HOME CULTUBES

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 3
PP 263-286

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KATE CHURCH, JENNY WEIGHT,

MARSHA BERRY, and HUGH MACDONALD

AT HOME WITH
MEDIA TECHNOLOGY
KATE CHURCH IS A LECTURER AND RESEARCHER
IN THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
PROGRAM, SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND
DESIGN, ROYAL MELBOURNE INSTITUTE
OF TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY (RMIT).
HER RESEARCH EXPLORES NOTIONS OF
"TEMPORARY-NESS," DISTURBANCE, AND
TRANSITION WITHIN URBAN SPACE.
JENNY WEIGHT LECTURES IN NETWORKED
AND PROGRAMMED MEDIA AT RMIT
SHE RESEARCHES ETHNOGRAPHIC AND
THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF NETWORKED AND
PROGRAMMED MEDIA AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS
FOR MEDIA PEDAGOGY.
MARSHA BERRY IS AN ARTIST AND A
RESEARCHER WHO IS SENIOR LECTURER IN
THE SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION,
RMIT UNIVERSITY. HER CURRENT RESEARCH
INVESTIGATES MOBILE MEDIA, URBAN HELDS,
GEOPLACED KNOWLEDGE, AND MEMORY
THROUGH ETHNOGRAPHY AND DESIGN.
HUGH MACDONALD IS A PHD CANDIDATE IN THE
SCHOOL OF MEDIA COMMUNICATION, RMIT
UNIVERSITY. HIS PHD RESEARCH IS ON THE
TRANSFORMATIVE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
ON THE NEW MEDIA LANDSCAPE.

ABSTRACT People's engagement with

media devices in the domestic sphere varies
greatly, as do the decisions they make
regarding when, where, and how the devices
are utilized. How do we organize our houses
for media consumption and/or creation?
How do our houses' spatial configurations
affect our media consumption and habits?
How does time play a role in media
engagement? These questions directly
relate to designour homes are both
spatially and temporally designedby us,
and for us. The design issues of creating
and maintaining a "home" are compounded
by the various media devices we use
telephone, TV, stereo, Internet-enabled
computer, and so on. We not only "design"
how we use these devices, but where
and when they are used. In this context,
media devices are not passive objects, but
rather through our engagement with them,
they alter domestic space/time, and may

KATE CHURCH, JENNY WEIGHT, MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

ultimately challenge how we understand and define

domesticity. Media technology simultaneously
constructs new, and interrupts existing, domestic
territories. We will explore the reciprocal impact of
domestic space/time and media technology, with
a view to revealing the ways in which this nexus
becomes a question of design.
KEYWORDS: mobile technology, domestic space, media, design,
hertzian

INTRODUCTION

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The way we live in our houses is the result of many small and
some large decisionssome retrospectively, in response to
media gadgets we have purchased, while others are more
proactive, to "make room" for media gadgets. As a lived environment,
"home is perceived as an intersection where ideals and practices of
architecture, industry, policy, advertising and media texts come together with private activities and interpretations of dwellers" (Soronen
and Sotamaa 2004: 223). Whether it is a matter of proactive design,
or a retrospective retro-fit, incorporating media technologies in the
home impacts on domestic space and time.
Although often so ubiquitous that it goes unacknowledged, media
engagement in the domestic realm is fraught with many issues. In this
article we wish to unpack and interrogate some of the decisions that
we make about domestic media technology, and what they do to our
understanding and engagement with "home."
In particular, this article focuses on revealing and articulating the
tensions and solutions that result from the increasingly complex engagement with media and media devices in the early twenty-first-century Australian home. Domestic media technologies are an intrinsic
part of contemporary life; they impact upon our personal relationships
and the way we structure our day. Some media technologies seem to
predetermine the space they must inhabit (because, for example, they
are too large to move around or they require a power cord). However,
fixed technologies are giving way to more portable devices such as
notebook computers and MP3 music playersif you have a portable
music device, not only can you listen to music anywhere, but also at
any time. As advertising campaigns from the 1960s about portable
television imply (Spigel 2001: 393), portable devices seem to evade
the technological determinism inherent in larger devices.
Although there is a trend towards the portable and the personal,
few of us live in houses that do not require some negotiation or redesign to accommodate media engagement. Issues may include noise
control, censorship, access, surveillance, notions of place (what home
is for?), use of space (how do we organize the available rooms?).

