Urban Experience

From early cinematic depictions of quotidian urban life and “cinematic exploration of city space” like Charles Sheeler’s 'Manhatta' (1921) and Dziga Vertov’s 'Man with a movie camera' (1929) to dystopic masterpieces such as Ridley Scott’s 'Blade Runner' (1982) or Michael Radford’s '1984' (1984) the urban experience has inspired a large number of cinematic narrations through which the built environment – our cities – has been celebrated and social topics problematized. This paper attempts to focus on and analyse genuine urban films under a specific scope; randomness as the defining narrative element and urban deviation as the eventual spatial and cinematic practice. By this I am referring to films where the protagonists engage into a series of chance events which derive from the complexity and multiplicity of architectural/spatial and social situations encountered in the city – setting. These situations act as stimulis and therefore define the protagonists’ engagement with the urban milieu as well as the movie’s development. Which sociological and spatial aspects of New York and Los Angeles are prompted through movies like Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and Schumacher’s 'Falling Down' (1993)? What is the relation between the Baudelairean flâneur and Antonioni’s 'Al di lá delle nuvole' (1995)? And how Tati’s 'Playtime' (1967) perceives and problematizes on the perplexing nature of post-modern architecture and the consequent alienation?

This document is the full version of the paper presented for the annual meeting of the working group "Sociology of Arts" (Sites of Interest conference) that was held in Berlin, 11-13/5/2017

Paralaks izleyicinin konumundaki değişikliğe bağlı olarak gerçekleşen, gözlemlenen nesnedeki yer değiştirmedir. Bireyin içinde yaşadığı, dönüştürdüğü ve dönüştüğü kent yaşantısına dair çoğulluğu ve çeşitliliği vurgulayan yeni bir anlayış önerme niyetinde olan çalışma, bu niyeti paralaks bakışın çoklu karakterinden esinlenerek çoklu deneyler aracılığıyla ortaya koymaya çalışır. Benzerliklerden ziyade farklıların altını çizmek amacıyla, bu çalışma, kent-birey ilişkisini çoklu deneyler aracılığıyla çoklu durumları ve çeşitliliği vurgulayarak açıklamaya çalışır. Bu deneylerlerin çokluluğu üç farklı aşamayla oluşturulmuştur: - Gerçek zamanlı deney belirlenmiş rotanın kentsel deneyim boyunca bir kamera aracılığıyla kaydedilmesi ve bu bilginin deşifre edilmesinden oluşur. - Katılımlı blog deneyi katmansız, tanımlı bir harita üzerine belirlenmiş rotaya dair deneyimlerin izlerinin işlenmesi talep edilerek sanal ve gerçek yaşam arasında bir etkileşim kurar. Farklı kullanıcıların deneyimleri birikir. - Anlatı deneyi Orhan Pamuk’un romanlarındaki hatıralarıyla farklı bir katman sağlar. Çoğalan deneyimle elde edilen çok katmanlı bilgi ile düzlemsel bakışla elde edilmiş indirgenmiş bilgi arasında paralaktik bir kayma yaşanır. Var olan temsiller ile indirgenmiş bilgi, mutlak ve eksiksiz bilgiye ulaşma amacıyla yola çıkılarak elde edilmiştir. Oysa paralaks bakışla çoğalan deneyim bunun aksini ortaya koyar. Böylelikle mutlak ve eksiksiz bilgiye sahip olma yanılsaması yerini gerçeklikle karşılaşmaya bırakır. Mutlak, eksiksiz, tek, doğru bilgiye ulaşma anlayışı günümüz düşünüşüne, günümüz gerçekliğine ve yaşantısına ters düşmektedir. Bu anlayış yerini, çoklu durumların karşılaşmalarına, farklı konumlardan izlenen farklı gerçekliklere, yanılsamalara ve göreceliklere bırakmıştır. Böyle bir dinamizme aynı noktadan bakmak imkânsız hale gelmiştir. Çoğalan durumlar gibi bakışı da çoğaltmak kaçınılmazdır. Bu bağlamda, bu çalışma çağdaş kenti kavrayışta ve varolan yaklaşım ve temsillerin yeniden ele alınışında kılavuz gibi davranmayı amaçlar. Bu bakış açısıyla, çalışma dört ana bölümden oluşur: Bunlar, giriş, kavramlar, deney ve sonuç bölümleridir. Çalışmanın birinci bölümünde, kavramsal çerçevesini oluşturacak temel kavramlardan ve bunları besleyen alt kavramlardan bahsedilmiş; çalışmanın amacı, kapsamı ve yöntemi ortaya konmuştur. İkinci bölümde, çalışmanın kavramsal çerçevesini oluşturan metropol, birey ve paralaks kavramları açıklanmış; buna ek olarak zaman faktöründen bahsedilmiştir. Her bir kavram öncelikle, başkalarınca ele alınmış ve yakın bulunan bakış açıları ortaya konarak incelenmiş; daha sonra diğer kavramlarla ilişkileri araştırılmıştır. Üçüncü bölümde, önceki bölümde ele alınan temel kavramlar doğrultusunda gerçekleşecek olan paralel deneyler ve çok katmanlı okumalar açıklanmış, bu deneyler süreçleri, verileri ve sonuçlarıyla değerlendirilmiştir. Son bölüm ise, tez kapsamında tartışılan konular ve tezin amaçlarının ortaya konmasına, sonuç ve değerlendirmeye ayrılmıştır.

