Abstract
The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the technologically mediated experience of public, urban space, focusing on playful, artistic or research projects, installations and applications. The approach that follows perceives the aforementioned games, projects and interactive installations that constitute the research object, as complex and multi-layered technospatial and technosocial systems, that converse with the multiplicity of cities, as structures of spaces and places and lead individuals to experience and to interpret the urban context through experiences that happen in parallel to ordinary everyday life. For the analysis and understanding of their inherently spatial qualities and characteristics and the assessment of interactions with the urban landscape, this thesis constructs and proposes a mixed, combined methodology. The interpretive methodological tool emerges through literature review that combines sources from Game Studies, Human Computer Interaction, with refe ...
The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the technologically mediated experience of public, urban space, focusing on playful, artistic or research projects, installations and applications. The approach that follows perceives the aforementioned games, projects and interactive installations that constitute the research object, as complex and multi-layered technospatial and technosocial systems, that converse with the multiplicity of cities, as structures of spaces and places and lead individuals to experience and to interpret the urban context through experiences that happen in parallel to ordinary everyday life. For the analysis and understanding of their inherently spatial qualities and characteristics and the assessment of interactions with the urban landscape, this thesis constructs and proposes a mixed, combined methodology. The interpretive methodological tool emerges through literature review that combines sources from Game Studies, Human Computer Interaction, with references from Science and Technology Studies and Philosophy, in particular, Postphenomenology and Critical Posthumanism. This thesis ultimately aims to inform both the design and the evaluation process of such technologically mediated, playful projects, with an emphasis on their spatial experience. It is primarily addressed to architects, as the discipline primarily concerned with the design of space and as the practitioners who can claim a role in similar creative and scientific groups and efforts. In the first part of the thesis, the special nature of play as an activity is presented, through the study of fundamental works for the field, as well as the transformation of its conceptualization after the advent of digital games. Moreover, a series of playful design projects and installations are examined, with an emphasis on the analysis of the technologies that support their implementation and the relationship they negotiate with the urban, public space. In addition, the characteristics of the Pervasive Games are analyzed, as of central interest for the thesis, while special care is given to the investigation of their spatial and social dimensions, while they unfold in cities, in spaces with a multitude of people, different stakes and claims. At the same time, theoretical and philosophical approaches are studied that can support the analysis of the distinct features of such complex phenomena, with an emphasis on their expressive, technological and spatial characteristics. The thesis focuses on Postphenomenology, as the approach that illuminates the multitude of relationships that the individual can develop with the various technologies and the ways in which these relationships mediate the experience of the world. Finally, the thesis complements this perspective, with the tools of Critical Posthumanism. The aforementioned steps led to the development of a theoretical framework, which consists of a series of questions on three axes: a) Literature from Ludology and Game Studies, b) Postphenomenology, c) Critical Posthumanism, as a combined, methodological tool for the analysis of such kind of projects. The second part of the doctoral thesis focuses on the application of the proposed methodological tool to the analysis of four specific case studies. The selected projects vary greatly from each other and express different aspects of playful and gameful design. The analysis of each project is guided by the questions formulated, following the multi-level literature investigation carried out in the first part of the thesis, and lead to conclusions that illuminate the central research question, namely how they shape the experience of the city's public space.
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