Producing place atmospheres digitally: Architecture, digital visualisation practices and the experience economy

Abstract

Computer generated images have become the common means for architects and developers to visualise and market future urban developments. This article examines within the context of the experience economy how these digital images aim to evoke and manipulate specific place atmospheres to emphasize the experiential qualities of new buildings and urban environments. In particular, we argue that CGIs are far from 'just' glossy representations but are a new form of visualising the urban that captures and markets particular embodied sensations. Drawing on a two year qualitative study of architects' practices that worked on the Msheireb project, a large scale redevelopment project in Doha (Qatar), we examine how digital visualisation technology enables the virtual engineering of sensory experiences using a wide range of graphic effects. We show how these CGIs are laboriously materialised in order to depict and present specific sensory, embodied regimes and affective experiences to appeal to clients and consumers. Such development has two key implications. Firstly, we demonstrate the importance of digital technologies in framing the 'expressive infrastructure' (Thrift 2012) of the experience economy. Secondly, we argue that although the Msheireb CGIs open up a field of negotiation between producers and the Qatari client, and work quite hard at being culturally specific, they ultimately draw "on a Westnocentric literary and sensory palette" (Tolia-Kelly 2006) that highlights the continuing influence of colonial sensibilities in supposedly postcolonial urban processes.

Digital interface design and power: Friction, threshold, transition

“…Whilst this work has done much to understand how power operates in the background of digital systems, through algorithms and search engines (Amoore and Piotukh, 2016;Cheney-Lippold, 2011;Deville and Velden, 2016;Mackenzie and Vurdubakis, 2011;Pasquinelli, 2009;Striphas, 2015) and interfaces (Ash, 2015;Degen et al, 2015;Rose et al, 2014;Seigworth, 2016;Wilson, 2014), little work to date has focused on how power operates, and is enabled, through actual practices of interface design. As work on the sociology of design (Broth, 2008;Farías and Wilkie, 2016;Mackenzie, 2006;Marenko, 2015) suggests, the risk is that, in ignoring practices of design, assumptions about the smooth manipulation of user action and experience creep back into analysis, reproducing conventional stories about the location and form of power in a digitalising world.…”

Habsburg coffeehouses in the shadow of the empire: Revisiting nostalgia in Trieste

“…Crafting nostalgic atmospheres, or the business of nostalgia in Trieste Thrift (2004) argues that because atmospheres can be manipulated, engendered, and shaped, they become political, while Sumartojo adds that their intensities can affect people differently (2015,271) and Degen, Melhuish, and Rose (2015) investigate how architects have a long history in manipulating space to create atmospheres that communicate (or infer) feelings of excitement (retail), safety (street lighting design), or fear (policing). If atmospheres can be crafted through the construction of the built environment or the staging of events, they become meaningful when these atmospheres are apprehended, inhabited, and performed by moving bodies (McCormack 2013, 4).…”

Showing/Sharing: Analysing Visual Communication from a Praxeological Perspective

“…Pictures and especially personal photos depict and display taste, aesthetics and embodied performances (Goffman, 1987;Müller, 2011) as well as sensory, atmospheric and affective elements (Degen, Melhuish, & Rose, 2017;Grace, 2014;Hjorth & Lim, 2012). With Goffman, pictures can be understood as condensed performances of practices that otherwise might be fleeting and hard to grasp/collect: "The rendition of structurally important social arrangements and ultimate beliefs which ceremony fleetingly provides the senses, still photography can further condense" (Goffman, 1987, p. 10), therefore "pictorial artifacts allow for a combination of ritual and relic" (Goffman, 1987)-like all bit-based data, digital pictures shared on social media are documents and elements of interactions, performances, and rituals.…”