The mundane digital geographies of public space: A speculative visual approach

Integrated into routine sites and practices that make up space, mundane technologies and how they configure how public space is experienced is often overlooked. This obscures the emerging and consequential impacts that such technologies are having on how public space is experienced, and presents a dilemma for researchers; how do you investigate the significance of something that so easily escapes perception? This chapter discusses how visual ethnographic methods allows research participants to explore the role mundane technologies have in their experiences of public space. Specifically, I draw attention to how, through visual methods like photography and collage, it can become possible to engage in a sensorially rich exploration of mundane digital technologies, and how they are entangled with, and compose our everyday experience of public space. The chapter demonstrates why mundane digital technologies matter, and why they so often escape our attention in urban public space and elsewhere.