subtitle: The effect of street performing (busking) policies on the quality and experience of public space

Abstract:
The use of art and music has become a common way of revitalising and regenerating public spaces. Our study investigates the approaches adopted in cities around the world for the management of informal creative practices in the public realm. This study is part of a bigger research project that examines the effect that busking (street performing) has on the quality and experience of public space, and its effect on the daily life of citizens and buskers alike.
Notions like “placemaking”, “triangulation in public space”  and “tactical urbanism”, refer to a more community-driven, creative and inclusive way of approaching matters of public space. Although these approaches are under great discussion in academia, local authorities tend to be hesitant towards their application when it comes to busking.
Worldwide, local authorities prefer to restrict busking in a variety of elaborate ways. This leads to licencing systems and regulations that contradict any attempt to revitalize public space through creative practices.
However, there are a handful of major cities that are beginning to allow more creative practices in this sphere. By focusing more on the perception and experience of the urban environment and less on its design and image, the authorities of these cities allow and sometimes even assist in the development of busking practices and events.
We are studying the busking scenes in 50 cities around the world, collecting information on their regulations, and evaluating how encouraging they are towards buskers. Furthermore, we are interviewing policy-makers and buskers from 15 cities with interesting policy schemes. Thus, we will be able to compare and contrast the aspects of each policy when it comes to its realisation as regards the potential impact of busking as a tool for placemaking.
With this study we seek to highlight the role that street performers play for a space to be transformed into a place for citizens’ wellbeing, by enhancing human interaction, creativity, pleasure, sense of safety and freedom of expression in the public realm.
Keywords: busking, street performance, placemaking, public space quality, experience

