On oceanographic research vessels scientists from different disciplines must work together to obtain samples from the sea beneath their ship. Such juxtaposition of not just theory, but actual laboratory practice, creates unique possibilities for synergy, as members of one discipline co-operatively make use of the tools of another. Multiple kinds of space – including the sea under the ship, graphic representations, the work space of the lab, and embodied participation frameworks for the organization of tool-mediated human interaction – are constituted through a range of temporally unfolding, work-relevant, situated practices. Particular attention is paid to how three parties work together to position an instrument precisely in the sea. Because each actor uses alternative tools to organize his or her perception in ways appropriate to complementary tasks required for the successful accomplishment of the sampling run, each sees the place they are looking at together in a very different way. Both diverse resources provided by each other, and architectures for perception inherited from predecessors, are accumulatively reused with transformation to co-operatively accomplish their night’s work.

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