Public Space, Media Space asks how media saturation are transforming public space and our experience of it. From the role of graffiti and Youtube videos of street art in the Cairo revolution, to OOH (Out of Home) advertising, the book is diverse in its approach and global in its coverage.

Social media is restructuring urban practices–through ad-hoc experimentation, commercial software development, and communities of participation. This book is the first to consider how practices contained within social media are situated within a larger genealogy of public space, including theories of communal identity, civitas and democracy, the fete, and self-expression. Through empirical research, the actual social practices of participants of networked publics are described and analyzed. Documenting how online counterpublics use the Internet to transmit classified photos, mobilize activists, and challenge the status quo, Tierney argues that online activities do not stop in online conversations; they are physically grounded through mobile GPS coordinates which are then transformed into activities in physical space—the street, the plaza, the places where people have traditionally gathered to demonstrate and express their opinions publicly.

Reflections on the rapidly changing formulations of public space in the age of digital media, vast ecological crises, and civic uprisings. “Public space” is a potent and contentious topic among artists, architects, and cultural producers. Public Space? Lost and Found considers the role of aesthetic practices within the construction, identification, and critique of shared territories, and how artists or architects—the “antennae of the race”—can heighten our awareness of rapidly changing formulations of public space in the age of digital media, vast ecological crises, and civic uprisings. Public Space? Lost and Found combines significant recent projects in art and architecture with writings by historians and theorists. Contributors investigate strategies for responding to underrepresented communities and areas of conflict through the work of Marjetica Potrč in Johannesburg and Teddy Cruz on the Mexico-U.S. border, among others. They explore our collective stakes in ecological catastrophe through artistic research such as atelier d'architecture autogérée's hubs for community action and recycling in Colombes, France, and Brian Holmes's theoretical investigation of new forms of aesthetic perception in the age of the Anthropocene. Inspired by artist and MIT professor Antoni Muntadas' early coining of the term “media landscape,” contributors also look ahead, casting a critical eye on the fraught impact of digital media and the internet on public space. This book is the first in a new series of volumes produced by the MIT School of Architecture and Planning's Program in Art, Culture and Technology. Contributors atelier d'architecture autogérée, Dennis Adams, Bik Van Der Pol, Adrian Blackwell, Ina Blom, Christoph Brunner with Gerald Raunig, Néstor García Canclini, Colby Chamberlain, Beatriz Colomina, Teddy Cruz with Fonna Forman, Jodi Dean, Juan Herreros, Brian Holmes, Andrés Jaque, Caroline Jones, Coryn Kempster with Julia Jamrozik, György Kepes, Rikke Luther, Matthew Mazzotta, Metahaven, Timothy Morton, Antoni Muntadas, Otto Piene, Marjetica Potrč, Nader Tehrani, Troy Therrien, Gedminas and Nomeda Urbonas, Angela Vettese, Mariel Villeré, Mark Wigley, Krzysztof Wodiczko With section openings from Ana María León, T. J. Demos, Doris Sommer, and Catherine D'Ignazio

Open Space New Media Documentary examines an emerging and significant area of documentary practice in the twenty-first century: community-based new media documentary projects that move across platforms and utilize participatory modalities. The book offers an innovative theorization of these collaborative and collective new media practices, which the authors term "open space," gesturing towards a more contextual critical nexus of technology, form, histories, community, convenings, collaborations, and mobilities. It looks at a variety of low cost, sustainable and scalable documentary projects from across the globe, where new technologies meet places and people in Argentina, Canada, India, Indonesia, Peru, South Africa, Ukraine, and the USA.

Media Space: 20+ Years of Mediated Life is loosely divided into three different, but interconnected, approaches to media space research. Each part opens with an introduction that lays out how readers can best approach the book, and provides a basic guide to the theory and research literature, technological developments and other notable events to help contextualize the book. The ‘social ‘ approach uses the rhetoric and methods familiar to a CSCW audience, but moves into actual situations that involve close working bonds, broken trust, shared joy, community building, interpersonal tension, anxiety etc. The section on ‘spatial’ approaches guides the reader through an intellectual landscape of spatiality, the ‘communications’ part is a field guide to sense-making in the as-lived mediated condition, demonstrating that media space sense-making combines an understanding of in-the-moment alongside sense made of existence in the world and reflecting upon it.

How augmented reality and virtual reality are taking their places in contemporary media culture alongside film and television. T This book positions augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) firmly in contemporary media culture. The authors view AR and VR not as the latest hyped technologies but as media—the latest in a series of what they term “reality media,” taking their places alongside film and television. Reality media inserts a layer of media between us and our perception of the world; AR and VR do not replace reality but refashion a reality for us. Each reality medium mediates and remediates; each offers a new representation that we implicitly compare to our experience of the world in itself but also through other media. The authors show that as forms of reality media emerge, they not only chart a future path for media culture, but also redefine media past. With AR and VR in mind, then, we can recognize their precursors in eighteenth-century panoramas and the Broadway lights of the 1930s. A digital version of Reality Media, available through the book’s website, invites readers to visit a series of virtual rooms featuring interactivity, 3-D models, videos, images, and texts that explore the themes of the book.

New public spaces tend to over-represent attentions for the young and middle-aged, whereas elderly citizens are often neglected by contemporary urban design practice. This publication is a dialogue between architects and academic contributors from a variety of disciplines: by collecting examples and showcasing architectural case studies as well as age-inclusive design methodology, it provides practitioners with inspiration as well as theoretical and practical knowledge on how to design public space to meet the needs of people of all ages. The drawings, photographs and illustrations of contemporary built environments, historic gardens, art installations and atmospheric landscapes cater to the reading habits of spatial practitioners at large.