ABSTRACT
In my discussion of mediated urban experience in the previous chapter I ascertained that walking in a mediated city refers the passer-by to various physical and symbolic surroundings that unfold within the passer-by’s mobile horizon in a changing mix. In this context, encounters with screens are situations which always have a potential to create friction within movement. By inviting a parallel activity of interaction with various elsewheres, encounters with screens can momentarily orient or disorient the passer-by. Walking in the mediated city is thus not merely a form of physical movement-it is a way-fi nding practice through physical and symbolic spaces of the city. It manifests the ‘qualitative character’ of the passer-by’s ‘apprehension and kinaesthetic appropriation’ of urban space (de Certeau, 1984: 97). An empirical exploration of walking and looking, then, requires ‘a microscopic, sensitive methodology which successfully registers and preserves the characteristic traits of the fi eld of study’ (Knorr Cetina, 1981: 15). If public screens both occupy material space and feature images of other spaces, and the domestication of screens is indivisible from inhabiting space, we need a methodology ‘sensitive’ (ibid.) to both the mediated and spatial dimensions of everyday life.