AT HOME WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

temporal coordination (when are various media devices used?), and

choice of technology (for example, personal music player or stereo).
Some of these issues "bleed" into policies promulgated outside the
home (for example, the Australian Government's attempt to police
Internet access).
The variety of media technoiogies now existent in contemporary
Australian households, and the diversity of styies of Austraiian homes,
confounds generalizations about how we soive these tensions. In terms
of house typologies, the types of design issues faced by residents of a
two-bedroom apartment may be considerably different to those faced
by residents of a "McMansion" (a large house with many bedrooms
and living spaces, possibly including a dedicated home entertainment room, often iocated on the outer suburban fringe of Australian
cities). As Soronen and Sotamaa suggest, the "[i]nteractions and atmosphere of the contemporary media-rich home are defined through
the dynamics between private and public, individual and cultural, and
personal and famiiial" (2004: 211). These dynamics are reflected in
the architecture of the home, and the way we adapt that architecture.
According to Lefebvre (2007), even what we perceive as the private
sphere is the result of a history of public and authoritative decisions
about how space should be structured. Amongst the public policy decisions and normative criteria that establish concepts of home (such
as the mid-twentieth-century Australian ideal of the "quarter-acre
block") each individual asserts their own spatial and temporal decisions. This creates a complex negotiation of disparate interests which
has spatial, temporal, and programmatic ramifications.
Use of media technologies is often embedded within domestic
routines. They may be used to coordinate or combine the activities
of household members (doing the ironing while watching television);
they also may define the ways in which we undertake certain activities
(going for your morning run while listening to music on your portable
music piayer). Bausinger (1984: 350) postuiates that many such
behaviors are ritualized, and the content of the media consumed is
not necessarily of central import. Such coordinations are examples
of design responses by inhabitants to the exigencies of domestic
space and time. They affect the spatial organization of the home (for
example, the ironing board is stored near the television) as well as its
temporal occupation (the ironing is done at a time that coincides with
a particular show). It is simplistic to describe such design responses
asa reflex responsetotechnologymedia technologies and household
organization evolve together through usage. They are invented behaviors by individuals. In an effort to avoid the technological determinism
decried by Williams (2003: 5), our current inquiry seeks to rearticulate
the territory of research away from media-centrism towards a more
situated study of media devices "so as to better understand the ways
in which media processes and everyday life are so closely interwoven
with each other" (Morley 2003: 445).

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KATE CHURCH, JENNY WEIGHT, MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

METHODOLOGY
Theoretical, ethnographic, sociological, and phenomenological studies of domestic and urban space, and notions of place such as those
of Bachelard (1997) and de Certeau (1984) inform the current research. To analyze the impact of media technologies on a home, situated, contextual studies can capture the complexity of factors giving
rise to a household's design solutions.
Our initial methodological issue was to work out how to turn
environments that are so familiar and taken for granted into ones
that could be analyzed. Our issue was one previously encountered
by Fiske (1990), who found that "[e]nvironments can be observed
and interpreted up to a point from the outside, but can only be experienced from the inside." Fiske's solution was an autoethnography,
where he attempted to reconcile the meanings that occurred in the
interdiscourse between the social discourses in the text (his home,
or media practice that he was studying) and "those through which
I made sense of my 'self, my social relations, and my social experience" (1990).

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Our own study includes not just studying our own behaviors towards media devices in our homes, but those of our co-inhabitants
as well. The approach to this analysis was that of "defamiliarization."
Bell et al. (2005) observe that defamiliarization, or rendering the familiar strange, is a useful tool for creating space for critical reflection
and thereby opening up new design possibilities. "Estrangement" or
defamiliarization is a formal device used in literature, performance
and visual arts. The device has its origin in Russian formalism in the
early twentieth century (see, for example, Bakhtin 1981). It is also
a research tactic that can shine a light on human behavior that has
become invisible due to familiarity.
Using this tactical device, we started to investigate the interrelationships between home, media devices, and human behavior via situated case studies of our own homes. Our aim was to capture potential
complexity, diversity, and similarity in the ways by which our households engage with media technology. This provided us with four case
studies. Case study 1 was a household of two heterosexual Caucasian
Australian adults, both with professional occupations. The dwelling
in Case study 1 was built in 2006 and is very close to Melbourne's
central business district. Case study 2 was a household of three heterosexual adultstwo parents aged fifty-three and their twenty-threeyear-old daughter. The parents are professional Caucasian Australians
and the daughter is an undergraduate university student. The dwelling
in case study 2 was a Deco bungalow built in 1929. Case study 3 was
a household of two heterosexual males comprising a retired professional father in his early sixties and a twenty-five-year-old son who is
a doctoral candidate. Both are Caucasian Australians. The house was
built in 2001. Case study 4 was a rental household comprising two
heterosexual adults aged thirty-one (female) and thirty-nine (male)

AT HOME WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

years old. Both are professional Caucasian Australians. The dwelling

in case study 4 was built circa 1906.
To achieve the required defamiliarization, we developed self-documentation kits to interrogate our own domestic spaces, and generate
comparable data on each participant's home. The self-documentation
packages contained, or asked participants to provide:

a technology audit sheet to provide quantitative data;

instructions for completing a "media diary" or media consumption journal, which sought to tap into and record the daily habits of
each household member over the period of a week (similar to the
"time-use diary" in Silverstone et ai. 1991);
|
an indicative house floor plan (showing furniture positions, power
points, network access points for computers and televisions) to be
used by the research team as "base data" on which to visualize
and map the media diary and the "location" of technologies within
the home;
a shot list for photographs.
I
The self-documentation package also included a collection of materials and tasks that were intended to encourage reflection and speculation from participants relating to their everyday domestic media
consumption and production. The households undertook a series
of self-paced exercises regarding use, placement, and engagement
with domestic media technology. We were not focusing on the actual
content of media consumed (for example, television show genre),
but rather on the place, time, and circumstances under which media
was consumed/produced and the negotiation that occurredboth
between the design of the house and its occupation in relation to
media consumption as well as the negotiation among the occupants
required to facilitate individual and shared media experiences.
The shot list included each room of the house with instructions to
stand in the center of the room and take photographs of everything,
not merely the media devices. Visual material is increasingly used in
ethnography. Sarah Pink argues:
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Photography, video and electronic media are becoming increasingly incorporated into the work of ethnographers: as cultural
texts; as representations of ethnographic knowledge; and as
sites of cultural production, social interaction and individual
experience that themselves form ethnographic fieldwork
locales. (Pink 2001:1)

