key: cord-0329809-cyi26qb4
authors: Smith, Anna Louise
title: Atmospheres and the Experiential World: Theory and Methods, Shanti Sumartojo and Sarah Pink 2019 Routledge London and New York 978-1-138-24113-8 1 134 index. £120 hardback
date: 2020-08-01
journal: nan
DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2020.100707
sha: b6845244b1f11e5c44dece3e98e7b7ec060be383
doc_id: 329809
cord_uid: cyi26qb4

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"We live in atmospheres, we talk about them and we move through them. Yet atmospheres are impossible to capture, elusive to define and continually beyond our grasp as they ongoingly transform." (Sumartojo and Pink, 2019, p. 1) .

Nevertheless, Sumartojo and Pink decide to tackle this elusory yet everyday subject in their latest work 'Atmospheres and the Experiential World.' Until now, research around atmospheres has been place-led, focusing on specific sites and physical environments. Contrastingly, Sumartojo and Pink disrupt the narrative, putting atmospheres themselves at the centre of investigation, characterising them as emergent and transient rather than rooted in place and spatiality. This fluidity allows for a framework and methodologies that are multidisciplinary, globally relevant and reflect a constantly evolving world. Throughout the book, this theme of changeability is addressed by analysing the relationship between three key binaries: fixed structures and movement, anticipation and memory, and intention and outcome.

The book opens by outlining Sumartojo and Pink's 3-pillar framework for their approach to thinking atmospherically in 'Atmospheres and the Experiential World'. Firstly, 'knowing in atmospheres' means looking at how researchers and participants live in and experience atmospheres; 'knowing about atmospheres' focuses on how atmospheres are retrospectively defined and described as well as which methods are employed to expand understandings; and lastly 'knowing through atmospheres' is a process of analytical reflection that endeavours to see atmospheres as a concept, not as a 'thing.' Next, 'Situating Atmospheres' reviews the literature and identifies gaps to be addressed. Sumartojo and Pink summarise that existing theories locate atmospheres within human perception and surroundings whereas their work frames them as emergent and impermanent. Thirdly, 'Researching Atmospheres' suggests applicable methodologies including video, interview and archival approaches. Chapter 4, 'Space-Times of Atmospheres,' marks the shift into the applied section of the book, addressing physical environments and individual sensory and emotional reactions to them. Following, 'Atmospheres on the Move' uses examples such as cyclists to address the role of movement and anticipation. Chapter 6, 'Design and Intervention' questions the relationship between intention and outcome, asking what role humans can play in curating atmospheres. Lastly, 'A New Agenda for Thinking Atmospherically' reflects on the futurity of atmospheres, in particular, what they make possible and how they can contribute to understanding personal, spatial and emotional worlds.

Indisputably, the book's strength lies in the innovative and playful methodologies that take both the multi-sensory and the nonrepresentational seriously. These range from collating archival photographs and video, to doing autoethnography, participant observation and interviews, and using technologies such as hand-held camcorders, mounted GoPros and self-tracking devices. Such methodologies fuel research that emphasises the importance of movement, sensory experiences, memory and emotion, surrounding the authors in the atmospheres they seek to understand. Through this assemblage of technologies and techniques, Sumartojo and Pink challenge the neoliberal drive to produce research that uses easily quantifiable metrics and figures to provide meaning. Instead, these immersive, collaborative and sensory methodologies allow participants to ascribe value to things that they do not necessarily have the words or mechanisms to do so ordinarily. For example, research on Melbourne's Queen Victoria Market used interviews and observations to gather descriptions, videos and photographs representing how people moved through, interacted with, experienced sensorially and memorialised the site. This data identified atmospheric qualities of the market important to its users which could then be protected by the local council in their redevelopment plans. By giving value and voice to immaterial and ungraspable things, atmospheric research broadens academic notions of what can be studied and what data is of significance, contributing to geographical, nonrepresentational understandings of the world. Moreover, the book's inherent interdisciplinary nature means that these techniques could be useful for researchers across geography, anthropology, politics, architecture, design, film, art, literature, tourism, events and beyond.

Although the use of the authors own research works well to elucidate their theoretical discussion, this is also a limitation due to the lack of geographical diversity of the examples. Albeit the types of spaces covered is diverse, where they are is not. Asides from the Camp des Milles Memorial in France, the case studies are all located in Australia and overwhelming Melbourne. Understandably, sites local to the authors feature heavily, however, more could have been done to include wider global examples, perhaps via guest authors or proposing future research opportunities. In fact, the experiential ubiquity of atmospheres affords globally relevant research as a subject that transcends spatial, temporal, personal and cultural differences. Sumartojo and Pink's bold contributions to studying atmospheres could have been strengthened further by harnessing this factor and considering multiple geographies beyond the remit of their primary research.

Still, Sumartojo and Pink's approach to atmospheres is convincing in arguing that they are not fixed entities. Instead, they depict atmospheres as emergent, endlessly evolving, ebbing and escalating according to different temporalities, spatialities, interventions and variabilities in personal experience. The book also highlights the limits of the extent to which atmospheres can be crafted, something that is increasingly clear as the world watched COVID-19 empty out high streets, restaurants, parks and other public spaces in ways that have never been seen before. Spaces that once conjured up particular emotions and experiences now leave nostalgia as only the memories of atmosphere remain. It is not these physical spaces alone that are innately atmospheric, but a coproduction with the people that move through and reside in them. This reinforces the authors' choice to promote immersive and collaborative methodologies. Acknowledging that the researcher cannot act in isolation from atmospheres means instead that they should be embedded in them to better understand how they emerge and manifest. Whilst global shifts are caused by events and processes from pandemics to climate change and technology, atmospheric research could ensure that the things that humans' value are given the voice to be protected.

Atmospheres and the Experiential World: Theory and Methods. Routledge