Desktop Regions: The Real My Space

Desktop Regions, by Dibau Naum H, is a thematic flickr set that caught my attention a while ago, but it's only recently that I figured out what does it mean for me. It's a human-centric, multi-layered work that captures three different worlds and two competing desires. I think of it as a Web2.0 Schizophrenia.

The following is my personal interpretation of this interesting work.

Iceland Region 10

Desktop Regions is a personal, private and introverted version of a metaverse. It's a world that exists only inside a single, personal computer desktop (i.e. there's one and only one instance of this world, inside one and only one personal computer – Dibau's computer).

The Desktop world is divided into regions. Each region is numbered - region 19, region 32,… - and labeled with a known location name, such as Greece, Japan and Eiffel. Same region can hosts different physical locations, but only in different timestamps. Each photo in the flickr set is a representation of a single region at one point in time.

Desktop Region is a tripod, a converging place for three worlds: the physical, the virtual and the personal. The physical world is represented by landscape & people images; the virtual world - by images of gadgets, widgets, and desktop application's parts. The personal world is represented by both the location of the metaverse – inside a personal computer's desktop - and by private desktop icons



Champs Elysées Region 11

Eiffel Region 9

This artwork is extreme. It goes against the browser's metaphor, i.e. the social, impersonal, public space and public place. In the Desktop World there are no shared notes on public white boards, no friends, no buddies, just me.

And yet, representations of this private, walled garden space have been published in Flickr. That's the schizophrenic nature of our time: being anxious about our privacy, and being desperately in need for a private space, while at the same time voluntarily and eagerly disclosing any aspect of our Identity and inviting anybody into our private spaces.

We are all struggling these days in understanding and re-establishing our place in the confluence of physical, virtual and personal worlds. This is why Desktop Regions is such a contemporary work of art.

Kyoto Region 1