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The series of photographs yielded through the self-documentation

kits would serve a number of purposes: as a potential point of
comparison, as an orientation device for the media consumption
journals, as a spatial context, and potentially as a way to clarify or

KATE CHURCH. JENNY WEIGHT, MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

investigate the specifics of particular spatial and temporal relationships. A similar approach is taken by McCarthy (2001: 19-20) in her
investigation of television In public space where she describes her
method as partly "chorographic," in that it allows her to capture and
examine unique sites, and partly generic, enabling her to find similarities across a variety of sites. In this way, she can explore both sitespecific and generic trends.
The material yielded by the self-documentation kits was also approached as a "cultural probe." As Soronen and Sotamaa explain,
because the emphasis "is not only on exploring user needs ... probes
are supposed to provide opportunities to discover perceptions, attitudes and pleasures people attach to daily activities" (2004: 213).
A probe is a research device designed to stimulate exploration and
is deployed to find out the unknown or unexpected. It generates research outcomes by provoking conversation or triggering memory as
opposed to gathering precise scientific data. Thus:
... the cultural probes approach can be seen as a part of
larger tendency in the development of human factors research
methodology that aim at acquiring a more holistic perspective
on people and their actions. (Soronen and Sotamaa 2004:
213)

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It is important to recognize the largely qualitative nature of these selfdocumentation kits and their role in an ethnographically based research methodology. The study does not attempt to collect data from
a statistically representative sample of the population, but rather It
provides a qualitative "snapshot" to expose and explore some of the
complex interactions, issues, and "design solutions" generated by our
use of domestic media technologies.
An initial phase of our data analysis, and one that featured in an
exhibition we curated to disseminate our research, was to map the
invisible flows of space usage, and speculate on the "territories" that
were being produced as a result. The act of mapping has long been associated with the concept of territory. A simple line on a map can have
far-reaching implications-it determines the country/state/suburb/
zone you live in, it constructs "inside" and "outside," and therefore
abstractly constructs difference. Territory is an act of coding space; it
attributes identity, significance, and meaning to space.
This concept of territory is pertinent to notions of domestic space
as it typically relates to a perception of ownership or "claim" on space.
Ina reductive sense this may manifest in a house through traditional
place-making strategiesit makes a house (impersonal) into a home
(personal). This process further territorializes the built form along the
notions of inside/outside.
In our pilot case studies we sought to capture the domestic use of
space in different ways. First, the floor plans and sketches for each

AT HOME WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

case study were analyzed and visualized in relation to the (text-based)

media consumption diary through maps. As an investigative device,
the act of mapping is one of "making visible" and translating information. As a research technique, maps allowed us to visualize spatial
and temporal data in a manner that enabled us to view multiple
events and information simultaneously.
\
Through layering and separating information, maps became a
useful tool through which we could begin to unpack the relationship
between domestic space, technology, and behavior. As the mappings
indicate, this technique also revealed routine and spatiotemporal negotiations. These are depicted in Figure 1.
The maps document the movement and activities of all of the
household occupants (see Figure 2, where these are overlaid). Combining hand mapping and digital techniques, a separate map was
created for each day of the media diary and documents the space
and sequence of the activities recorded in the media diary for each
occupant. The mapping techniques also respond to the format in
which each household completed the media diary. For example, case
studies 1 and 3 completed their media diaries in a "timetable" format
whereas case study 2's media diary was prose and included a number of anecdotes and speculations as to why certain behaviors were
occurring. While mapping tends to be understood as a quantitative
medium, we were interested in finding techniques that could combine
and translate the qualitative data we had gathered from the media
consumption diaries. Therefore two sets of mappings were created for
each household: one that was created using the same cartographic
conventions in order to provide a comparable empirical data set
across all of the case studies, and a second set of maps that were
tailored to respond to particular idiosyncrasies or pertinent anecdotes
discovered in individual case studies (see Figure 3).

graund noor

Figure 1
Mappings of case study 1 on days one and four of the media consumption diary period (note: this house has
two storeyseach storey has been mapped separately).

KATE CHURCH, JENNY WEIGHT. MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

Figure 2

--V

Overlaid mappings of case

study 1 (ground and first
floor) for the entire period
documented in the media
consumption journal, revealing
routines and behaviors.

ground floor overlaid

firsi fkxir overlaid

A third set of mappings (Figure 4) operated across all four case

studies and provided generalized information about where key technoiogies and activities took place in each house. These mappings
enabled a different scale of comparison across the data set.
In combination, the data collected by these research interventions
create what Silverstone et al. (1991) term a "methodological raft"

o
Figure 3
Example of a mapping technique responding to an anecdote: "X's study takes priority this week, as it always
does when she is approaching exams... She listens to i-lectures on the computershe prefers it aloud rather
than through headphones. This impacts on conversations in the kitchen ... we spend more time in the kitchen
and dining room and use other phones" (case study 2).