Tekinsizlik kavramı üzerinden kentsel mekanın deneyim ile yeniden üretimini tartışmaya açan tez çalışması; Sigmund Freud tarafından kavramsallaştırılan tekinsizliği negatif bir alfabe ile değil, kentsel mekanı anlamak, deneyimlemek ya da tekrar inşa etmek için taşıdığı potansiyeller üzerinden tartışmaya açmaktadır. Tezin ikinci bölümünde tekinsizlik kavramının literatürdeki yeri açıklanmaktadır, sonra kavram kendisini besleyen, var eden ya da diyalog halinde iletişim kurduğu eş kavramlar (rüya, hayal edilebilir, muğlak, ikiz / tekrar, karanlık) üzerinden tartışılmaya açılmıştır. Tekinsizlik ilk olarak 1919 yılında Freud tarafından yazılan "Das Unheimlich" isimli makalede bir kavram olarak ele alınarak; ev/tanıdık yer üzerinden saklanmaya çalışılanın açığa çıkması; uzun zamandır bilindik olan bir şeyin aşinasızlaşması olarak gündeme getirilir. Freud tekinsiz olan korkutucu olandan farklıdır diyerek aslında tekinsizliğin potansiyellerini tartışmaya açar. Tekinsizliğin Almancası das unheimlich, heim/heimlich kökünden gelmektedir ve heimlich, evi/güvenli bir alanı tanımlamaktadır. Heimlich, Almanca olumsuzluk ön eki "un-" ile evi; gizli ya da bastırılmış / üstü kapatılmış, mahrem olarak tanımlar. Diğer bir tabirle unheimlich, yersizlik – yurtsuzluk, evsizlik, tanıdık-yabancı arasındaki gerilim olarak da tanımlanabilir. Freud yazısında tekinsiz durumları bir zamanlar bastırılmış tanıdık nesnelerin, ansızın beklenmedik formlarda geri dönmesi, tanıdık olanın-yani ev'in aniden kişiye yabancılaşması ya da kişinin yabancı bir ortamda evinden bir parça bulması, tekrarla nesnelerin/dilin anlamını yitirmesi, ikilik durumları ile açıklamaya çalışmaktadır. Tekinsizliğin bilinçaltından, yani örtülmüş/bastırılmış olandan gelen bir deneyim olduğunu vurgular. Tekinsizliği bir kavram olarak incelemekten çok deneyiminin kendisini ve bu deneyimin potansiyellerini tartışmak için tekinsizlik diyalog içinde olduğu bir kavram seti üzerinden incelenmiştir. Bu eş kavramlar hem tekinsizlik deneyimine ortam sağlayan, hem de bu deneyim ile iletişimi olan durumları işaret eder. Tekinsizliği bir kavram ya da atmosfer tarifi için kullanan çeşitli ana kaynakların sökümü ile elde edilen bu eş kavramlar (rüya, hayal edilebilir, muğlak, ikiz/tekrar, karanlık) tekinsizlik üzerinden irdelenmiştir. Tezin üçüncü bölümünde ev ile ilişkili olan tekinsizliğin neden sokakta arandığı ve kent üzerine spekülasyonlar üreten 20.Yüzyılın ilk yarısındaki avangard topluluklar tartışmaya açılmıştır. Kentin, yani ev olmayanın, ev / güvenilir bölge (heimlich) olması; iç – dış, mahrem – kamusal ayrımını muğlaklaştırır, arada bir durum tariflemektedir. Birbiri yerine geçen aradalık durumu psikanalist Jacques Lacan'ın ex-timate kavramı üzerinden de okunabilir. Ben ve başkası, dışarısı ve mahrem aradalığı; ev ile kent arasındaki sınırları açmada ilginç ve potansiyelli bir durum vadetmektedir. Kentsel mekan bu araştırmada tekinsiz deneyimin tartışmaya açıldığı yer; hem en güvenilir olan / ev / mahrem hem de yabancı / dışarısıdır. Kentteki tekinsiz deneyimi deşmek, ortaya çıkartmak için öncelikle sürrealistlerin geliştirdikleri, var olan gerçeklik algısının yıkımı ve bilinçaltı ile yeni deneyimlerin inşasına olanak sağlayan yöntemler incelenerek; bu yöntemler sürrealistlerin ardılı olan avangard gruplardan Harfçiler ve Durumcuların kent üzerine olan söylemleri ile tekrar tartışılmıştır. Çalışma kapsamında tartışmaya açılan tekinsiz deneyimin potansiyeli ile avangard grupların kentsel algıyı yıkarak, gündelik hayat ile yeni bir devrim yapma yöntemi olarak öne sürdükleri durum, saptırma, sürüklenme gibi pratiklerle, kentliler üzerinde yaratmak istedikleri etki benzerlikler taşımaktadır. Avangard toplulukların uyanma olarak tariflediği ve kentsel mekandaki algıyı yıkarak yeni bir deneyim / mekan üretimi vadeden pratiklerinin kentliler üzerinde bıraktığı etkiyi tekinsizlik olarak tariflemek mümkündür. Tezin dördüncü bölümünde kentsel mekanı tekinsizlik üzerinden tartışmaya açmak için Durumcu Enternasyonalin dérive ve psikocoğrafya taktiği İstanbul üzerinde denenmiştir. Çalışmanın ikinci ve üçüncü bölümlerinden toplanan kuramsal altyapı ve metodolojik araştırmalar; çalışma kapsamında sadece yazarın deneyimlerini deşifre etmesi için değil, başka araştırmacıların da kentte benzer bir keşfe çıkabilmesine olanak sağlamak için Tekinsiz Kent Araştırmaları: İstanbul isimli bir kart oyun seti olarak tekrar üretilmiştir. Bir tür kentsel mekandaki tekinsiz deneyim dedektifliği olan oyun; üç adet kart seti ve bir İstanbul haritasından oluşmaktadır. Tez kapsamında bu oyun üç farklı ekibe oynatılmış ve çıktıları karşılaştırılmıştır. Sonuç bölümünde tekinsizlik deneyiminin kentteki karşılığına dair didaktik ve bitmiş bir söylem üretmek değil; kentsel deneyime yönelik yeni spekülasyonlar, denemeler ve okumalara olanak sağlayacak bir tartışma alanı açılması nihai nokta olarak belirtilmiştir. Görme ve göz hegemonyasındaki bu dönemde kentsel mekanın içerdiği gizli katmanların deşifre edilmesinde yeni yöntemler ve bakış açıları sunmaya çalışan araştırmada; öncelikle tekinsizlik kavramı ve deneyimi teze özgü bir tavır ile söküme uğratılmıştır.

This article explores a corpus of literary works in verse and prose that deal with the city of Isfahan, the capital of the Safavid dynasty in seventeenth-century Iran. Following a brief overview of the formats and conceptions of city description in medieval Persian literature, the essay examines seventeenth-century topographical works as verbal expressions of emergent modes of urban experience in early modern Isfahan. Seen together, these works bespeak the formation of a novel arena of literary production—a social terrain nourished by the city and largely independent of courtly circles. The corpus reveals the ways in which seventeenth-century Isfahan became intertwined with the emergence of new expressions of subjectivity and new modes of fashioning the self. Markets, gardens, urban spaces, and coffeehouses were represented in various narratives integrating subjective experiences into the urban landscape.

https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-the-Senses-in-the-Ancient-Near/Neumann-Thomason/p/book/9780367235284
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429280207-36/smellscapes-ancient-egypt-dora-goldsmith

The olfactory world of a city reveals many aspects of a culture: urban planning, social hierarchy, professional and culinary activities, customs and values, sexual behavior, hygiene, treatment of the sick, religious beliefs, differences between mundane and holy days, plant cultivation, and animal husbandry. One way to discover the smellscapes of an ancient Egyptian city is by examining the written sources that elaborate on the smells of various urban areas. Since odors are left mostly undetected in the archaeological record, the texts the ancient Egyptians recorded themselves about the smell of their urban environment are all the more important. Within the human-made, ancient Egyptian urban environment, each area and establishment had its own special smell defined by the time of year and the activities that took place within them. The written sources elaborate on the sweet scent of the streets imbued with incense and myrrh during festivals, the perfume of the queen that fills the halls of the palace, the smell of ritual offerings getting mixed in the cult chamber of the temple, and the aroma of incense burnt in simple houses. Nevertheless, the texts don’t fail to describe the stench of industrial areas, drunkards whirling around in pleasure in the streets and the unpleasant smell of the sick.

