Atmospheres and the Experiential World ― Theory and Methods

We live atmospheres, we talk about them and we move through them. They offer us an important route into comprehending several aspects of human life and experience, what is important to people, the environments life is played out in, and the processes of change and possible futures. Atmospheres are an ephemeral, yet inescapable, element of our everyday experiential and conceptual environments. They are continually beyond our grasp as they undergo constant transformation.

By interrogating atmospheres, this book arrives at new ways of thinking about the relationships between people, space, time and events. This book explores the ways we engage with these affective modes, and the possibilities that researchers, designers and policy-makers must make and intervene with in the world.

Chapters propose an approach to atmospheres that is not fixed to certain forms or boundaries. Instead, this book argues that atmospheres should be conceptualised as dynamic and changing configurations that allow analytical insight into a range of topics when we think in, about and through them. This book offers scholars, designers and creative practitioners, professionals and students, a research-based way of understanding and intervening in atmospheres.

Shanti Sumartojo is a Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia). Her research investigates how people experience their spatial surroundings, including both material and immaterial aspects, using ethnographic and practice-led methodologies. With a particular focus on the built environment and urban public space, this includes ongoing work on memorials and commemorative sites. She is author of Trafalgar Square and the Narration of Britishness (2013), and co-editor of Nation, Memory, and Great War Commemoration (2014) and Commemorating Race and Empire in the Great War Centenary (2017).

Sarah Pink is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University (Melbourne Australia). Her research, based in design anthropology, focuses on design for wellbeing and emerging technologies, often through interdisciplinary collaborations with designers, engineers, artists and scholars from other disciplines. Her recent publications include the co-authored books Uncertainty and Possibility (2018) and Making Homes (2017) and the co-edited books Anthropologies and Futures (2017) and Theoretical Scholarship and Applied Practice (2017).