No / This paper develops an argument about transformations in the experience of the urban as a consequence of the rise in, so called, augmented public space. Contemporary media spaces of which media architecture now plays center stage. The argument is this: that through artistic and creative interventions that deploy these technologies and the spaces that they are embedded within can have a direct impact on issues such as the mediation of place and locality and consolidates the central role of the body as a frame in contemporary media spaces. The intention is to map the potential of a media architectural body.

The home is a physical place that provides isolation, comfort, access to essential needs on a daily basis, and it has a strong impact on a person’s life. Computational and media technologies (digital and electronic objects, devices, protocols, virtual spaces, telematics, interaction, social media, and cyberspace) become an important and vital part of the home ecology, although they have the ability to transform the domestic experience and the understanding of what a personal space is. For this reason, this work investigates the domestication of computational media technology; how objects, systems, and devices become part of the personal and intimate space of the inhabitants. To better understand the taming process, the home is studied and analysed from a range of perspectives (philosophy, sociology, architecture, art, and technology), and a methodological process is proposed for critically exploring the topic with the development of artworks, designs, and computational systems. The methodology of this research, which consists of five points (Context, Media Layers, Invisible Matter, Diffusion, and Symbiosis), suggests a procedure that is fundamental to the development and critical integration of the computationally enhanced home. Accordingly, the home is observed as an ecological system that contains numerous properties (organic, inorganic, hybrid, virtual, augmented), and is viewed on a range of scales (micro, meso and macro). To identify the “choreographies” that are formed between these properties and scales, case studies have been developed to suggest, provoke, and speculate concepts, ideas, and alternative realities of the home. Part of the speculation proposes the concept of DomoNovus (the “New Home”), where technological ubiquity supports the inhabitants’ awareness, perception, and imagination. DomoNovus intends to challenge our understanding of the domestic environment, and demonstrates a range of possibilities, threats, and limitations in relation to the future of home. This thesis, thus, presents methods, experiments, and speculations that intend to inform and inspire, as well as define creative and imaginative dimensions of the computationally-enhanced home, suggesting directions for the further understanding of the domestic life.

With the rising influence of digitalization and its immense penetration intoeven everyday life, the last decade of the 20th Century addressed to a critical threshold in the successive transformation process of the spatiality in its long-term run. The advanced digital technologies of ubiquitous computing and generative design, as well as the invention of smart materials in late 90’s (particularly the nano-technological materials that emerged as the programmable matters with their ability to evolve continously) have all provoked the fluid characteristics of spatiality, and strengthen the transformative capacities of the architectural space through the emergence of computer-augmented territories. Additionally, while they are becoming as the body extensions, the advent of novel apparatuses and gadgets further enhanced the inte- gration of the corporal and incorporal bodies with the spatio-temporal multiplicities, where the hyperdimensionality of the space has been triggered to its outmost range, in relation to the “soft and smart technologically augmented immanent millieu”, in Spuybroek terms. Thus, like Spuybroek points out as the “haptonomist” presence of the body merges itself with these diverse bodily extensions on one hand; and on the other hand, as the rising influence of nomadic view of the world further stimulates the unboundedness and endless fluidity of space, so that the spatiality becomes a landscape of successive transformations, a topology of emergence or a plane of becoming, which is merely defined by lines of forces, and occures as an alive territory rather than a limited space of predefined boarders. Therefore, this evolvable territory which is affectable and being affected by the lines of forces –inner and outer forces–, emerges as an animated existence, an interactive organism. So, by interacting with the Deleuzian Philosophy and their notions like lines of forces, folding, becoming, smooth space, territory, spatium, this article aims to reveal the relevance of these notions in architectural discourse, as well as the emergence of the smooth space in the contemporary architectural practice, by magnifiying one of the very initial examples of its kind; in terms of unfolding the Fresh Water Pavilion of NOX Architecture by Lars Spuybroek into question to reveal the essences of thecontemporary transformable-evolvable architectural spatiality.

No / In this chapter, augmented space is described as the layering of media technologies onto the physical space of the city. The approach assesses salient aspects of the experience of space in everyday life, the city and urban space more generally. The chapter discusses these in relation to the deployment of augmenting technologies and modes of display associated with augmented reality, new and digital media: visual or otherwise. Selected work, carried out in relation to culture, leisure and tourism is assessed. These case studies indicate the potential of augmented reality in areas of a) urban design, b) tourism and heritage, and c) the promotion of cycling for health and the creation of alternative transport infrastructure. The main characteristics of AR and augmented space are presented. This is followed by a discussion and development of hybrid research tools and applied in two case studies with a view to providing a potential roadmap for future work in this area.

Electroacoustic music is often regarded as not being sufficiently accessible to the general public because of its sound-based abstract quality and the complexity of its language. Live electronic music introduces the figure of the performer as a gestural bodily agent that re-enables our multimodal perception of sound and seems to alleviate the accessibility dilemma. However, live electronic music generally lacks the level of detail found in studio-based fixed media works, and it can hardly be transferred outside the concert hall situation (e.g. as a video recording) without losing most of its fresh, dynamic and unpredictable nature. Recent developments in 3D simulation environments and game audio technologies suggest that alternative approaches to music composition and distribution are possible, presenting an opportunity to address some of these issues. In particular, this Portfolio of Compositions proposes the use of real and virtual space as a new medium for the creation and organisation of sound events via computer-simulated audio-sources. In such a context, the role of the performer is sometimes assumed by the listener itself, through the operation of an interactive-adaptive system, or it is otherwise replaced by a set of automated but flexible procedures. Although all of these works are sonic centric in nature, they often present a visual component that reinforces the multimodal perception of meaningful musical structures, either as real space locations for sonic navigation (locative audio), or live visualisations of physically-informed gestural agents in 3D virtual environments. Consequently, this thesis draws on general game-audio concepts and terminology, such as procedural sound, non-linearity, and generative music; but it also embraces game development tools (game engines) as a new methodological and technological approach to electroacoustic music composition. In such context, space and the real-time generation, control, and manipulation of assets combine to play an important role in broadening the routes of musical expression and the accessibility of the musical language. The portfolio consists of six original compositions. Three of these works–Swirls, Alice - Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, and Alcazabilla–are interactive in nature and they required the creation of custom software solutions (e.g. SonicMaps) in order to deal with open-form musical structures. The last three pieces–Singularity, Apollonian Gasket, and Boids–are based on fractal or emergent behaviour models and algorithms, and they propose a non-interactive linear organisation of sound materials via real-time manipulation of non-conventional 3D virtual instruments. These original instrumental models exhibit strong spatial and kinematic qualities with an abstract and minimal visual representation, resulting in an extremely efficient way to build spatialisation patterns, texture, and musical gesture, while preserving the sonic-centric essence of the pieces.