Si Barcelone et Lyon étaient considérées
comme des laboratoires d’aménagement
d’espaces publics à la fin du 20e siècle,
Copenhague est certainement l’une des villes
européennes les plus prolifiques dans le
domaine à l’heure actuelle. Dans ce contexte
d’émulation générale, un certain nombre de
réalisations marquantes ont récemment vu
le jour. Largement plébiscités et publiés à
l’échelle internationale, ces exemples se distinguent
par une grande hétérogénéité dans
leur expression formelle comme dans les
usages qu’ils accueillent. Un élément les rassemble
pourtant : l’affirmation récurrente
dans le discours des architectes et paysagistes
qui les ont imaginés d’une volonté de créer une
expérience par un aménagement singulier1.
Les espaces publics copenhagois contemporains
se présenteraient ainsi comme des lieux
uniques dans lesquels les usagers peuvent
vivre une situation inhabituelle et éprouver
des émotions mémorables. Mais qu’entendent
véritablement les concepteurs par là ? Et plus
spécifiquement, comment crée-t-on une expérience
en aménageant un espace public ?

Se propone a la categoría de acumulación para describir la expresión física de la ciudad resultante del tránsito de la modernización a la contemporaneidad. Se propone ubicar la pertinencia de esta categoría en distintas aproximaciones a la fotografía urbana, donde se estima que ha sido un tema recurrente. La presencia de esta idea en lo fotográfico habla de las representaciones donde colapsan distintos elementos, formando una heterogeneidad extrema, pero también de la repetición de elementos que cobran una apariencia ordinaria o insustancial. Por último, se explora, por medio de la fotografía, la restitución de una imagen urbana posible de la ciudad de Santiago donde la idea de acumulación se hace presente, mostrando una ciudad distanciada de los discursos complacientes de lo político, lo económico o lo académico.

- chapitre d'ouvrage collectif -

Référence :
Olivier Gaudin, « Un autre sens de l’esthétique urbaine. L’élaboration artistique de la perception des espaces urbains »
in Emilio F. Orihuela et Geneviève Vilnet (dir.), Cultures et urbanités, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2015, 256 pages [contribution : p. 31-52]

An upcoming lecture as part of the following venue run by Professor Hyon-sob Kim: 2021 Autumn Semester/ Korea University Architectural History, Theory and Criticism Open Seminar [online]

22nd of November, 2021, 19:00-21:00 KST

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10/11(월) 10:30~12:30. Neil Leach (Department of Architecture, Florida International University), “Learning from AlphaGo: what AI can tell us about the future of architecture” https://korea-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/83265389582?pwd=czU3SkJqMllpMGZ6UXJRUFkrS294dz09

11/08(월) 19:00~21:00. 박유정 (대구가톨릭대학교 프란치스코칼리지), “크리스티안 노르베르그-슐츠의 ‘장소의 현상’” https://korea-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/85963926969?pwd=clBjd05iMjNpajcrR24vYjRqVDVwdz09

11/22(월) 19:00~21:00. 백승한 (가톨릭관동대학교 건축학부), “한국 콘텍스트에서 <라스베이거스의 교훈> 다시 보기” https://korea-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/84055600677?pwd=RVl0S3RlSFpFbEU2SFp2c1V6ODNEQT09

12/06(월) 10:30~12:30. 조현정 (KAIST 인문사회과학부), “일본 건축에서 전후(戰後)란 무엇인가?” https://korea-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/84536869760?pwd=MVZ0TStDL2UyZWtaR2Q2SmhralBjQT09

2021 Global Mobility Humanities Conference, 29-30 October 2021

http://www.mobilityhumanities.org/main.html?lang=EN

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Abstract

This paper aims to rethink the idea of ‘urban experience’ in today’s urban world that operates in relationship with the forces of mediatization and mobility. In doing so, it will focus on reading sociologist Scott Lash’s work, in particular reviewing the way that he theorizes the term ‘experience.’ Addressing three types of experience—epistemological, ontological and informational—Lash claims that the first two types are collapsed into the third. According to him, one’s experience of the city is knowledge-based and sense- driven but both faculties are collapsed and reformulated in “today’s global information culture” in which an excess of images has become a form of life. Lash’s claim is based on his critique of information and also in line with Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory in that he considers information, as broadly defined, to be a realm where both human and nonhuman agents coexist and unfold events. But his theory remains insufficient as to address the “agential cuts,” to borrow the term from Karen Barad, as well as coming an unresolved conclusion that one’s sensory experience predominantly becomes nonhuman data and thus loses its tactility. By reading Lash against the grain, this paper argues that urban experience operates as a mode that is reshaped through the contacts with the systems but still bodily oriented in a loose sense.

