Large Public Screens Research Articles

The sociality of public space broadcasting during media events

In the last decade, large public screens and globally organized public viewing areas (PVAs) have become increasingly significant elements of media events, expanding the possibilities for mass audiences to collectively watch events together in real time. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in connection with the British Royal wedding (2011) and the London Olympics (2012), this article explores the ‘sociality’ of public space broadcasting, focusing on interactions and performances of identity by people gathered for collective viewing in the city centres of London, Birmingham and Manchester. The analysis shows that public space broadcasting mobilizes a variety of social identities and performances, spanning from ‘relaxed’ forms of engagement to more fannish articulations of nationality, cosmopolitan hybridity and spectacle participation. Geographical location and structural embedding strategies clearly impinge on public performances within PVAs. The article concludes that the degree of commercialization and presence of journalists and other media professionals are particularly central external drivers of performativity in connection with public consumption of media events.

Mourning Mandela: sacred drama and digital visuality in Cape Town

The world united in unprecedented ways in mourning the global icon Nelson Mandela, an emotionally charged historical event in which digital visuality played an influential role. The memorial service for Nelson Mandela on Tuesday, 10 December 2013, gathered dignitaries and celebrities from around the world at the First National Bank Stadium in Johannesburg, to mourn the passing of Madiba and to celebrate his life work. At the Grand Parade in Cape Town, the event was broadcast on large public screens, followed by live music performances and narrowcast interaction with the audience. Building on recent research on public screens during global media events, this article addresses the mediated mourning rituals at the Grand Parade in terms of a sacred drama. Focusing on social relationality, the article discusses how digital visuality mediated a sense of global communitas, thus momentarily overcoming historical frictions between the global north and the global south, while expanding the fame of Madiba. Paying attention to the public display of visual memory objects and the emotional agency of images, it argues that digital visuality mediated social frictions between the living and the dead, while recasting a historical subject as a historical object. The article further discusses how digital visuality mediated cultural frictions of apartheid and xenophobia, through the positioning of Mandela in the pantheon of Pan-African icons, thus underlining the African origin of this global icon. The analysis is based on ethnographic observations and experiences in Cape Town.

Mega Screens for Mega Cities

This article considers how networked large urban screens can act as a platform for the creation of an experimental transnational public sphere. It takes as a case study a specific Australia-Korea cultural event that linked large screens in Federation Square, Melbourne, and Tomorrow City, Incheon, 1 through the presentation of SMS-based interactive media art works. The article combines theoretical analyses of global citizenship, mobility, digital technologies, and networked public space with empirical analyses of audience response research data collected during the screen event. The central argument is that large public screens can offer a strategic site for examining transformations in the constitution of public agency in a digitized, globalized environment. The idea of ‘aesthetic cosmopolitanism’ is finally proposed as a conceptual framework for understanding how new forms of transnational public agency in mediated public spaces might operate.

C-Blink: A Hue-Difference-Based Light Signal Marker via a Cell Phone Color Display

To enable existing cell phones to interact with contents shown on large public screens in town, we propose “C-Blink,” a new light signal marker method that uses the color liquid-crystal display of a cell phone as a visible light source. We overcome the performance limitations of such displays by developing a hue-difference-blink technique. In combination with a screen-side sensor, we describe a system that detects and receives light signal markers sent by cell phone displays. Evaluations of a prototype system confirm that C-Blink performs well under common indoor lighting. The C-Blink program can be installed in any mobile terminal that has a color display, and the installation costs are low. C-Blink is a very useful way of enabling screens to become interfaces for existing mobile terminals.