Engaging Cities: From Urban Space to Media Interface

Abstract

Technology in this millennium has evolved to become a conduit for communication, creative expression and knowledge transmission. Central to this is the designer's agentic role in mediating the percolation of the digital into the built environment to produce new and transformative experiences incorporating mixed reality. Through discussing two speculative projects, this paper poses the question of what instigative role media might play in efforts to boost spatial ambience and social agency. The first reimagines an AR media architecture experience: by expanding the scope of screen media to include touch media and mobile media, handheld devices fulfil a fresh function, to re-center the urban experience alongside encouraging multidimensional user interaction. Meanwhile, a virtually mediated tour conceived to explore interactions between media and architecture, user agency and behavior, redefines an appreciation for the mimetic. While VR is unable to replicate the randomness and complexity of real-world experience, the sensorial richness of the lived environment and in-person interactions, insights can still be gleaned by how people navigate in cities, even in a simulated environment. These examples reconfirm how our relationship with urban space has been irrevocably altered by digital affordance, through interpretation, interactions and interventions. They open up a dialogue on other alternatives to traditional notions and practices of media architecture. Given the proliferation of digital and online tools and platforms, it stands to reason that now is the opportune time to enskill and empower designers to seize control of the technological ensemble, and exploit what the digital affords, to interpret new and meaningful uses.