Psychogeography in the Digitally Expanded City.

PhD ThesisThis thesis investigates the digitally expanded city, (i.e., how the urban implementation of ubiquitous and mobile computing shifts and shapes how its inhabitant's experience and perceive the city), through the development of a psychogeographically influenced art practice. Psychogeography is the study of the geographical environment’s influence on the mind or behaviour using avant-garde art walking techniques. This thesis engages with the intersection between digital technology, the city and the perceiving body, by expanding the critical creative practices of psychogeography through the development of an original art practice to investigate the role of ubiquitous and mobile computing in the production of space in East London. Psychogeography brings to digital cities research access to the complexity of the embodied, culturally and socially situated experience of the perceiving body located in space. This work is situated in an interdisciplinary space across fine art performance, cultural geography and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Empirical data is gathered from four performance events. This thesis situates itself within East London, which is approached from three interrelated perspectives: 1) Virtual Space, focuses on the subjective and intersubjective understandings of the digitally expanded city; 2) Actual Space, explores the materiality of digital infrastructures; 3) Potential Space, investigates digital representational practices. The contribution takes three forms. The first is a critical framework and lexicon. It presents a meta-model that maps the processes and actants that were observed to play an important role in the production of space in East London. The second provides an overview of the digital geography that emerged from the combined psychogeographically-inspired events presented within this thesis. The third provides an understanding of using a psychogeographicallyinspired art practice within spatial research. It outlines the kinds of knowledge a psychogeographical art practice can produce and concludes by exploring their implications for future ubiquitous and mobile computing research