The poetics of augmented space

Abstract

This article discusses how people experience spatial forms when they are filled in with dynamic and rich multimedia information; spaces such as shopping or entertainment areas or other spaces where various information can be accessed wirelessly. The author calls such spaces ‘augmented space’: the physical space overlaid with dynamically changing information, multimedia in form and localized for each user. The article asks whether this form becomes irrelevant and ‘invisible’ or if people end up with a new experience in which the spatial and information layers are equally important. The author also discusses the general dynamic between spatial form and information and how this might function differently in today’s computer culture. Throughout the article, augmentation is reconceptualized as an idea and cultural and aesthetic practice rather than as technology. Various practices in professional and vernacular architecture and built environments, cinema, 20th-century art and media art are discussed in terms of augmentation.