Open Doors

Behind the mostly closed and uninviting facades of the buildings in the Neustadtviertel, there are a multitude of gardens enclosed by the surrounding buildings. If the front door is open to the street, so that you can catch a glimpse of the garden behind it, is it all right to go in? Is an open door an invitation?

In some ways this kind of invitation is more clearly defined in online space than in urban space. Photos, journal entries (i.e. blog posts), bookmarks can not only be defined as private, but it is also possible to set various degrees of public and private accessibility in most of the free services offered online (like this one).

If it is all right to walk through an open door to look around at the garden behind the building, is it all right to leave a tag on the white wall of the hallway there? Will the owner and the residents of the building see the tag as a greeting, a sign of appreciation, or as an act of vandalism, evidence of an intruder?

If someone automatically makes all their photos online publicly accessible, is it all right to look at all the pictures of their baby, family gatherings, exuberant parties and private holidays? If it is all right to look at the pictures, is it all right to comment on them, link to them, use them somewhere else? Will that be understood as an expression of appreciation or an act of intrusion?