Guardami: Looking through the Window-Shopping Window, the (Neuro)Science of Desire

Abstract

It was only recently when our urban sidewalks in front of Department stores were inlaid with terrazzo and the urban space was a site to capture the fantasy of an onlooker who is mesmerized into another world. Spaces like these were part of the social fabric that brought a sense of “health” to our city. This was a space of desire, looking into the glass vitrine as an urban agency that created vibrant stage sets for narratives, fantasies, dreams and curiosities. Our paper presents the Window-Shopping Window as an opportunity to bring back an empathic exchange of our urban space. Exploiting mirrors (architecturally) and mirror-neurons (neurologically) to understand a system a perception, our project argues that bodies and environment are always in an inter-active dialog and as such urban agencies can generate emotive responses through interactive means to heighten experience and reinvigorate the health of urbanscapes.

Keywords:

• neuroscience in urbanism
• immersive desire
• interactivity
• spatial empathy
• multi-sensory
• augmented reality
• urban agencies

Acknowledgements

Marvin Malecha, President, NewSchool of Architecture and Design Kurt Hunker, Acting Dean, NewSchool of Architecture and Design Matilde Martello (1915–2015), Ludovica's grandmother. The key figure of Martello snc, family company that runs the hat shop since 1888. Marco Caboni, VeletteSospette hat couture: concept development and designer of the shop window Mike Case: Engineer of the interactive system Gamassi Studio: re-styling of the Cappelleria in 2016. BlueShark srl—DigitalNue srl: engineering of the interactive window project. Fu Yuran, design assistant

Notes

Notes

1 Neuroscientists explain the difference between foveal (center of vision) and peripheral vision to determine what we are seeing versus where we are in space respectively.

2 This becomes a very critical question as current trend indicates more than 75% of the world’s population will live in urban conditions by 2050. The data published in Nature magazine by the group Andreas Meyer–Lindenberg at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Central Institute of Mental Health in Germany show a very interesting relationship between living in cities and the social stresses that are caused by it. Research shows that mental health is often negatively affected: mood and anxiety disorders are more prevalent in city dwellers and the incidence of schizophrenia is strongly increased in people born and raised in cities. Florian Lederbogen et al., “City Living and Urban Upbringing affect Neural Social Stress processing in Humans,” Nature 474 (2011): 498–501.

3 Nowadays, smartphones today seem to be attracting most of ones’ attention, as we see more and more people staring into the digital screen than seeing the actual world around them.

4 These machines such as fMRI, robust EEG & EKG devices are extremely costly and are stationary in laboratories. However, with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), camera sensors in the city will start to measure the physical and psychological traits of people to their environment with facial recognition software that can read people’s emotions and intentions.

5 With the use of a low-cost single-node mobile EEG device and questionnaires, Professor Ellard took his group of students around the city to extract some “emotions” that people felt when walking through different streets and blocks. Vedran Dzebic, Justin S. Perdue, and Colin G. Ellard, “The Influence of Visual Perception on Responses towards Real-World Environments and Application towards Design,” Intelligent Buildings International 5, no. sup1 (2013): 29–47.

6 To overcome the long-term effects of a "sensory degradation" that is happening in poorly designed cities, promoting the efforts for good design can be the source of relief, consolation and comfort from the stresses of urban life. Harry Francis Mallgrave, “Should Architects Care about Neuroscience?,” in Architecture and Neuroscience: A Tapio Wirkkala – Rut Bryk Design Reader, ed. P. Tidwell (Espoo, Finland: Tapio Wirkkala Rut Bryk Foundation, 2013), 33.

7 Colin Ellard, “A New Agenda for Urban Psychology: Out of the Laboratory and Onto the Streets” Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 2 (2017): 3.

8 The store was first called "Alle città di Italia" but after was renamed "La Rinascente" to allude to a post-war renaissance.

9 The same introduction of glass windowpane in the mid-19th century has offered transparency and reflection available on a larger surface. This contributed to the move from goods exchange to visual exchange, the virtual-bodily distancing/ heightening of the urban shop window. The reflections are pronounced or faded based on the amount of transparency and reflectivity, ranging from total transparency in glass, to semi-transparency in one-way glass, and to no transparency but full reflections in mirrors. To start, we looked at physical mirrors in various scenarios that were agents of re-cognition and embodiment.

10 Beautiful is the image of the drops of falling rain: many mirrors from each of these images of the sun are reflected. A water drop can contain a whole environment by scaling its dimension; multiple drops can multiply an image infinitively. Consuelo Pavanetto, Lo Specchio:Riflessidel Molteplice. Dall’Antropologia alla Cultura Visiva. Tesi di laurea. Corso di Laurea magistrale in Storia delle arti e conservazione dei beni artistici, Rel.Prof. Nico Stringa. (Venezia: Università Ca' Foscari, 2014–2015), 9, 33.

11 Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OpJLvlJJ-U.

12 Karin Kavelin Jones, Beast in the Mirror: The Life of Outsider Artist Antonio Ligabue (Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1997).

