Geographies of information behaviour: a conceptual exploration

PurposeThis article examines the relation between place, space and information behaviour.Design/methodology/approachConcepts of place and space are explored through a comparison of three leisure pursuits: running, urban exploration and genealogy, based on the authors' research and the published literature.FindingsA socially constructed meaning of place is central to each leisure activity but how it is experienced physically, emotionally and imaginatively are different. Places have very different meanings within each practice. Mirroring this, information behaviours are also very different: such as the sources used, the type of information created and how it is shared or not shared. Information behaviour contributes to the meanings associated with place in particular social practices.Research limitations/implicationsMeaning attached to place can be understood as actively constructed within social practices. Rather than context for information behaviours in the sense of an outside, containing, even constraining, environment, the meaning of place can be seen as actively constructed within social practices and by the information behaviours that are part of them.Originality/valueThe paper adds a new perspective to the understanding of place and space in the study of information behaviour.

A New Sensibility towards Unfinished Ruins: Affective Knowledge Translation through Experimental Video

In the last 50 years, and due to a dilapidation of funds, hundreds of public works have remained unfinished in Italy, most especially in Sicily. In 2007, the group of artists Alterazioni Video declared these modern ruins a formal architectural style—so-called Incompiuto Siciliano— through which they aim to change the buildings’ negative perception, turning it into something positive. In September 2015, I carried out an urban exploration journey during which I visited a dozen Incompiuto Siciliano works all across Sicily in one week. Based on that journey, this paper argues that a renewed sensibility towards incompletion necessarily requires original and creative methods to translate the affective knowledge gained in these sites. Therefore, through the use of personal narratives and the creation of three different experimental videos, the aim is to advance the way we translate embodied encounters with these spaces. This is relevant not only in the context of modern ruins but in further unruly spaces where aesthetic experiences emerge.

Things Fall Apart: Modernity and Entropy

“Modernity and Entropy” is about the gradual recognition that the industrial and urban fabric of America was falling apart in the twentieth century, as cities aged and factory production moved out of cities like Detroit to manufacturing facilities outside the US. Philadelphia photographer Vincent Feldman has portrayed the decaying structures of his city, while Detroit’s ruins have been elaborately portrayed in the work of outsiders like Andrew Moore, Marchand and Meffre, and Camilo José Vergara. The chapter examines the various techniques and strategies photographers have developed, from the high aesthetic of Moore to the documentary time-lapse imagery of Vergara. America’s love affair with urban ruins is also examined here in the “Urban Exploration” movement and in the cinematic representation of urban ruin as futuristic dystopia.

3D MODEL OF NATURAL URBAN RESETTLEMENT SYSTEM USING THE ALTAI AS AN EXAMPLE

The article is devoted to environmentally oriented urban development for the purpose of resettlement. The study of natural urban resettlement system is a new scientific field, which gives much attention. The author proposes to consider one of the most interesting territories located in the southern part of Siberia and stretching south of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the direction of the Altai Mountains, between the Ob river (along the settlement axis "Novosibirsk - Barnaul - Biysk - Gorno-Altaysk") and Tom river (along the settlement axis "Kemerovo - Novokuznetsk"). As a result, the author identified certain morphotypes, in each of which a resettlement framework and a natural-ecological framework were identified. For one of the morphotypes, the one characteristic fragment – Katun (Chemal region) with characteristic problems was selected along. As a result, a 3D model of the natural-urban planning system of settlement was designed. The key element in the work is the methodology for the development of such 3D models, which allows making a connection between urban exploration and development, taking into account the saving of the ecological balance of unique natural landscapes.

Berlin Not for Sale: The Film Lens as a Tool of Urban Exploration in 1960s West Berlin

West Berlin, a city emblematic of a fractured post-war society, provided the basis for the volatile student protests of 1968 where the youth sought to reclaim the city from its prescribed path. This article identifies the film camera as a probing tool of urban exploration during the 1960s through the films of Irena Vrkljan (1930−). As an “outsider” in the city, Vrkljan built on the work of many intellectuals in Berlin compelled by their urban experience to explore the connection between city and dweller. In contrast to the image of the 1960s as a period of upheaval, Vrkljan’s films offer a historically conscious and lyrical approach to the city that discovers alternative pasts and potential futures. Armed with a 16-mm camera and the writings of Kracauer and Simmel, an alternative West Berlin is uncovered where, in the words of Vrkljan, “it is possible to penetrate the fabric of the city.”