Paper short abstract:

After deploying a digital lighting intervention, we analyze the effects of light atmospheres in a public place. We explore the potentials of creative digital applications to generate sensory and body encounters, memories and reactions with shared spaces and public infrastructure.

Paper long abstract:

After deploying a digital lighting intervention, we analyze the effects of light atmospheres (Edensor, 2012) in a public place. We explore the potentials of creative digital applications to generate body encounters, memories and reactions with shared spaces and public infrastructure.

During the intervention, we explored opportunities for interactive and participative engagement with lighting and mobile devices, as well as sensors to drive system reactions enacted from ambient noise. For the analysis, we mixed digital data collection of interactions with an ethnographic study.

We conclude with a provocation on how an approach to mobilities and spatial assemblages can be an alternative to deploy digital and smart cities, and to engage critically the emotional consequences and imaginaries created around embodied encounters. The effect of such interaction between senses and atmospheres causes that the meaning of a place emerges from mundane and ordinary actions. In the interaction, places become diluted between body meaning, senses and memory, but lacks any social definition or cultural reputation.