ABSTRACT
It has discreetly become part of the usual, if often unnoticed, urban experience, to be addressed by various screens whilst moving through public space. This book is an interdisciplinary, grounded empirical investigation of how people interact with screens on encountering them in their daily rounds. In my data about interaction, derived from 65 in-depth interviews and a number of diaries, participant observations, rhythmanalyses, and photographs, collected at four different sites where screens have been placed in public urban space, comments like Nathan’s demonstrate an important consistency. In an audio recording of his passing through the site, he commented about others passing by and about a new building being constructed across the road. At the moment of passing by a screen, which he was not told of in advance, Nathan was silent. Although his response to my question about a large electronic news and advertisements screen in his neighbourhood may have declared the screen’s insignifi cance, it in fact revealed the screen’s everyday purchase in Nathan’s movement.
