ABSTRACT
In this chapter I explore interactions with a public screen incorporated into the pavement of the promenade in Zadar, Croatia. Zadar is a Dalmatian town with a population of 100,000 and the highest proportion of its income comes from the tourist industry (Vjesnik, 2007). Its promenade provides local inhabitants with a central space for highly valued evening rounds of walking and talking. The end point of the promenade was derelict for decades due to the Yugoslav war and institutional neglect. In 2007, when it was refurbished, a 22 metre moving-image screen, called ‘Greeting to the Sun’ (‘Pozdrav Suncu’) (henceforth, the GS), was inserted into the pavement. The City Council’s aim was to have people return to the site. The architect assumed that, on top of cleaning up the site, a particular piece of street furniture-a moving image screen-should ‘do the work’ of fostering communal life on the long neglected spot (ibid.). However, as I intend to illustrate, the local inhabitants make use of the interface for interactions of different kinds.