The city does not exist.  The city is a fiction, an abstraction rooted in history and mythology.  For how can we identify it?  However it is identified or defined, the city is an environment of experience before it is anything else.  Urban experience, in fact, is perhaps one of the most important and powerful of the complex dimensions that constitute the city, whatever it may be. 

I call this talk "Distant Cities" because I want to inquire into urban experience from a different, perhaps unfamiliar direction, urban experience as encountered from the outside, from a distance, as it were.  How is the city seen and understood not by its inhabitants but by an outsider who may occasionally enter into the urban sphere for visits of limited duration?

The question of urban experience is as complex, intricate, and elusive as its material condition, the city.  Here we encounter massiveness – the physical mass of the urban conglomerate of skyscrapers, institutional edifices, commercial monoliths; urban regions, districts, and neighborhoods.  We not only encounter massiveness; we face spatial extent, as the urban consumption of the landscape spreads across whole geographical regions, such as the megalopolis of the eastern seaboard of the United States stretching from Boston to Washington or the amoeba-like spread of construction across huge distances and often overlapping state lines, as in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, St. Louis urban conglomerates.

Moreover, we encounter social mass, as well, in teeming populations with their associations and organizations both formal and informal, official and subversive.  And, related to this, mass culture is replete with the mass marketing and consumption of goods, entertainment, and anything that can be controlled and on which a value can be placed.  Consumption also overwhelms the ambient environmental resources that, until recently, people took for granted, such as air, water, quiet (the absence of intrusive sound), and even in cities of a human scale, visual space and easy distance.  This is more than mass culture; it is more a mass world.  How can we understand this world?

From this uncommon external perspective on urban experience, I want to consider what it can tell us about the possibilities of an aesthetic of urbanism.  In particular, I want to recover the humane and civilizing possibilities of the city.  This leads me finally to an unabashed sketch of how a responsible environment might be now understood.

As cidades metropolitanas estão inscritas nas novas formas de uso público urbano entre as práticas que desafiam as representações culturais e sociais, configurações dos espaços urbanos representados pela arquitetura das cidades que moldam os espaços. Essas modificações apontam a mudança histórica da representação entre os indivíduos sociais. Devemos identificar os desafios com que as codificações dos espaços culturais da cidade se encontram em suas novas propriedades de direito de uso e manifestação social, já que produzem narrativas que alteram a produção dos espaços na inscrição de identidade social. Práticas cotidianas possibilitam situações, essas com que deparamos na forma de organização social da cidade, tanto formalmente ou informalmente administrada, o local da estrutura dos sistemas de valores na referência ao espaço/tempo de ser utilizado. As ruas imaginadas, apropriadas pelos skatistas, como narrativa da prática cotidiana nos espaços públicos urbanos, que cada vez mais são abandonados em detrimento aos espaços privados. Desse modo, pode o skate trazer a discussão sobre o urbano, apontando que as identidades culturais nos espaços públicos estão longe da percepção ilícita de práticas culturais urbanas. Assim o skate pode então encontrar o diálogo entre a imaginação da experiência urbana contemporânea nas ruas das cidades.

A crescente utilização de aplicativos em dispositivos móveis, principalmente com uso de mídias locativas, tem alterado o relacionamento das pessoas entre o espaço físico e o espaço digital. Este projeto analisa como os aplicativos móveis potencializam a vida urbana das pessoas nos contextos de mobilidade, esporte, relacionamento, negócios, entretenimento e cidadania. Os resultados revelam que com o uso de aplicativos, as pessoas agora podem economizar mais tempo no trânsito; praticar atividades físicas de forma mais engajada; ter mais autonomia nos negócios; relacionar-se de forma mais afetiva; conhecer aprofundadamente uma cidade e assim, participar de causas políticas e cidadãs. A conclusão se dá por meio da reflexão sobre as ambivalências dessas tecnologias e seus limites de uso. Além de revelar conteúdos interessantes e contemporâneos, a pesquisa abre espaço para estudos futuros.

