This paper aims to propose a tentative typology of urban play in the wider frame of gamification. Based on the semiotic features of urban spaces and of human activities within them. The paper starts by outlining the existing perspectives on urban gamification and by describing the semiotic feature of urban spaces. Based on these, the author constructs a brief typology of urban gamification in regard of the kind of action undertaken and how it involves the city. Finally, a few examples are analyzed by the mean of this typology, underlining how playful activities of urban gamification can influence the citizens' perception and interpretation of the urban environment.
The current trends related to 'smart cities' are bringing the cityscapes of movies such as Blade Runner and games such as Cyberpunk 2077 closer to our immediate reality. The question of what will the cities of the future look like is at the heart of urban studies. In parallel, a similar question is posed by (trans)humanists about the future of humanity and its possible technological enhancements. However, (trans)humanity and future cities are defined in a bi-directional dependency. Therefore, we have to answer the questions of future humans and cities simultaneously. This paper maps several ways of interacting between transhuman communities and smart cities to understand their possible effects on governing, design and society at large resulting in a framework and a series of speculative pastiche scenarios that will work as a cautionary tale and an inspirational blueprint for imagining future urbanity. CCS Concepts •Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models; User models; Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms; Ubiquitous and mobile computing theory, concepts and paradigms;
This chapter outlines a specific framework for the creation of critical playable cities. This framework combines three different concepts: DIY urbanism, critical design and urban gamification which are seen as complementary to each other. Cities are complex systems. Various actors often explicitly or implicitly harmonize or collide to shape the landscape of a city and its future. In the past decades, there has been an increased interest in activating citizens as vital actors in shaping urban life. This has taken place through various practical works and research around the paradigms of Playable Cities, DIY Urbanism and Gamification amongst other paradigms. Urban gamification-that is, using play and playfulness to alter our perception of and interactions with city spaces-is specifically emerging as one of the main strategies to activate citizens. Urban gamification alone, however, risks to be disconnected from the urban fabric and its communities. In this chapter we argue that combining it with the grassroot approach of DIY urbanism and the thought-provoking techniques of critical design creates a unique, multi-dimensional approach to designing urban experiences. This chapter, then, aims at exploring how play can be used by citizens as a mean for critical reflection and practical re-appropriation of public urban spaces.
This paper introduces the notion of speculative semiotics as a scientific project within the larger umb- rella of speculative studies. The paper first provides a brief account of the projects of “nuclear semiotics” that investigated how to communicate across long periods of time. These efforts are then connected to the traditions of speculative design and design fiction, whose roots can be traced back to situationism and to Italian radical design. The synergy between semiotics and speculation is articulated around four main dimensions: communication with the future, communicating in the future, semiotics as a tool for speculation and speculation as an object of semiotics. To solidify its proposal, the paper presents a small semiotic speculation related to machine learning and image generation and an overview of the papers presented in this special issue. The conclusions reiterate the potential of this approach and outline a simple roadmap for the development of speculative semiotics.
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