Special issue: Mixed realities in the urban environment

Urban mixed realities represent a growing and exciting area of research, which requires new ways of thinking about issues such as usability, place and presence. Urban situations are dynamic and can change rapidly, with a vast array of complex and exciting rhythms. They cover a whole spectrum of complex and chaotic happenings which span organisational and material configurations. These characteristics are both challenges and motivations for exploring mixed reality technology solutions, in particular with respect to finding methods to improve the ways in which participants can relate to the environment and to others. Mixed realities cover all situations in which digital objects are combined with physical features of the environment. Technologies include pervasive, ubiquitous, multimodal, and augmented reality solutions. Current projects explore and evaluate forms of interaction and presence in urban environments which use mixed reality technologies to improve or create new practices. This can be achieved in two ways: either by augmenting the engagement with others (including encounters, feelings, exchanges, co-experiences) or through augmenting the engagement with the environment (places, or things), which includes playing, understanding and interpreting the environment in new ways. We invite designers, technology developers, social scientists, psychologists and urbanists to submit a paper. Topic areas include but are not limited to: - The role of the urban environment in shaping content and technologies - Interaction issues within urban environments - Frameworks and theories: place, presence, co-operative systems and cognition - Technologies: from mobile phones to head-mounted displays - Design and evaluation methodologies - The role of art and performance in urban mixed realities - Personal and societal issues related to the use and deployment of urban mixed reality systems - Applications of urban mixed reality technologies: games, cultural heritage, emergency response training, pervasive games, social networking etc.