This article examines the essential role of reverberation in everyday spatial experience and argues that the perception and production of reverberation-along with the related concept of resonance-is an example of an innate mimetic capacity residing in both living beings and seemingly inert matter. Reverberation , and acoustic experience more generally, are explored in relation to urban space, with attention paid to the transformation of sense experience in modernity. Drawing on a range of authors, with reference to the work of Walter Benjamin in particular, this article proceeds from a primarily theoretical level to that of concrete human experience, with the example of buskers (street musicians) who perform in the highly reverberant spaces of Montreal's underground metro system. Drawing on the author's ethnographic research among metro musicians, this article demonstrates that reverberation is a vital element in busker practices and experience, and argues that, in their practices and in their effects on space and passersby, metro buskers make evident-make perceptible-the mimetically reverberant relations between body and space, and between self and other. K E Y W O R D S : reverberation; resonance; mimesis; acoustic perception; busker; metro musician; architectural acoustics; urban space. In these pages, I examine the production and effects of reverberation, as a theoretical concept and a component of acoustic experience, and connect this aspect of the urban sonic environment to the concept of mimesis. I argue that reverberation, a key acoustic element of everyday experience, is a perceptible instantiation of mimetic activity that underscores the inter-relationality of sensing bodies, social and technological practices, and urban architecture. It is my contention that reverberation-and the related concept of resonance-is an expression of a mimetic capacity residing in human actors and seemingly inert materials. That is, in our everyday activities and relations with things and each other, there lies a generative capacity that is reproductive of those activities and relations, but always subject to the singular material-historical conditions under which they unfold. As I will argue, the essential role of reverberation in acoustic experience can be understood as a mimetic propensity by which we both integrate

Resumo Este artigo procura analisar os primeiros filmes do cineasta maliano Souleymane Cissé — A garota (1975), Baara (1978), O vento (1982) — a partir de como este apresenta a experiência urbana pós-colonial em Mali. O texto procura se contrapor à classificação de um Terceiro Cinema e suas implicações categóricas sem deixar de reconhecer a influência de mediações com o cinema ocidental e do contexto pós-colonial na forma fílmica. Busca-se entender como o cinema de Cissé traduz formalmente a coletividade urbana de Mali sem recorrer ao nacionalismo sugerido pelos teóricos de um Terceiro Cinema. Palavras-chave: Cinema africano. Pós-colonialismo. Terceiro Cinema. Souleymane Cissé. Experiência urbana.

Abstract This article intends to analyze the first films of Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé — Den muso (1975), Baara (1978), Finye (1982) — through the way in which Mali's post-colonial urban experience is presented by him. The text intends to oppose against the classification of a Third Cinema and its categorical implications notwithstanding recognizing the influence of mediations from the Occident based cinema and the post-colonial context in film form. It seeks to understand how Cissé's cinema translates in form the urban collectivity of Mali without resorting to the nationalism suggested by theorists of a Third Cinema.

Livro-catálogo de exposição. Três fotógrafos, Arnaldo Pappalardo, Mauro Restiffe e Pio Figueiroa, enfrentam o desafio de abordar São Paulo sem o recurso de pontos de vista externos, elevados ou aéreos. Ver do meio, como o mato entre as pedras. A questão da percepção de espaços que não permitem mais a experiência individual, zonas de grande densidade ou fluidez. Retratos de uma cidade que não se dá a ver.

The paper presents a one year study that deals with the emergent multiple character of the urban environment of metropolis. Besides examining the city, discourse of this research has an intention to initiate a new understanding for the cities that we live in, adopt and transform through multi-layered character of the parallax view with an aim to explore the urban experiences. In order to represent the differences rather than the similarities in the city, the study approaches to the interrelation of the city and the urban dweller, underlining multi-layered conditions and the diversity through multiple
experiments of urban experiences that have taken place in  Istanbul case.
Three parallel experiments were held respectively real-time, collaborative and
literal for the same site to collect multiple views of urban dwellers. In real-time experiment 6 participants walked around the site with a recording camera. In collaborative experiment, participants marked the traces of their experiences of the same site on a non-layered common online map. And finally in literal
experiment, novels of Orhan Pamuk are examined for his fictional and real memories of the same site.
Since these specific experiments have an intention to transform the multiple urban data without a reduction but with an interpretation, it is clear that the study favors the subjectivity of urban life. The reproducible and transformable outcomes and methodology of the suggested experiments imitate this subjective and multiple behaviour of urban environment, expecting to lead similar design behaviours.

Si Barcelone et Lyon etaient considerees comme des laboratoires d’amenagement d’espaces publics a la fin du XXe siecle, Copenhague est certainement l’une des villes europeennes les plus prolifiques dans le domaine a l’heure actuelle. Dans ce contexte d’emulation generale, un certain nombre de realisations marquantes ont recemment vu le jour. Largement plebiscites et publies a l’echelle internationale, ces exemples se distinguent par une grande heterogeneite dans leur expression formelle comme dans les usages qu’ils accueillent. Un element les rassemble pourtant : l’affirmation recurrente dans le discours des architectes et paysagistes qui les ont imagines d’une volonte de creer une experience par un amenagement singulier. Les espaces publics copenhagois contemporains se presenteraient ainsi comme des lieux uniques dans lesquels les usagers peuvent vivre une situation inhabituelle et eprouver des emotions memorables. Mais qu’entendent veritablement les concepteurs par la ? Et plus sp...

