The sensitive construction of the private space in liquid modernity: the connected room of one's own

Abstract

This article analyzes the transformations that new information and communication media technologies have generated in individuals, their way of relating and their notion of privacy. From the end of the 20th century until today, in a hyperlinked and global setting, made up of equally hyperconnected people, they have also modified and adapted their environment by drawing a new concept of private space: the connected room of one´s own. This living space stages the immateriality and instability of the “liquid modernity” described by Zygmunt Bauman. The New Babylon project that Constant builds based on Huizinga’s homo ludens will serve as a reference to identify the modifications that are taking place in the use of the private sphere currently conditioned by new technologies. Generation Z, young people who have been born and are educating themselves in perpetual interaction with screens, computers and social networks that are illustrating a complex private area without precise limits, fluid and interactive. We propose to delimit some vital metamorphoses that are happening in individuals and verify how to dematerialize and dilute the limit of the public and the private, as well as the processes that shape the work of art.