AT HOME WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

for the overall study in that it enabled multiple research inputs and
modes of data to be collected and viewed in conjunction with each
other. In combination these provided rich descriptions and revealed
many intricacies of each householdthe combination becoming more
than the sum of its parts. This method enabled a "triangulation" of
information whereby each set of data "generated within the research
reflects on the others" (Silverstone et al. 1991: 217).

Figure 4
Zone mappings locating
usage of the most common
technologies across all case
studies.

DISCUSSION
Domestic media include a broad range of technologies that have
either been designed specifically for use in the home, or have been
co-opted from other contexts. Some devices, such as the television,
have become so domesticated that they can seem strangely out of
context when they are not located in a home (McCarthy 2001), even
though the pre-history of television had little to do with providing video
entertainment in the home (Williams 2003: 13). The mid-twentiethcentury "consumer durable" phase of domestic appliances included
the development of much broadcast era technology, and has been
described by Williams as the period of "mobile privatisation," which
"served an at-once mobile and home-centered way of living" (2003:
19). More recent portable devices, such as the mobile phone.

KATE CHURCH, JENNY WEIGHT, MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

extended the notion of home (intimacy, family, friends, relaxation) into

the street (Castells et al. 2007; Ling 2004).
In many households, domesticity is partially confirmed by the
availability of a certain range of media technology (the stereo, the
television, the radio). Indeed, "home" and media technologies exist
in a relationship of mutual confirmation. Media technologies become
an intimate aspect of our lives via incorporation into the space/time
rhythms of home, at the same time as their existence signifies that we
have come home. Lull's (1990) ethnographic study of how families
select television programs revealed social uses of television within the
domestic setting. He proposed that mass media are used by individuals and family units to "serve their personal needs, create practical
relationships, and engage the social world" (1990: 29). Engaging in
these activities is, to a certain extent, what being home means.
Despite the unspoken "rules" of domestic space/time, we routinely
contravene them. In all four case studies, the occupants occasionally
used shared space for activities that fall outside of traditional definitions of these spaces. For example, all houses utilized the living room
as a work space at various times for non-social activities like word
processing. At other times the living room would revert "fluidly" back
to a place where social media activities (watching television, listening
to music, etc.) would take place, in the manner of de Certeau's (1984)
"practiced places."

Changing Devices, Changing Domesticities

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A nod to history helps contextualize the issues and tensions that result
from changing media technologies, changing architecture, and changing expectations of what the home is for. Here are two examples.
In the 1920s, radio was a technical gadget designed for men and
boys. You needed quite a bit of tech nica I knowledge to use it, and itwas
listened to privately, via headphones. Itwas also ugly, potentially dripping battery acid, and not suitable for the increasingly designed living
rooms of the aspiring middle classes (Spigel 1992:26-8). However, by
the 1930s it had been transformed in the context of modern domesticity "into a domestic machine that promised to embellish homes across
the nation" (Spigel 1992: 27). Advertising representations of the role
of the radio in the home at the time started to depict the individual
"as part of a mass audience more than as part of a family" (Spigel
1992: 28) and thus the broadcast transformation of domestic life
commenced. Although "home" is conceived in the bourgeois tradition
as personal and private space (Lefebvre 2007: 314), industrial design
and marketing have always intervened to reconceptualize its nature
and the fantasies that may be entertained there (Spigel 2001). Media
technologies have been instrumental in the transformation of domestic space, and in representing how those transformations can work.
Our second historical example of this nexus between domestic
space, media devices, and human behavior concerns the landline

AT HOME WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

telephone. Until quite recently the phone was a fixed object and
therefore needed a permanent "nook." This led to the development
of specific phone furniture which might include a seat and a shelf for
phone books and notes (Figure 5). In recent years many such furnishings have been abandoned, for even landline phones have become
cordless, and the phone book is being replaced with Internet search
engines.
Even in Its heyday, the architecture of many Australian houses
never provided a good location for the landline phone and its paraphernalia. Homeowners would make do with the hallway, for example.
Now the need for a telephone nook is obsolete, and dedicated phone
furniture are junk shop curios.
Of course, the telephone had far-reaching implications for personal
relationships, and those implications continue to evolve. Effectively
compressing time and space, the landline phone resulted in a major
change in the perception of personal relations and the dissemination
of information. The distinction between personal and public began
to blur via local telephone exchanges, whereby personal information
was often overheard and passed on by exchange employees (see,
for example, Rakow 1992; Sola Pool 1977). The advent of personal
portable computing and broadband Internet access have further
complicated this privacy issue, necessitating a reconsideration of the
boundaries between notions of public and private, both within the
home and without.

Co-opting technology
Contemporary media devices may be co-opted by individuals from
one context and made to work in a new one. Crabtree and Rodden
(2004) point out that the design of much personal computing and
communications technology commonly used in contemporary homes

Figure 5
Obsolete furniture: "Telephone
Table" by Puf that Down (2006).
Creative Commons (http://
creativecommons.org Aicenses/
by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en).

