundamental, constitutive site of digital curation. The parameters of digital space are not merely visual or linguistic but are operationalised through the interface's architecture. As demonstrated, the curation of experience, whether in an online biennale or a net art project, hinges on manipulating or adhering to this deeply ingrained spatial logic. When interfaces follow established conventions, they recede, fostering the illusion of a direct, unmediated reality. When they disrupt these conventions, as in the examples above, they become visible, asserting their role as active authors of the digital environment. Therefore, the curator's critical task in digital space is to consciously engage with this interfacial architecture. It involves a dual awareness: orchestrating the symbolic language that makes abstraction concrete, while simultaneously choreographing the spatial logic that allows users to inhabit and navigate the curated reality. Ultimately, to curate digitally is to curate the interface itself—to design the conditions of encounter that either seamlessly integrate a new heterotopia into the user's world or deliberately fracture that integration to provoke critical reflection.