Exploring creative geographies : urban art and the cultural uses of public spaces

In this thesis, I study various kinds of creative, artistic, and cultural activities that take place in the public spaces of cities. I focus on the ways in which public spaces constitute opportunities for art and culture, as well as how citizens, artists, and other urban actors can take part in the creation and development of urban environments. My research consists of four case studies that represent different cultural uses of urban public spaces, including temporary urban interventions, do-it-yourself (DIY) urban practices, the more established forms of new genre public art, and art-based urban planning methods. I employ the concept of ‘urban art’ as an umbrella term to describe these artistic and creative practices in order to emphasise their context and roles in wider urban processes. The specific contribution of my dissertation concerns the rules, regulations, and responsibilities related to the cultural uses of public spaces. In addition, I discuss the role of the more insurgent forms of citizen action and creativity that occur in cities. Hence, the relationship between formal and informal urban practices is another focus of my study. I offer a pluralist view on public space, where ‘public’ refers to things that can be both accessible and political but in which the conflictual nature of public space is also acknowledged and permissible. My research belongs to a study field best known as ‘creative geographies’, as I am interested in the art–site relationships and creative practices related to geographical thinking. Additionally, critical urban geography has had a strong influence on my work. This research takes a stand on the topic of ‘the politics of public space’, as I discuss different kinds of possibilities and challenges concerning the creative forms of urban actions and resistance. Moreover, I introduce the concept of ‘spatial responsibility’ in order to discuss the many legal, moral, and practical aspects regarding the cultural uses of urban public spaces. The research methods that I have used are based on the case study approach and on different qualitative methods. The cases I have studied have all taken place in the city of Turku, Finland. As a result of this study, I present how different elements of public space (material, social, and those related to meanings, expectations, and values) have an influence on the artistic and cultural conducts in the city, and how art and culture can be used to promote the ‘publicness’ of urban spaces. For example, I argue that artistic practices are useful in the playful production of public spaces and as participatory tools for urban planning. Moreover, I claim that urban art can be employed to challenge the conventional uses and orders of urban spaces. Nevertheless, I also demonstrate that there are many rules and regulations governing spontaneous actions in cities and there exist internal codes and etiquettes about the creative practices themselves. As a consequence, I argue that many creative urban activities are located somewhere in-between the categories of ‘formal’ and ‘informal’. As regards the spatial responsibilities for the city, I claim that they are not only about obligations or duties, but they also involve the idea of caring for the city and of the radical subversion of urban order. Overall, my study shows that these many ambiguities related to public spaces and their cultural uses, as well as to urban rules, regulations, and responsibilities, indicate that the public space is still, above all, a dynamic place characterised by spatial negotiations, conflict, and diversity

Coping with Standards: Integrating Art and Safety into the Design of a Creative Playground

Technical safety standards have a strong yet controversial impact on the design of current playgrounds. This article studies the process of making a unique art-playground under the strict safety requirements. Building on the case study of a participatory design project between artists and children in Turku, Finland, this paper discusses the many legal and technical ambiguities regarding the playground standardization and investigates artists' experiences of implementing standards in their work. The article shows that despite the controversies, it is possible to make playgrounds that comply with the standards, respect children's desires, and are original and creative in their appearance

Evolving Coagency between Artists and AI in the Spatial Cocreative Process of Artmaking

This article applies theoretical and empirical discussions of emerging human and digital technology relations to our interest in collaborative artist–artificial intelligence (AI) artmaking processes. Thus far, the theoretical focus has largely been on mediating (code) and merged (cyborg) human–technology relations, with mutual (coagency) relations yet to be adequately explored. To address this, we nuance the theoretical discussion and extend the empirical research, analyzing the spatial cocreative artmaking process through video interviews with eighteen Finnish artists using AI. Drawing on the work of Barad, we regard humans and AI as fundamentally entwined, receiving their agencies through intra-action. Building on this, we demonstrate how the agencies of artists and AI emerge and mutually evolve across three stages of the creative process: (1) coding and data, (2) learning and training, and (3) curating the outcome. Thus, through our empirical research on how artist and AI create new material and meaningful artworlds, we are able to nuance understanding of coagency as a spatial process.本文将新兴的人类和数字技术关系的理论和实证讨论, 应用于艺术家-人工智能(AI)的合作艺术创作过程。迄今为止, 理论研究的主要重点是调节(代码)和融合(电子人)人与技术关系, 没有对相互(协作)关系进行充分讨论。为此, 我们开展了详尽的理论研究, 扩展了实证研究。基于对使用人工智能的18位芬兰艺术家的视频采访, 分析了艺术的空间合作创作过程。根据巴拉德的研究, 我们认为, 人类和人工智能本质上是交织在一起的, 并产生内作用。在此基础上, 我们展示了艺术家和人工智能的作用如何出现于并相互演化于创作的三个阶段: (1)编程和数据, (2)学习和训练, (3)策划结果。通过对艺术家和人工智能如何创造新材料和艺术世界的实证研究, 我们得以详尽理解协作的空间过程。Este artículo aplica las discusiones teóricas y empíricas de las relaciones emergentes entre los humanos y la tecnología digital a nuestro interés en los procesos colaborativos de producción estética entre el artista y la inteligencia artificial (IA). Hasta este momento, el foco teórico en gran medida se ha centrado en las relaciones humano-tecnológicas mediadoras (código) y ligadas (cíborg), con las relaciones mutuas (coagencia), todavía sin exploración adecuada. Para abordar este asunto, matizamos la discusión teórica y extendemos la investigación empírica, analizando el proceso espacial de producción artística cocreativa por medio de entrevistas en vídeo con dieciocho artistas finlandeses que usan IA. Basándonos en el trabajo de Barad, consideramos que los humanos y la IA están fundamentalmente entrelazados, recibiendo los efectos de sus agencias a través de la intra-acción. A partir de lo anterior, demostramos cómo las agencias de los artistas y la IA emergen y evolucionan mutuamente a través de tres etapas del procesos creativo: (1) codificación y datos, (2) aprendizaje y entrenamiento y (3) curaduría del resultado. Así, por medio de nuestra investigación empírica sobre cómo el artista y la IA crean nuevos materiales y mundos de arte significativos, nos habilitamos para matizar el entendimiento de la coagencia como un proceso espacial.©2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Redefining Creativity in the Era of AI? Perspectives of Computer Scientists and New Media Artists