KATE CHURCH, JENNY WEIGHT, MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

was originally created for an office/business environment. The working environment of an office with its focus on "production" and "efficiency" does not necessarily translate well to a domestic environment.
Evidence of these contextual tensions was illustrated by one of our
case study houses: the printer is on the floor because there is nowhere
else to put it; the fax machine is unplugged in the cupboard because
it is used so rarely, and media technology is usually accompanied by
unsightly power cables that never go with the decor (decor is usually
considered more important at home than in the office). Sometimes
our media technologies remain uncomfortably situated in the home
throughout their (and their owners') lives, despite technology companies' attempts at redesigning office technology for domestic contexts,
for example the lightweight, small footprint, neutral-colored printer
(Figure 6).
From the examples above, it is clear that many homes are not particularly well designed for the rather tactical way we use contemporary
media devices, and our houses bequeath us eccentric or outdated
assumptions about how media consumption occurs (for example, having a TV aerial plug in the master bedroom). House occupants must
invent their own design solutions.
Design problems exist along the twin axes of space and time. An
obvious example of the problem of space occurs in domestic environments where dedicated office or entertainment space is not available.
The development of the dual-purpose bedroom/entertainment room
was a popular design solution to the introduction of the portable
transistor radio in the 1950s, a media technology much favored by
those "who had least social opportunities of other kinds" (Williams
2003: 21). Bayley (1990) explores the invention by Sony of the pocket
radio, which resulted in a generation of teenagers taking radio up to
their bedrooms to listen to pop music. Such improvisation through coopting of space has given rise to what Sonia Livingstone (2002) terms
"bedroom culture," where televisions, computers, games consoles.

Figure 6
"Psyche napping in the sun and
on my printer" by Silver Starre.
Creative Commons (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en).

AT HOME WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

and mobile phones effectively transform the ways in which the space
is negotiated and inhabited.
Two of our case studies had dual-purpose rooms in which computer
equipment is positioned within the bedroom (Figure 7). Such rooms
may result in temporal, as well as the obvious spatial, compromises.
For example, a dual-purpose room used by two or more members of
the household may forcibly structure activities in that room in sequential rather than simultaneous ways.
Our case studies also revealed ways in which architecture and
media devices structured domestic time. In one of our houses, the
kitchen is near the television, and watching teievision is difficult if
there is a lot of noise in the kitchen. The householders must either
negotiate workarounds and compromises, or put up with a clash of
activities.

Fixed versus Mobile

In the wealthier nations of the early-twenty-first century, space and
time are increasingly at a premium, and fixed media devices are progressively giving way to more mobiie (or portable) ones which shift
and redefine how we negotiate, inhabit, and design space and time.
A telling example was found in all our case studies, where laptop
computers were significantly more prevalent than desktop computers (with an average of two laptops per household and 0.75 desktop
computers). The revolution of portability may bring with it a revolution
in the very concept of domestic space, as the possibility of having
personal media always at hand seems to extend domestic space
into the public sphere and vice versa (Castells et al. 2007); it also
expands the times when we can engage with types of media. These
shifts also reify a high level of privacy surrounding the activity of
media consumption.

Figure 7
Example of dual purpose
bedroom (case study 4).

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KATE CHURCH, JENNY WEIGHT, MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

However, older patterns of media consumption are crosshatched

with these newer ones to form a temporally and spatially layered domestic realm. For example, older patterns of television consumption,
based on network programming, work concurrently with the temporal
shifting made possible by view-on-demand Internet media.
Only one of our households radically breaks the structuring of
space and time around network television scheduling. This is at least
partly because they do not own a television; rather they view video
via their networked laptop. This household has effectively "mobilized"
television viewing by taking advantage of video-on-demand television
programming available on the Internet, thus taking the time-shifting
possibilities that were so widely adopted by video recorder users of
the 1980s and 1990s to a whole new level. The ability of the laptop
computer to operate as a television transformed the household's
bedroom into a dual-purpose room: it also meant that they watched
television quite late at night, past the hours of the relevant prime-time
free-to-air programming.
Sawhney and Gomez (2000: 1) discuss how domestic media devices are integrated in the routine of the household to such an extent
that television programming is often seen as a cue to other activities.
Despite their use of portable networked devices, this was consistent
with what we observed in the other three of our case studies. Although
these households had more choices about when and what they would
watch, patterns of television use were still quite traditionally attached
to evening viewing and network programming schedules.
In partial response to the temporal exigencies of networked
programming, one household has since switched to (often illegal)
quasi-"video-on-demand" downloading. From a temporal and spatial
perspective, the viewing patterns remain remarkably consistent to
those of conventional network televisionvideo is still consumed
during "prime time" on the living room television. Network television
scheduling seems to have been responsible for a degree of social
conditioning about when it is appropriate to watch video.

