In my research associated at Aalto University (Finland), I explore how common objects and spaces can be augmented with embedded technologies to enhance users’ awareness and curiosity about the inhabited space and its inhabitants. The particularity and challenge of my research is the focus on opportunistic interaction. This means supporting collocated individuals independent discovery and interaction (alongside daily activities and without being instructed by the researcher). My studies include embedding technologies in real life settings, analysing how individuals discover, interact, and make sense of interaction over time and the benefits on sociality. In order to make sense of real-life messiness, I rely on ad-hoc research methods coupling quantitive and qualitative analysis techniques (i.e. data logs, video supported observations, interviews, diaries, surveys). My publications contribute with new knowledge about how different interaction design aspects can leverage and affect sociality in diverse public and semi-public spaces and inform future research aiming to support opportunistic sociality in daily inhabited spaces.
“I just leaned on it!” Exploring Opportunistic Social Discovery of a Technologically Augmented Cushion – Beatrice Monastero, David McGookin, and Tapio Takala. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20)
Augmenting daily spaces and objects for opportunistic social interaction – In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct (MobileHCI ’18)
Traces: Studying a Public Reactive Floor-Projection of Walking Trajectories to Support Social Awareness. Beatrice Monastero and David McGookin – HONORABLE MENTION – In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18).
Multimedia Ubiquitous Technology for Opportunistic Social Interactions. Beatrice Monastero, Andrés Lucero, Tapio Takala, Thomas Olsson, Giulio Jacucci, and Robb Mitchell – In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM 2018).
Exploring Seasonality in Mobile Cultural Heritage – David McGookin, Koray Tahiroălu, Tuomas Vaittinen, Mikko Kytö, Beatrice Monastero, and Juan Carlos Vasquez – HONORABLE MENTION In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’17).
Wandertroper: supporting aesthetic engagement with everyday surroundings through soundscape augmentation. Beatrice Monastero, David McGookin, and Giuseppe Torre – BEST PAPER AWARD – In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM ’16).
Mobility and Identity in the Art and Literature of Etel Adnan, Two Homelands, 2020
This article is based on a literary reading of two books by Etel Adnan: In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country and Of Cities & Women (Letters to Fawwaz), and on an interview that the author personally conducted with her in 2018. It examines Adnan’s sense of nomadism in her art and literature. She is born into a nomadic culture and moves as an intellectual nomad from Lebanon to Paris, and then to California, and finally returns to Lebanon before having to escape due to the civil war. Her nomadism gives her an inspiring openness, creating a state of béance – the freedom from borders postulated by Bouraoui.
Beirut, an immensely historically and culturally rich city, can be described as a city of birth, destruction, and rebirth. Using comparative literature, I will be discussing how the works of Zeina Abirached use words and images to describe the people, places, and events of the civil war which occurred there in the 1970s and 80s. I will start by briefly describing each book. As this review progresses, I will focus on the individual as well as universal human behavior through graphic narration and storytelling. This is essential to the understanding of the totality of the situation in the text. The question to be analysed is how she—as an author of comic books—writes about the Mediterranean (in particular, Beirut) through the study of its characters as well as their stories and origins. Zeina Abirached was born in Beirut, in 1981, when the civil war had already begun; she was already 10 years old by the time it ended in 1990, and her childhood memories were shaped by living through its horrific events. Going on to study graphic arts and commercial design at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA), she was awarded the top prize at the International Comic Book Festival in Beirut in 2002 for her first graphic novel Beyrouth-Catharsis. She moved to Paris in 2004, where she attended the National School of Decorative Arts. From among her illustrated books, I chose three: A Game for Swallows: To Die, To Leave, To Return, I Remember Beirut, and Le piano oriental.
Representation of Places in Etel Adnan’s In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country and Of Cities & Women (Letters to Fawwaz), INTERLITTERARIA, 2020
This article will take a close look at two books of Etel Adnan which are strongly tied to the representation of places. References to nature found in both books link the places she is physically present in to her inner-spaces. Additionally, the people she encounters in these locations also become elements with which she weaves different places together. In Of Cities & Women (Letters to Fawwaz), the notion of place is particularly enriched by the different qualities of the women she finds in each location, comparing the situation of women in the Orient and the Occident. The shadow of recent wars hangs heavy in the memories of Adnan as she travels between these different places in both books-the thought of which never abandons her.
RADICA 