Ma

Pots are formed from clay,

but the empty space between it

is the essence of the pot. - Lao Tse

Listening is only partially about what is said. What is unsaid is often more important. This is one important reason why machines struggle to interpret human speech. They can only work with what is there.

The concept of "negative space" is used in painting to describe the spaces between objects. It's important. The objects and the space in which they sit are closely related. You might call "negative space" by another name: "context".

I had the same experience again in a very different context this morning in a hospice sitting with a friend who is dying and talking to her son. Bizarrely about sport: the England game last night, the Lions Tour, 2020 world series and Andy Murray. Although our topic was carefully chosen to keep us away from the theme of impending death I couldn't help noticing how aligned the themes we spoke of were with the figure in the bed alongside us - metaphors about mental strength, injury, weakness letting go. - Further & Faster

And then I stumbled over the concept of "Ma". Gap. Pause. Lacuna. Space. Betweenness. Our interactions and our lives are full of Ma*. Are you listening hard enough to the spaces?

*As I write there's some dub reggae on the radio - a music built on the use of space (to build intensity, a dub producer subtracts rather than adds sounds).

Mind the gap: negative space

Victoria Ward talks about knowledge and negative space. At one level this could be referring to unknowns. Possibly to ignorance. Even silence. It imples an edge. Something that needs to be mapped out.

An invitation to imagine themselves as vanished and see
1. what work does not get done when they are not at work and
2. what work would need to get done by another filling their shoes

What happens when you are not there? What gets missed/lost/left?

Some of this could be painted using SNA or value networks (the gaps created by removal of individuals or roles) but some kind of richer description might be required.