The Malleable Home

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The inflexible nature of large, fixed media devices such as the television set and the stereo are often reinforced by household media
infrastructure. Cables pull electricity, telephone, Internet, and cable
television in from the street.^ Our devices are umbllically attached to
outlets in the house walls. Lefebvre (2007: 92-3) imagines the house
represented with all these conduits unraveled:

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our house would emerge as permeated from every direction by

streams of energy which run in and out of it by every imaginable
route: water, gas, electricity, telephone lines, radio and television
signals, and so on. Its image of immobility would then be
replaced by an image of a complex of mobilities, a nexus of

AT HOME WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

in and out conduits. By depicting this convergence of waves

and currents, this new image, much more accurately than any
drawing or photograph, would at the same time disclose the fact
that this piece of "immovable property" is actually a two-faceted
machine analogous to an active body: at once a machine
calling for massive energy supplies, and an information-based
machine with low energy requirements. The occupants of the
house perceive, receive and manipulate the energies which the
house itself consumes on a massive scale...
Flows of energywhether human movement, plumbing, electromagnetic or communicationsoccur simultaneously in the various (physical and virtual) spaces, and over a range of temporalities. These flows
are contingent on the routines, predilections, occupations, work demands, personalities and ages of the occupants (Figure 8).
The complex negotiation between the external flows of what
Lefebvre terms "streams of energy" and the internal placement of
media objects also impacts on how domestic space/time is inhabited.
The larger media devices require either access to a constant power
supply or some other sort of connection such as a telephone line or
cable, and consequently their positioning within the house is dictated
by the location of these points. This design problem was directly experienced by one of our case study participants, who moved house
during the research period. The location of a television point within
a room was repositioned in order to evade the assumptions about
how the room wouid be used. In this instance, the household's preferred "design for living" could be implemented due to the feasibility
of running a cable from the front of the house into that location. Often,
however, such solutions are not available.
As furniture and other functional non-media objects are introduced
to a room, a further design tension may arise between the placement
of media devices and these other domestic items. With large, fixed
media technologies, often the media technology determines the location of other furniture.
Our homes represent a particularly strong instance of space that
we act upon. In small ways, and occasionally in more significant ways.

Figure 8
Movement maps from case study 1 over seven days,

KATE CHURCH, JENNY WEIGHT, MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

we are constantly reconceptualizing our available home space/time.

In the four homes of our case study we found various improvisations
aimed at making a home more inhabitable or comfortable. One
household reported on two recent projects to accommodate media
technology: a shelf for a new style of telephone and a door to control
the noise from the television. Domestic space is malleable along a
number of axesarchitectural, behavioral, temporal, etc. However,
there are usually limits and compromises result.

Negotiating Home
Negotiations among occupants may involve the spatial constraints
of the house, the behavioral tendencies/routines of the occupants,
and the uses the media technology will be put to. Design solutions
will reflect issues of ownership, access, and availability. These negotiated design solutions are often improvised. They may include having
multiples of commonly used media devices, timetabling access, rules
for sharing media devices, volume constraints, basic consideration of
needs, etc.
Our households revealed a variety of methods for negotiating individual and group media engagement. However, the main solution
shared by all households was for private media consumption (remembering that each household contained at least two laptops and three
MP3 music players). Devices that were more likely to promote group
engagement are traditional broadcast devices such as television and
radio, yet only one person in one household regularly used the radio,
and television was more often used Individually in all households. (The
person who used the radio reported than she must turn it off when
the other member of the household is in the room, thus effectively
reducing it to a personal device.)
The findings from our technology audit Indicated that fixed devices
are perceived as shared (even if they are often used individually). The
exception is the household with four televisions (case study 3). In this
household a link exists between where the television is located, who
uses it, and when it is watched. Shared viewing occurs in the lounge
room, which is the only room organized to support this kind of usage
due to the position of the television set and the configuration of lounge
chairs, whereas Individual television viewing occurs in the bedrooms.
Neither of the occupants needs to negotiate which program they
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watch, because simultaneous viewing is always possible (Figure 9).

In this household, power relations operate to determine how the
lounge room television is used. The ideal mode of consuming television is sitting comfortably on a couch in the lounge room. If a conflict
over program choice occurs, the privileged member of the household
(the father) watches in the lounge room, while the son watches rather
less comfortably in his dual-purpose bedroom.
Dual-purpose bedrooms have emerged as a design solution in
intergenerational houses to conflicts over temporal and special use

AT HOME WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

Figure 9
Simultaneous television access
in case study 3.

of media, and thus are microcosms for the shifting approaches to

domestic media engagement. In case study 3, the contrast between
the two bedrooms belonging to different generations was revealing.
Both were equipped with connections for television, telephone, and
outlets for computers and other media devices. Although only an
average-sized room with a large double bed, the son's bedroom was
crammed with a host of media devices, including a television housed
in a wardrobe on a wheel-out trolley for space-saving reasons, and a
minimalist desk for a laptop computer. In the father's bedroom, the
only media device was a cordless telephone, as he had privileged access to the lounge room. A similar pattern was identified in case study
2 with a bedroom culture (Figure 10).
Livingstone (2002: 121) argues that there has been a shift in
media use from an era best characterized as "family television" to
one of individualized media lifestyles and, particularly for children
and young people, of bedroom culture. This shift has been facilitated
by the multiplication of domestic media goods through price reductions, a growth in portable media, innovation in existing technologies,
and by the diversification of media forms which encourages the
multiplication of technologies through upgrading and recycling items
through the householdchildren no longer just get hand-me-down
clothes, they also get hand-me-down technology. Media technologies
are increasingly reconfiguring both the physical and social space of
bedrooms, which in turn affects the hierarchy and occupation of the
overall house.

CO

Figure 10
Accommodating media
infrastructure with domestic
spatial configurations.