What would it have been like to live in the island of West Berlin during the 1960s? What impact did the experience of the post-war context have on the global student movement in the city? By reconstructing the cultural atmosphere of the time and considering the site of West Berlin not only as a city, but also as a home, this book seeks to understand how the world was viewed by the protesting students, how the urban space they were living in influenced their political viewpoint, and how the cultural outputs of the generation created a uniquely symbiotic relationship with the world. This book paints a picture of the transfer of ideas between a variety of intellectual and cultural sources by combining theories that influenced the students’ perception of the world with the events centred around the key year of 1968. The intention is to come to an understanding of how the experience of living in West Berlin combined with architecture, and the arts more generally, to form the critique of urban planning and, by extension, society as a whole.
[https://www.peterlang.com/document/1154452]

The current essay consists of a reflection on the construction of the experience of citadin life departing from the principles of Walter Benjamin’s theory of distraction. By making use of the method of montage, the photographs that compose this essay were carefully constructed having banal elements of everyday material culture as their object, aiming at allowing observers to consider the experience of contemporary city anew; one that is not closed up in the direct and explicit meaning of what is shown (the indexicality of photograph), but that turns its attention to the action of memory, to the act of registering (archiving), and to concrete reality and distraction itself as elements capable of shredding the obviousness of urban life’s sensory reception.

This paper discusses public spaces at night, analysing how urban lighting and its gradations of light and darkness affect experience. Urban lighting has been questioned in relation to sustainable and perceptual aspects of the night. Drawing on a methodology that explores the singularities of the nocturnal experience, this paper traces relationships between the practices of subjects and aspects of lighting identified in the Liberdade Square in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The findings suggest perspectives for designing public spaces at night, regarding the plurality of the experience, revealing deviations from the usual practices in Brazil regarding the lights of the city.

eprint link: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/F4FMNTEATCYHVJD4TJMT/full?target=10.1080/13574809.2021.1971962

Based on precedent theories on collective memory and urban studies, this article develops a framework of approach to contemporary urban collective memory. Understanding urban collective memory by handling people and urban space as a system provides a sociospatial perspective for critical approaches to cities. The study initially provides overviews of theoretical approaches to collective memory and city, and then puts forth constituents of urban collective memory. Based on these constituents, contemporary urban collective memory is discussed, and a framework for analyzing contemporary cities in terms of urban space and urban experience is introduced. For a clear portrayal of urban issues within the context, the introduced framework is devised through the case of Ankara, the capital city of Turkey and the inspiring force behind this study. This framework aims to present a ground to assess people’s relation to urban spaces in the contemporary era.

Si bien caminar es el modo más natural de desplazamiento del ser humano –considerado una práctica social que es compartida por la mayoría de las personas– poco se ha considerado desde la arquitectura y el urbanismo el rol singular que desempeña en la conformación de experiencias particulares del paisaje, incluyendo las formas y modulaciones que la ciudad adquiere cuando es apreciada a través de este movimiento. Considerando esto, el artículo explora la apreciación paisajística configurada en la caminata mediante la identificación de algunos de los elementos característicos de la experiencia pedestre, especialmente el movimiento corporal, la confluencia de distintas temporalidades, ritmos, y la percepción del espacio de la calle, recurriendo para ello a representaciones y reflexiones paisajísticas provenientes de campos artísticos y literarios. Estos atributos problematizan la discusión en torno a las nociones clásicas y más estáticas de paisaje para así abordar la especificidad de las configuraciones paisajísticas vividas en el movimiento. La experiencia del paisaje caminado permite reflexionar en torno a las relaciones mantenidas entre los cuerpos caminantes y la urbe, albergando el potencial de informar conceptualmente a las prácticas del diseño a partir de los usos y sentidos de la ciudad así vivida.

