A main feature of open office settings is that coworkers are physically co-present while doing their individual work. This visual access between coworkers, who are seated together, allows speaker to obtain the gaze of his recipient during the opening of a conversation without leaving his desk. As shown by EMCA workplace studies the placement of desks in seating arrangements have implications for the embodied practice of gazing at a coworker (Salvadori, 2016; Tuncer, 2018). However, as this paper demonstrates, even within the same seating arrangement there are differences in practices of establishing mutual gaze. By analyzing openings of conversations in vis-à-vis seating arrangements the paper highlights that the choice and success of an embodied practice depends on the affordances of the material environment at the desks as well as the bodily effort of the addressed recipient. Features of the material environment, e.g. size of desks, computer screens and number of screens, are shown to influence coworkers’ bodily conduct regarding the possibility to just momentarily pause a current activity or the need to completely disengage from the activity to establish mutual gaze, e.g. by standing up or moving away from the desk. The embodied practices of establishing mutual gaze, which are presented in this paper, are “gazing above the screen”, “moving body above the screen”, “torqueing body next to screen”, “moving body next to screen”, “moving and torqueing body next to screen” and “moving body next to desk”.

Thereby the paper builds on Schegloff’s work on body torque (1998) by demonstrating variations and nuances of embodied practices of moving and/or torqueing bodies away from computer screens to exchange gaze. The paper is based on a collection of six sequences of two- party conversations between coworkers seated opposite each other in vis-à-vis arrangements. The methodological approach draws on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Data consists of approximately 56 hours of video recordings of naturally occurring interactions in three Danish companies with open office environments. A common characteristic of the open offices is that everyone is sitting together in the same room where employees’ desks are placed in groups of two or four in either a square or rectangular formation. The paper contributes to EMCA workplace studies that in a similar way have studied interaction in shared workplaces featuring body torque (e.g. Heath & Hindmarsh 2000; Salvadori 2016; Tuncer 2018).