Artificial intelligence (AI) has breached creativity research. The advancements of creative AI systems dispute the common definitions of creativity that have traditionally focused on five elements: actor, process, outcome, domain, and space. Moreover, creative workers, such as scientists and artists, increasingly use AI in their creative processes, and the concept of co-creativity has emerged to describe blended human–AI creativity. These issues evoke the question of whether creativity requires redefinition in the era of AI. Currently, co-creativity is mostly studied within the framework of computer science in pre-organized laboratory settings. This study contributes from a human scientific perspective with 52 interviews of Finland-based computer scientists and new media artists who use AI in their work. The results suggest scientists and artists use similar elements to define creativity. However, the role of AI differs between the scientific and artistic creative processes. Scientists need AI to produce accurate and trustworthy outcomes, whereas artists use AI to explore and play. Unlike the scientists, some artists also considered their work with AI co-creative. We suggest that co-creativity can explain the contemporary creative processes in the era of AI and should be the focal point of future creativity research.© 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

The suburban ethics of care : Caring for shared spaces in suburban regeneration

The future of suburbs is a debated issue. This paper discusses the questions of care during suburban regeneration in the Nordic context, with an emphasis on shared spaces. The empirical research was conducted in the suburban housing estate of Kontula, in Helsinki, Finland. Theoretically, the study is based on the geographies of care and responsibility together with the ethics of care that is interpreted from a spatial perspective. The questions addressed are how (or if) care for shared spaces manifests in suburban strategies, plans, and regeneration projects, and how these caring notions relate to the views of the suburban care-givers interviewed in the study. As a result, the concept of the suburban ethics of care is proposed to describe how suburbs and their changing environments can be approached in a caring manner. The discussion indicates how the suburban ethics of care is a normative, relational, processual, spatial, and political concept and practice.Peer reviewe

Tutkitusti parempi lähiö: asuinalueiden kehittämisohjelman tutkimusjulkaisu

"Tiede, taide ja teknologia asuinalueen kehittämisessä" -hankkeessa kehitettiin paikkasidonnaista, mobiiliteknologiaa ja liikkuvaa kuvaa hyödyntävää osallistumismenetelmää. Mobiiliteknologian hyödyntäminen edisti matalan kynnyksen osallistumista, sai aiemmin passiivisia asukkaita osallistumaan ja mahdollisti osallistumisen paikan päällä kehitettävällä alueella. Lyhytelokuvien avulla osallistumisen tuloksia visualisoitiin alueen asukkaille ja suunnittelijoille. Taiteen käyttö suunnittelun apuna edistää kokemuksellisen tiedon keräämistä, joskin suurimpana haasteena on tämän tiedon integroiminen osaksi käytännön kehittämistyötä. </p

Kaupunki leikkikenttänä: Kriittisen leikin ja kaupunkitilan vuorovaikutteisuus Turku365-taidehankkeessa

Urban space offers various kinds of opportunities for play and recreation. The relation between playing andthe city can also be seen in a more interactive way as many artists, activists and city dwellers are using playfulactivities and games to redefine their everyday urban environment. In this article, I explore the case studyof Turku365 art project to identify different possibilities and problems of urban play in the production of amore versatile public space. By using the concept of critical play, I will give examples of how playful practiceshave been utilized in Turku365 project as a means to understand and use the city in an alternative way

Turvallisempia tiloja ikääntyneille? Lakimaantieteellinen katsaus ikäihmisten turvallisuutta koskeviin lakeihin ja ohjelmiin Suomessa

Ikääntynyt väestö sekä iäkkäiden henkilöiden palvelut, asuminen ja turvallisuus ovat asioita, jotka saavat tasaisin väliajoin huomioita julkisessa ja yhteiskunnallisessa keskustelussa. Näitä teemoja tutkitaan laajasti esimerkiksi hoito- ja sosiaalitieteissä sekä gerontologiassa (esim. Savikko ym. 2006; Lanne 2013; Hoppania ym. 2016; Luoma ym. 2018), mutta maantieteellisessä tarkastelussa ikääntyneitä koskeva tutkimus on ollut Suomessa vähäistä (kuitenkin esim. Semi 2010; Lundman 2019)