This collection of essays explores the history, implications, and usefulness of phenomenology for the study of real and virtual places. While the influence of phenomenology on architecture and urban design has been widely acknowledged, its effect on the design of virtual places and environments has yet to be exposed to critical reflection. These essays from philosophers, cultural geographers, designers, architects, and archaeologists advance the connection between phenomenology and the study of place. The book features historical interpretations on this topic, as well as context-specific and place-centric applications that will appeal to a wide range of scholars across disciplinary boundaries. The ultimate aim of this book is to provide more helpful and precise definitions of phenomenology that shed light on its growth as a philosophical framework and on its development in other disciplines concerned with the experience of place.

How would the humanities change if we grappled with the ways in which digital and virtual places are designed, experienced, and critiqued? In Rethinking Virtual Places, Erik Malcolm Champion draws from the fields of computational sciences and other place-related disciplines to argue for a more central role for virtual space in the humanities. For instance, recent developments in neuroscience could improve our understanding of how people experience, store, and recollect place-related encounters. Similarly, game mechanics using virtual place design might make digital environments more engaging and learning content more powerful and salient. In addition, Champion provides a brief introduction to new and emerging software and devices and explains how they help, hinder, or replace our traditional means of designing and exploring places. Perfect for humanities scholars fascinated by the potential of virtual space, Rethinking Virtual Places challenges both traditional and recent evaluation methods to address the complicated problem of understanding how people evaluate and engage with the notion of place.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on HCI in Games, HCI-Games 2020, held in July 2020 as part of HCI International 2020 in Copenhagen, Denmark.* HCII 2020 received a total of 6326 submissions, of which 1439 papers and 238 posters were accepted for publication after a careful reviewing process. The 38 papers presented in this volume are organized in topical sections named: designing games and gamified interactions; user engagement and game impact; and serious games. *The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Virtual Realities presents a ground-breaking application of phenomenology as a critical method to explore the impact of immersive media. Specific case studies examine 360-degree documentary productions about trauma, virtual military simulations, VR exposure therapy for anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder, and the emerging debate about regulating violent content in immersive media gaming. By addressing these texts primarily as experiences, Virtual Realities deploys an analytic and critical methodology that is sensitive to the bodily and cognitive impact of immersive media, especially via the body of an appropriately attentive researcher-critic. Virtual Realities provokes a rethinking of many of the taken-for-granted ideas and assumptions circulating in the field of immersive media. These include concepts of empathy, embodiment, the affective impact of textual and immersive properties on the users’ experience, as well as the “gee-whizz” mentality often associated with approaches to the medium. The case studies provide fresh engagement with immersive media such as cinematic VR at a time when dominant attitudes about the technology display an evangelical fascination with VR and other mixed realities as inexorably beneficial. Virtual Realities makes a compelling case for VR-phenomenology to be employed as a methodology by humanities scholars and also in cross-disciplinary applications of immersive media in fields such as psychology, human-computer interaction studies and the health sciences.

This book analyzes the hermeneutics of place, raising questions about central issues such as textuality, dialogue, and play. It discusses the central figures in the development of hermeneutics and place, and surveys disciplines and areas in which a hermeneutic approach to place has been fruitful. It covers the range of philosophical hermeneutic theory, both within philosophy itself as well as from other disciplines. In doing so, the volume reflects the state of theorization on these issues, and also looks forward to the implications and opportunities that exist. Philosophical hermeneutics has fundamentally altered philosophy’s approach to place. Issues such as how we dwell in place, how place is imagined, created, preserved, and lost, and how philosophy itself exists in place have become central. While there is much research applying hermeneutics to place, there is little which both reflects on that heritage and critically analyzes a hermeneutic approach to place. This book fills that void by offering a sustained analysis of the central elements, major figures, and disciplinary applications of hermeneutics and place.

