Week 2 Class

How does atmosphere influence our areas or art/design?

Atmosphere can be 

Physical conditions: amount of water in the air, colour, smell, sound etc

Social conditions: emotions, people, behaviours, animals etc

“Atmosphere is the common reality of the perceiver and the perceived. It is the reality of the perceived as the sphere of its presence and the reality of the perceiver, insofar, as sensing s/he is bodily present in a certain way.”

Bohme, p122

The theory of aesthetics

Embodiment is core to aesthetic theory

Zumthor, Peter: Atmospheres; Architectural Environments - surrounding objects

He thought atmosphere was created by: the sound of a space, the temperature, surrounding objects, tension between interior and exterior, light on things and the level of intimacy.

J.J. Gibson - ecological theory of perception

Refers it to ecology, and that animals and insects also perceive the environment. He also talked about how paint was the surface of the concrete wall, and upholstery was the surface of the seat foam.

He considered the environment to consist of hearing, smelling and seeing, and substances as ‘opaque’ such as rocks, mud etc. Surfaces provide a separation between substances and medium.

So you might have timber and leather who are both yellow, so the same colour range, but are completely different materials who emanate/give different atmospheres.

A footpath through a campus might give you an enjoyable walk, or a really difficult walk, depending on the materials it’s made of, and the route etc. Affordance - what the objects and environments impact and affect the atmospheres.

Essay structure:

Intro. - Laid out his overview in brief

Para 1 - Then the old theory, what already existed in some key points, setting the scene

Para 2 - Introduced the idea of his concept, gives an example, shows how his idea relates to example

Para 3 - Outlines what the other theory suggests, then argues what he does and doesn’t agree with about it

Para 4 - Starts to develop core of own theory, makes own definitions and redefines his views

Para 5 - Outlines strategy/method and ties everything else back in

Conc. - Summarises and comes back to what was established in into, restates his argument, briefly lists and revisits all sections.

Words that our group came up with:

staging/manipulation/communication/perception/immersion/background of an atmosphere 

Atmosphere task

Atmosphere-changing experimentation





In class we discussed atmospheres, what they were, and how we could alter them by changing haptic, lighting, and other senses within the environment we were in to induce and modify how people felt and experienced the environment.
In our group, we talked about different feelings people could gain from environments, such as sadness, awkwardness, anger, frustration, boredom, joy and fear. We decided to base our atmospheric change on awkwardness - attempting to sway people's perception of the space to make them feel awkward within the environment.
Within this one emotion we brainstormed further as to how we could make people feel it. We thought about how people sitting closely together forces them to make eye-contact with strangers and people nearby, and we decided to seat them in two circles, facing each other so that their backs were vulnerable, and they were surrounded by unknown people.
This did create an awkward tension and atmosphere in the room that we were after.