Katharine S. Willis

Situations and Encounters:   Social Technologies and Public Space

keywords: situations, interaction, city, social, territory, community, encounter, space, experience

The space of the city is not a static reality defined by built forms or demographic facts, but is instead a form of spatial practice created by the interweaving of everyday actions and interactions of its citizens. In this sense, it can be considered as being constructed out of sets of interrelations, the simultaneous co-existence of social interrelations and interactions at all spatial scales, from the most local to the most global (Massey 1992, p. 80). These interactions are no longer confined to face-to face contact, as communications media have re-arranged many social environments so that most people now find themselves in contact with others in new ways. Walls, doors, gates and distances still frame and isolate encounters, but new technologies have increasingly encroached on the situations that take place in physically defined settings. This paper will look at the potentials for situated technologies to inform the role of interactional territories in urban public space.

Katharine S. Willis is an artist, architect and researcher whose focus on exploring ways in which we interact with our spatial environment. This work has included installations, temporary and permanent public artworks in UK and Europe. In particular she has been researching and creating installations which adopt new approaches to understanding how we can create legible environments. These projects investigate navigation, wayfinding and identity and the transformative possibilities of mobile and locative technologies.

She is currently a research fellow on the   MEDIACITY project, Bauhaus University of Weimar and was previously a doctoral researcher in the Spatial Cognition program at the University of Bremen, Germany. Her work has been published in many publications, and she has lectured widely. Katharine's background and training is in architecture and she is a qualified architect.

http://www.mediacityproject.com/