Afonso, Andre Guazzelli; (2022) Flowing Bodies: A Multiscale Approach to Bodily Interactions with Urban Art and Media Installations. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Preview

Text Afonso_Thesis.pdf - Other Download (12MB) | Preview

Abstract

Urban interactive installations have increasingly exploited computing technologies to foster whole-body interactions and shared encounters in urban spaces. Despite the multiscale nature of urban mediated interactions, until now literature has adopted discrete scales to analyse them, particularly micro or meso scales – the first focusing on bodily interactions, the latter on social behaviours. There is a lack of macro-scale accounts exploring the impact of urban design and the spatial layout on the local mediated interactions. This thesis addresses this gap by developing a multiscale approach to interactions with urban art and media installations, exploring the human body as the linking thread between the different scales of analysis and articulating urban design, HCI, interaction design and related fields. An in-the-wild, mixed-methods approach is conducted, including five case studies of outdoor, fixed urban art and media installations encouraging whole-body interactions. Three case studies consist of permanent or semi-permanent installations, enabling longitudinal surveys and thus contributing to advance this research field that, hitherto, has emphasised short-term investigations. The findings unveiled various factors that, operating at distinct scales, influenced on the levels of bodily interactions and shared encounters around the installations. At the macro scale, key factors were the spatial configuration and the quality and variety of land uses and environmental stimuli on the installation sites. At the meso scale, the thesis revealed that different interface designs resulted in different degrees of socio-spatial permeability, which should be a core concern when placing urban installations. At the micro scale, the discussion highlighted the material characteristics of the interfaces, crucial factors in encouraging specific forms of bodily engagement. Altogether, this body-centric research expands on the mechanisms of placemaking, offering the design, research and planning communities new ways of framing and problematising the notion of smart city.

Download activity - last month

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as JSONCSVXML

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Archive Staff Only

View Item