SPACES & EXCHANGES - Written work on two individual documents Exchanges in Real Spaces & Virtual Spaces

In order to illustrate the notion of "Spaces and Exchanges" through both virtual and real spaces, I have picked two documents: a cartoon illustrating virtual spaces and and a video illustrating real spaces.

Social Media In Real Life, published by cartoonist Sarah See Andersen on her Tumblr Blog which can be found here.

I found this cartoon interesting in order to illustrate this notion, since it represents social media (a virtual space) actually transformed into a real space: a big stage in which the main character is standing. She allegedly shows how social media would be like if it went beyond a mere screen and became everyone's way of communicating in real life, and we realize it's a nonsense. By making the little girl shout in front of a huge crowd something as irrelevant as the fact she just ate a burger, the author makes us aware of how people posting on social media are attention-seekers who are looking forward to make 'public' every tiny detail of their lives.  Nevertheless, the crowd seems somewhat interested about the information given (they randomly shout "like!" and "me too!"). What the author means is, perhaps, that we are focusing too much on virtual spaces although they rarely provide useful information.

The Suburbs official video directed by Spike Jonze, song by canadian-american band Arcade Fire introducing their homonym album in 2010.

This song's lyrics are the following:

In the suburbs I

I learned to drive
And you told me we'd never survive
Grab your mother's keys we're leavin'

You always seemed so sure
That one day we'd fight in
In a suburban world
your part of town gets minor
So you're standin' on the opposite shore
But by the time the first bombs fell
We were already bored
We were already, already bored

Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling
Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling again

Kids wanna be so hard
But in my dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard
And all of the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall
And all of the houses they build in the seventies finally fall
Meant nothin' at all
Meant nothin' at all
It meant nothin

Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling
Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling and into the night

So can you understand?
Why I want a daughter while I'm still young
I wanna hold her hand
And show her some beauty
Before this damage is done

But if it's too much to ask, it's too much to ask
Then send me a son

Under the overpass
In the parking lot we're still waiting
It's already passed
So move your feet from hot pavement and into the grass
Cause it's already passed
It's already, already passed!

Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling
Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling again

I'm movin' past the feeling
I'm movin' past the feeling

In my dreams we're still screamin'
We're still screamin'
We're still screaming'

I chose this song not only because I find it enriching and beautifully written, but also since it offers a completely different overview of something as traditional (and somewhat boring) as the suburbs that can be found in the peripheral area of every big American city, inhabited by middle-class families. This song begins with a honkey tonk piano, and the first stanza of the lyrics is quite innocent: it illustrates the life of an average suburban family. The lyrics are narrated by a young man evoking his childhood in the suburbs, remembering how sweet and innocent his life used to be before his dreams were forced through the meat grinder of real life. When he was a child, everything from outside the suburbs, such as war, seemed distant and irrelevant ("but by the time the first bombs fell we were already bored"). Now he looks back feeling nostalgic. He realizes everything he believed in back then was meaningless and unreal, but still he would have that rather than the real world he has been forced to discover during his adulthood, in which every trace of beauty is being brutally destroyed. This song introduces a real space through one of his inhabitant's viewpoint, which makes us see the suburbs  in a more complex, yet intimate, way.