Flow as Place-Making

Part II interrogates the role of space and place in flow and the treatment of those same terms in existing flow literature. Inconsistencies between the evident importance of place to/in flow in empirical accounts and the under-specification of spatial concerns in constructs of flow are identified, spatial concepts employed in flow scholarship in ways that do not align with contemporary geographical thinking are updated, and the unidirectional notion that place influences flow but not vice versa is corrected. Comparative analysis of flow experiences in artistic practice and online gaming, through the conceptual lenses of aesthetic theory and (tele)presence, brings to light very different spatial experiences through the unique signatures of different types of presence discerned in each domain of practice. This concluding chapter extends these analyses to flesh out not only how archetypal flow is itself a space (physical presence in material practice) and can be generative of place (spatial presence in a different phenomenological place), but also how this spatially transformative quality can itself vary between domains of practice. It reformulates flow and presence as distinct yet related experiences, it provides a more processual framing of how diverse spatial experiences in flow might come into being, it affirms that flow is inherently, multiply and thoroughly spatial, and it encourages a more bodily, material, pre-reflective and practice-based approach to flow research.