13 Available online: https://hirshhorn.si.edu/kusama/infinity-rooms/

14 Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirror Rooms,” shows an astonishing way of transforming the 'intense repetition of her earlier paintings and works on paper into a perceptual experience'. Available online: https://hirshhorn.si.edu/kusama/infinity-rooms/

15 There are many perspectives that contribute to this viewpoint. Vico in the XVII century said that we use our body as a filter to make sense of the world. Freud stated that the eye is a bodily eye. Giacomo Rizzolatti, Lectio magistralis: I neuroni specchio (Genova: Università degli Studi di Genova, 2017). Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS3kX3kXmVI

16 Harry Francis Mallgrave, “L’Empatia degli Spazi.” In Architettura e Neuroscienze, ed. R. Cortina (Milano: R. Cortina, 2015).

17 Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, “The Nervous System and Cognition,” in The Tree of Knowledge, ed. Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela (Boston: Shambala, 1992).

18 This is the concept of interactivity that goes beyond a reductive idea of pressing a button and something happens. According to Stephen Wilson’s definition “interactivity refers to the ability of the user/browser/audience to act to influence the flow of events or to modify their form”. Stephen Wilson, The Aesthetics and Practice of Designing in Interactive Computer Events (San Francisco, CA: San Francisco State University, 1993), © Stephen Wilson. Available online: http://user.www.sfsu.edu/swilson/papers/interactive2.html

19 Eduardo Macagno, UCSD Professor of Neuro-molecular biology.

20 Alva Noë, Action in Perception (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004).

21 Alva Noë, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).

22 Lisa Feldman Barrett, “Discrete Emotions or Dimensions? The Role of Valence Focus and Arousal Focus” Cognition And Emotion 12, no. 4 (1998): 579–599.

23 “Mirror neurons represent a distinctive class of neurons that discharge both when an individual executes a motor act and when he observes another individual performing the same or a similar motor act.” Sourya Acharya and Samarth Shukla, “Mirror Neurons: Enigma of the Metaphysical Modular Brain” Journal of Natural Science, Biology, and Medicine 3, no. 2 (2012): 118–124.

24 Rizzolatti, Lectio magistralis: I neuroni specchio.

25 Neuroscientist Rizzolatti discovered mirror neurons in the late 1980s. Rizzolatti, Lectio magistralis: I neuroni specchio.

26 Antonio Damasio, “How Our Brains Feel Emotion”. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsSv1KzdiWU&t=244s

27 Lana Kühle, “William James and the Embodied Mind” Contemporary Pragmatism 14, no. 1 (2017): 51–75.

28 S. G. Shamay-Tsoory, J. Aharon-Peretz, and D. Perry, “Two Systems for Empathy: A Double Dissociation between Emotional and Cognitive Empathy in Inferior Frontal Gyrus versus Ventromedial Prefrontal Lesions.” Brain 132, no. 3 (2009): 617–627.

29 "Buildings do not merely provide physical shelter or facilitate distinct activities. In addition to housing our fragile bodies and actions, they also need to house our minds, memories, desires, and dreams. Our buildings are crucial extensions of ourselves, both individually and collectively.” Juhani Pallasmaa, “Towards a Neuroscience of Architecture,” in Architecture and Neuroscience: A Tapio Wirkkala – Rut Bryk Design Reader, ed. P. Tidwell (Espoo, Finland: Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Foundation, 2013), 8.

30 Mallgrave, “Should Architects Care about Neuroscience?”

31 For the Spring Season Collection in collaboration with artist Marco Caboni of VeletteSospette.

32 A QR code is illuminated if they do not have the App running. Once running, product information is displayed on their phones with historical references to the object as well as the location of the objects inside the store.

33 Furthermore, this empathic agency of the Window-Shopping Window can be deployed in various storefronts all over the world where people can connect culturally and globally by sharing images in real time through video.

Additional information

Funding

Faculty Support Grant: NewSchool of Architecture and Design. Interactive system support: BlueShark srl

Notes on contributors

Kristine Mun

Architect Dr. Kristine Mun directs the Neuroscience and Architecture program at the NewSchool of Architecture & Design. Her diverse history in academia and practice is embedded in her philosophy that is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach to design with the aim of creating an experimental ground for innovation. Since early on, her interest in how machines and bodies form a/synthesis in our environment were explored through design inquiries at various scales and domains. She cross-blends theory, practice, research and application focusing on ‘Empathic Architectures’, architecture that feels. Ms. Mun received her Ph.D. from the Architectural Association, London.

Maria Ludovica Tramontin

Engineer Dr. Maria Ludovica Tramontin is currently the architectural management strategist of the oldest Cappelleria (hat shop) of Sardinia. Her strategic aim is a new organization where design research, business capabilities, information and history of the place fit together. She is also the co-founder of ASPX studio, a design practice based in Italy. She has taught at a number of universities internationally. Ms. Tramontin holds a MS degree in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Architecture in Cagliari exploring the concept of interactivity from art to architectural design.