KATE CHURCH, JENNY WEIGHT, MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

Domestic Transformations
As we have shown above, domestic media technologies are transformative of home, but are also transformed by us because of the home.
On the one hand, householders reconfigure their houses structurally,
aesthetically, and perhaps even definitionally (case study 1 has created a music/gym room out of what is marked on the house plan as
a formal lounge). On the other hand, human interaction may be mediated, if not governed, by the situation or the portability of particular
devices. In case study 2, this was exemplified by an Ethernet cable
that dictated where laptop computers could be used. This not only determined the placement of appropriate furniture, but converted that
room to a non-social (work) space, and restructured the tasks that
might occur around this computer to give priority to Internet use. A
set of priorities around purposes for Internet use may be inferred. The
journal notes for case study 2 revealed that listening to an iLecture
took precedence over checking private e-maii accounts. This was a
form of making do or improvisation in the absence of wireless connectivity to the Internet.
The other houses all had wireless access and Internet use permeated the whole space. Checking of e-maii and other Internet-based
activities occurred in the kitchen, living room, bedroom, and dining
room. Because of the spatial freedom achieved by wireless Internet
access, the householders were able to transform the meaning of the
device, for example by using the computer as a recipe book in the
kitchen. Meanwhile, access to the network revolutionized preconceived notions of the spatial and temporal uses of the kitchen.

Public and Private

The reconsideration of the distinction between public and private, and
the "shared privacy" of the domestic lounge room has occurred in a
range of discourses. Crabtree and Rodden divide the home into "ecological habitats" (places where communication media live and where
residents go in order to locate particular resources); "activity centers"
(places where media is actively produced and consumed and where
information is transformed); and "coordinate displays" (places where
media are displayed and made available to residents to coordinate
their activities) (2004: 205). However, this typology underestimates
the portable and flexible nature of contemporary media technologies.
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A simiiar critique may be applicable to the anaiysis of Beil e( al. regarding the domestic environment in terms of space, community, time,
iabor, and piay (2005:157-9). Our self-documentation kits suggested
that the zones in our houses are much more fluidly used. When space
is so fluid, new boundaries need erecting, and new systems of etiquette are required.
Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) distinction between "smooth"
and "striated" space has useful applications to our understanding
of domestic space(s) in the context of emergent uses of networked

AT HOME WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

and portable media technologies. Digital information contains many

of the qualities of "smooth space": continuous variation, open to the
virtual and to the locally governed forces of self-organizationsmooth
is indeterminate space. Striated space is sedentary, filled by forms
and perceived things; it produces order and a succession of distinct
forms, such as a television program time determining a domestic routine.Differing temporalities, such as sequentiality (linear time, "clock
time") versus simultaneity, rhythmic or indefinite time; objective
measured time versus subjective experience of time; and local versus
global (non-diurnal) time may be some of the temporal concomitants
of smooth and striated space.^
A range of domestic activities occur either in the smooth space/
simultaneous time of digital Information flow or the striated space/
sequential time of the physical house. Spatial compression and
temporal disembeddedness are primary experiences resulting from
networks of digital information; at the same time, older broadcast
era media technologies tie us to striated space, with their program
schedules, local news, and sports programming. Globalization, which
is in large parta communications revolution (Giddens 2003; Jameson
1998), has penetrated the walls of our houses via the networkbut
at the same time, we still have bodies, local relationships, and the
six o'clock news. Within the privacy of our homes the contradictions
and compromises wrought by a clash of communications and media
cultures are yet to be resolved.
Deleuze and Guattari offers a useful framework for thinking about
the concept of "territory" as an operative process as opposed to a
specific or fixed spatial outcome. This provides a lens through which
to understand the territorializing capacities of digital information flow
and the reterritorialization of domestic space through engagement
with technology.
Technology used in homes constructs territories in a multitude of
ways and increasingly these modes of territorialization reach beyond
notions of physical expansion to the realm of the digitalvirtual territories. A households' claim to virtual territory Is facilitated by improved
connection speeds; the result of this colonization is an intensification
of communications exchange, external to the family unit. The distributive nature of digital information and their associated networks form
highly strategic territories that are neither democratic nor location-dependent, but rather link some disparate locations and exclude others.
The virtual territorialization of home is structured by the possibilities
of Hertzian space (Varnelis 2008), which permit or deny engagements
with various types of networked Information. Cities contain clouds of
electromagnetic signals emanating from a variety of transmission
towers which connect PDAs, mobile phones, and laptop computers
with large- and small-scale networks. Hertzian space engages on two
levels in the territorialization of space in domestic environments: our
domestic media technologies bring it into our houses and convert it

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KATE CHURCH. JENNY WEIGHT, MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

into information and communications; in turn it shapes how domestic

space/time is occupied by people.
Therefore digital networking converts households into a hub for a
two-way information/media/communications exchange (Figure 11)
networked householders are not only consumers of information, but
also producers and disseminators to a potentially internationalized
public. All this is done instantaneously "from the safety of your own
home," possibly quasi-anonymously. However, the digital porosity of
domestic walls is perceived as both a threat (for example, to children)
and a boon.
Connectivity and mobile devices not only challenge traditional notions of how we design domestic space/time to enable our use of
media technologies, but what we understand home to be. We are
contending with a transition from communications centralization to
dispersal, and from collective to individualized media. This transition blurs and interrupts the convenient (albeit reductive) binaries by
which we tend to conceptualize space: public and private, domestic
and commercial, etc.
Having personal, networked, portable devices means that each
householder engages with his/her own choice of media on a schedule
to suit themselves, with little awareness of each other. A "leveling" of
domestic space and time occursno longer do specific experiences
belong to a specific space/time (for example, the conjunction of television, lounge room, and early nighttime). According to Mitchell:
The more we interrelate events and processes across space,
the more simultaneity dominates succession; time no longer
presents itself as one damn thing after another, but as a structure of multiple, parallel, sometimes cross-connected and interwoven, spatially distributed processes that cascade around the
world through networks. (Mitchell 2003:14)

Figure 11
Inside/outside connections with
Hertzian space.

