ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the images transmitted by videoconference are being both produced and oriented to by the participants, thus reflexively accomplishing a collective visual space for the ongoing action. It presents how a participation space is shaped by the way in which participants organize their talk-in-interaction. The chapter reviews some procedures by which members interactionally define and install an adequate space for the collaborative achievement of tasks and for the exercise of their expertise. It focuses on the specificities of surgical work - object of a few sociological studies, but as yet unexplored by ethnomethodological and conversational studies of work. Thus the video image is the major link between the various participants and is a central technological tool for accomplishing their activities. Participants are actually orienting towards the visual space of action as the common focus of their different activities, even as a condition for the event to be achieved successfully.
