engleski

Wrestling with contexts in a study of interactions with public screens: introducing 'methodological site-specificity

In this paper I want to challenge, from a methodological angle, claims that recent proliferation of varieties of screens in public urban spaces generates a placeless world. My empirical explorations of everyday interactions with media façades, advertising screens and installation art in a street, a square, underground transport tunnels and a promenade in London (UK) and Zadar (Croatia), suggest that people, on repeated encounters, ‘domesticate’ screens as intimately meaningful pieces of street furniture. Globally recognisable screens are given locally relevant roles, such as points of escapism from a busy or intimidating site, sources of subsidiary street light or pieces of colourful décor. If mediated urban scenographies are thus a complex mix of material realities and electronic images, research practice itself faces a double, and often conflicting, requirement. Flexibility needed in responding to ever- changing contexts of media consumption is met with rigidity in maintaining a set research framework in the messy urban field. In turn, a study of interactions with public screens requires developing a sense of what I call 'methodological site-specificity': orchestrating different contexts of interaction (strolling, rushing, waiting) with site- specific sets of methods (rhythmanalysis of walkers' flow, ‘walking diaries’, covert and participant observation).

media ; audiences ; screens ; city ; public space ; site-specificity ; methodology

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