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For much of the twentieth-century broadcast era, home was an environment of sequential and group activity. As a result of the current interest in personal, hyper-portable devices, the lounge room becomes
obsolete; at best it is a nostalgic and perhaps elitist space. Instead of
the home entertainment center, forward-thinking architects may begin
to design radically multipurpose rooms, one for each householder, catering for all personal activities, from sleeping to grooming to media
engagement. Perhaps only cooking, eating, and sex will require coordination (via wireless-enabled text message).
Twentieth-century suburban space established a "threshold of
sociabilitythe point beyond which survival would be impossible because all social life would have disappeared" (Lefebvre 2007: 316).
Suburban space Includes private space, "where people could spread
out in comfort and enjoy those essential luxuries, time and space,
to the full" (Lefebvre 2007: 316). However, the luxuries of time and
space have evolved since Lefebvre was writing, as we incorporate
more media technologies into domestic life. Householders are reinventing Lefebvre's notion of suburban space as they enter the "global
suburbia of personalized networks. Domestic space/time is now
replete with material connections and devices that literally bring the
outside in. Home has become paradoxical; we go home to experience
being away:
... these "smart skinned" homes of tomorrow develop fantasies about media, mobility, and domesticity... Just as advertisers promised consumers that portable TV would allow them
to imaginatively liberate themselves from domestic doldrums
while remaining in the safe space of the home, the new "smart
skinned" homes of the digital age negotiate a dual impulse
for domesticity on the one hand and the escape from it on the
other. (Spigel 2001: 400)
As domestic space and time evolves with our devices, so will our
sense of polite behavior. Intergenerational tensions surrounding bedroom culture and family time, often the subject of media speculation,
suggest that we are only beginning to renegotiate the etiquette of
being home.
i

CONCLUSION

In this article we have charted our initial research into the relationships between domestic technology, space, and time. We have focused on the uses of domestic media technologies, defined broadly,
and considered how houses are adaptedor notto their use. This
adaptation may have occurred spatially (e.g. the reconfiguration of a
room, retro-fitting, etc.), temporally (whereby our domestic habits and
routines may alter), and programmatically (e.g. the dining room table

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KATE CHURCH, JENNY WEIGHT. MARSHA BERRY AND HUGH MACDONALD

may get reprogrammed as an office desk when work commitments

encroach on the evening's domestic activities).
How we accommodate media technologies in domestic space/
time involves a range of decisions, choices, negotiations, and compromises. We choose not only what media information to consume, but
we increasingly have choices about what device we use to access and
consume that media with. We are choosing the "when," "where," and
(to some extent) "how" of media consumption. However, these choices
are predicated on a range of specific spatial, temporal, material, and
social contexts, which produce both possibilities and constraints.
Thus the relationship between domestic space and the consumption
of media is complex, negotiated, and usually compromised.
Despite the undoubted compromises that we make, the radical
incorporation of media technology into our homes may be changing
the nature of the suburban homeno longer does home establish a
"threshold of sociability" in Lefebvre's sense, it changes the terms and
conditions of that sociability in favor of a heavily mediated sociability,
in which direct exchange is filtered and routed, even, perhaps, among
family members. Our aim has been to document this transition rather
than to pronounce judgment upon it, except, perhaps to reconfirm
that peopleand familiesare adaptive entities.
Despite their apparent solidity, houses are fluid and changing
spaces, and the notion of "home" is being redesigned, often in an adhoc manner, to respond to the spatiotemporal novelties thrown up by
contemporary portable, personal, and networked media technologies.
Bausinger (1984: 349) proposes that we should consider our
media engagement as "a structured set [of psychological motivations] within a very complex household of needs." This article has
attempted to unpack one aspect of these complex needs. To achieve
a more holistic sense of the role of media in everyday life, a further
phase of this research would include a consideration of the emotional
impact of mediated experience on everyday human exchanges; the
phenomenology of media technology (for example the difference
between "watching television"a flow experience in Williams' sense
(2003: 89); and "using the Internet" which in most instances "runs
out" unless you interact (the page stays the same; the video simply
ends); changing concepts of family (Williams 2003: 20-1) and identity (Giddens 1991). By synthesizing a richer interplay of factors we
would further unpack the ways that home, technology, and human
behavior evolve together.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors acknowledge the support of the Design Research InstitUte, Urban Liveability Program, RMIT University.

AT HOME WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

NOTES
1. These structurally reconfigure the exterior of the house, considering there was a need to place receiver boxes for these cables in
convenient spots.
2. Space constraints prevent a proper consideration of types of time
that media technologies suggest here. A good introduction to types
of time can be found in Crossan ei al. (2005).

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