Resumen Se propone la noción de ciudad accidental para referirse a aquellas localizaciones donde buena parte de la expe-riencia presente, aunque proviene de un sistema intencional de proyectos, no está formulada explícitamente dentro de éste. De este modo, lo describible como ciudad accidental describiría una frecuente distancia entre proyecto y experiencia. Esta categoría resultaría útil para describir situaciones que dentro de un sistema autó-nomo de comprensión disciplinar, pueden ser descritas como arquitectura y valoradas en claves físico-espaciales. Sin embargo, paradójicamente, la ciudad accidental se presenta como u na arquitectura sin autor, como un conjunto de experiencias residuales en la percepción de una obra o un lugar, como un paisaje antrópico no formulado. Son residuos que actúan al modo de una arquitectura encontrada. La ciudad accidental es una suerte de arquitectura heterónoma, que se construye por todo lo no considerado al interior del proyecto. Si se reconoce que todo proyecto propone un conjunto de límites que separan lo previsto de lo imprevisto, lo pensado de lo no pensado, lo esencial de lo accidental, la ciudad accidental son el conjunto de excedentes perceptuales ubicados fuera de ese límite. Así, puede constituirse en oportunidad para la acción y la crítica, o simplemente ser molestos residuos, inestabilidades o imposibilidades que dificultan la construcción de sentido. En los modos imperantes de producción y de desarrollo urbano, esta experiencia es especialmente frecuente y determinable en los proyectos de enfoque instrumental, tales como las infraestructuras de movilidad, que deter-minan experiencia territorial y paisaje sin formularlos proyectualmente. En casos de este tipo, se define con pre-cisión los límites de actuación, y se excluye, por inefables e inútiles, las experiencias significantes. Lo percibido se compone en buena parte de experiencias no pensadas, sujetas a la descripción y valoración. Comprendida así, esta noción sería una herramienta crítica que permite identificar, caso a caso, lo formulado y lo no formulado en la instrumentalidad urbana contemporánea. Permite valorar experiencias antes siquiera mencionadas, por estar ausentes de discursos de autoría, y se sitúa al interior mismo de la producción proyectual de la ciudad. Se propone discutir lo anterior en casos donde lo accidental se identifica claramente como ajeno a lo pretendida-mente esencial de lo proyectado. En aquello comprensible siempre como otro respecto al proyecto urbano o arquitectónico, exponiendo ejemplos localizados en la tensión de lo instrumental versus lo inefable de lo accidental. Palabras clave: ciudad accidental, proyecto urbano, ciudad contemporánea, experiencia urbana. Accidental city The contemporary distance between project and experience Abstract The notion of accidental city is proposed to refer to locations where much of its experience derives from an intentional system of projects, but is not explicitly stated within it. Thus, the accidental city is describable as the common distance between project and experience. This category would be useful to describe situations within an autonomous system of disciplinary understanding, which can be described as architecture and valued in physical-spatial aesthetics key. Nevertheless, paradoxically, the accidental city is presented as architecture without author, as a set of residual experiences in the perception of a work or a place, as a not formulated anthropic landscape. Is a set of remains, just recognizable as a found architecture. The accidental city is a kind of heteronomous architecture that is built by everything not considered within the project. It is accepted that any project proposes a set of boundaries that separate the intentional from the unexpected , the thought of the no-thought, the essential from the accidental. The accidental city is the set of perceptual surpluses located outside that limit. Thus, it can become a opportunity for action and criticism, or just be annoying waste or impossibilities instabilities that hinder the construction of meaning. In the prevailing modes of production and urban development, this experience is especially prevalent and deter-minable in instrumental projects such as mobility infrastructures, which determine territorial landscape without articulate experience. In such cases, the limits of actuation are precisely defined, and the unspeakable and useless , is excluded as significant experience. The perceived world consists largely of unformulated experiences, subject to the description and evaluation. Well understood, this notion would be a critical tool to identify, case by case, the formulated and the excluded in contemporary urban instrumentality. The accidental city notion allows to evaluate experiences even mentioned, since absence of authoring speeches, and locate critically in the production of contemporary urban space, in the relations of autonomy and heteronomy in the built space. It is proposed to discuss this in cases where the accidental is clearly identified as unaware to what supposedly is essential in the project. That is which always is understood as other regarding urban or architectural project, giving examples located in the tension of the instrumental versus the ineffable of the accident.

Background: This article offers an alternative look at the experiential character of the built environment by combining objective analysis and subjective perception. The aim is to measure and elaborate on quantitative descriptions of 'hidden' urban characteristics, attempting to build correlations between different unseen but detectable qualities of cities. Methods: The study introduces an applied research method to quantify objective features of the built environment and the related subjective experience, prototyping a mobile phone application that both actively and passively measures urban parameters and human perceptions. To test the validity of the research process, a few experiments were performed in Cambridge, MA mapping out a series of different places.

This paper presents an academic project developed a few years ago, named Square Lights. The project Square Lights is a cross-disciplinary approach that tries to conciliate the spatial issues with the human and technological factors related to new media. It’s a speculative effort centred on how urban digital media might improve user’s experience and reinforce the image of the city. The project seeks to reach these goals by paying special attention to the surfaces of the city.
The design process that underpins the project Square Lights invites to a reflection on the very notion of urban surfaces, which is expanded to include not only the vertical planes and faces that cover the buildings and give them an urban expression, but also the myriad of graphical components spread in the outdoor urban spaces. These components are wide-ranging and comprise urban elements such as patterns and drawings inscribed on built surfaces (pavements, streets, walls, facades etc.), as well as architectural details, urban art, monuments, landmarks and signs. Together, these graphical surfaces – some of them commonly overlooked – not only help establish the identity of places, giving them a tangible expression. In fact, they also help engender the place experience. Thus, if we are to design responsive, context-aware urban media, we should consider an expanded notion of urban surfaces.

In qualità di project manager di Urban Experience, insieme a Justyna Kaminska e Carlo Infante, ho tenuto un intervento durante il Barcamp #facciamolagenda, il primo Barcamp europeo svoltosi all'interno di un parlamento.
Nella Sala del Mappamondo presso la Camera dei Deputati a Montecitorio abbiamo presentato "Performing Media Project", progetto itinerante che Urban Experience propone a livello europeo nell'ambito del bando "Erasmus+".