There is an urgent need to emphasize inclusivity in architecture and the built environment. Innovative technologies within the field of architecture are being developed to enhance inclusivity in architectural approaches and development processes. It is essential to research inclusivity in architecture and the built environment toward holistic sustainable development. The Handbook of Research on Inclusive and Innovative Architecture and the Built Environment discusses inclusive and innovative approaches to providing socio-cultural value within architecture and the built environment. It focuses on issues of diversity, sustainability, resilient designs, and more. Further, the book expands the knowledge and awareness of architecture and the built environment towards inclusivity in design development and emerging advanced technology. Covering topics such as architectural challenges, global health, and urban morphology, this major reference work is an excellent resource for architects, government officials, urban planners, practitioners, students and educators of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

Since the turn of this century (and even earlier), a plethora of projects have arisen to promise us bold new interactive adventures and immersive travel into the past with digital environments (using mixed, virtual or augmented reality, as well as computer games). In Playing with the Past: Into the Future Erik Champion surveys past attempts to communicate history and heritage through virtual environments and suggests new technology and creative ideas for more engaging and educational games and virtual learning environments. This second edition builds on and updates the first edition with new game discussions, surveys, design frameworks, and theories on how cultural heritage could be experienced in digital worlds, via museums, mobile phones, or the Metaverse. Recent games and learning environments are reviewed, with provocative discussion of new and emerging promises and challenges.

This volume explores the phenomenology of broken habits and their affective, social, and involuntary dimensions. It shows how disruptive experiences impact self-understanding and social embeddedness. The chapters in this volume investigate the epistemic and existential relevance of breakdown of habits and the corresponding kinds of self-understanding available to the agent. The first part focuses on the double-sidedness of habitual life. On the one hand, habits allow us to arrange and navigate in a familiar home world; on the other hand, habits can take hold of us in such a way that we lose our sense of autonomy. The contributors argue that habitual agency is structurally carried by a dynamic that entails both freedom and necessity. As habits enable us to inhabit and thus acquire a world, they also affectively provide a texture and a background for our feeling at home in the world. The chapters in Part 2 focus on the breakdowns of our habitual social and technological life forms and the phenomenology of their affective texture. History and habitual learning are sedimented in our body memory and in our language, and these sedimented layers are partly out of our direct control. Part 3 focuses on the structural openness of habits in relating to one’s past and one’s traumatic experiences. Part 4 reflects on the ways in which we might become aware of and thus transform or appropriate our culturally given habits. Phenomenology of Broken Habits will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychology.

This book explores the ways in which the spatio-temporal contingency of human life is being conceived in different fields of research. Specifically, it looks at the relationship between the situatedness of human life, the situation or place in which human life is supposed to be situated, and the dimensions of space and time in which both situation and place are usually themselves supposed to be situated. Over the last two or three decades, the spatio-temporal contingency of human life has become an important topic of research in a broad range of different disciplines including the social sciences, the cultural sciences, the cognitive sciences, and philosophy. However, this research topic is referred to in quite different ways: while some researchers refer to it in terms of “situation”, emphasizing the “situatedness” of human experience and action, others refer to it in terms of “place”, emphasizing the “power of place” and advocating a “topological” or “topographical turn” in the context of a larger “spatial turn”. Interdisciplinary exchange is so far hampered by the fact that the notions referred to and the relationships between them are usually not sufficiently questioned. This book addresses these issues by bringing together contributions on the spatio-temporal contingency of human life from different fields of research.

This book explores how virtual place-based learning and research has been interpreted and incorporated into learning environments both within and across disciplinary perspectives. Contributing authors highlight the ways in which they have employed a variety of methodologies to engage students in the virtual exploration of place. In the process, they focus on the approaches they have used to bring the real world closer through virtual exploration. Chapters examine how the resources of the urban environment have been tapped to design student research projects within the context of an interdisciplinary course. In this way, authors highlight how virtual place-based learning has employed the tools of mapping and data visualization, information literacy, game design, digital storytelling, and the creation of non-fiction VR documentaries. This book makes a valuable contribution to the literature, offering a model of how the study of place can be employed in creative ways to enhance interdisciplinary learning.