Yet, there is no denying thatbeing on Whyville was for us like being in a different world, whereas our afterschoolclub participants seamlessly joined the virtual community.

e it put the visitor in a very active role as learner:experimenting, hypothesizing, interpreting, and drawing conclusions

In particular, we wish toconsider the ways in which we can take ‘low-tech’, tangible objects andrefashion or augment them to engender interaction and co-participation

the article isconcerned with the ways in which people, in interaction with each other, boththose they are with and others who happen to be in the same space, reflexivelyconstitute the sense and significance of objects and artefacts, how theengagement with the artefact emerges in different ways for differentparticipants, and the ways in which those material features, and the ecologyin which they lie, reflexively inform the production and intelligibility ofconduct and interaction

It is surprising that the substantial body of research concerned withhow people discern and discover the functionality and affordances of objectsremains principally concerned with the cognitive abilities they bring to bearin perception rather than with the social circumstances in which objects andartefacts are seen and discovered.

The active spectator becomesengaged with a sequence of moments portrayed in asingle image.

We can see, for example, how through interactionparticipants discover and reflexively create the sense and significance of theinstallation and its various components, their playful actions and activitiesgiving a flavour or character to the piece and the surrounding artefacts.Indeed, as people enter the scene and see others exploring and playing withthe piece

ather, the very response may be designed to facilitateand engender particular forms of co-participation, and to enable others tosee and experience what you have seen in the ways that you saw it.