ABSTRACT
In recent decades, atmospheres have become a central object of study in urban and sensory studies. How does a place feel? How can such a sensuous and affective phenomenon challenge conventional theories of space and perception? Particularly, in phenomenological and affect theory approaches, there is the fundamental premise that atmospheres cannot be reduced to words. Quite the opposite actually: identifying, articulating, and representing atmospheres fixates and reduces them to something that defies the very nature of atmospheres as a concept. Rather, they must be felt. This raises questions about how we can know something about them. While the theoretical elaborations of the concept of atmospheres have been dominant, methodological discussions of the experiences of atmospheres are rarer and have ranged from ethnographic fieldwork to artistic explorations and autoethnography. This chapter takes a slightly different approach by asking: What do words reveal about atmospheres? Agreeing that there is something about atmospheres that are beyond words, the chapter nonetheless explores how people talk about atmospheres, and how vague articulations are part of describing atmospheres as an aspect of lived life. Based on two examples from an extensive interview material on atmosphere, lighting, and experiences of the city, the chapter discusses interview technique, vagueness, and sensory ethnography, by honing in on the small details of everyday life. From the feeling of bringing “life” to a home through lighting, to the difficulty describing a square, the central argument is that by attending to the words, we actually get an understanding of the cultural role of sensory and atmospheric experiences of urban life that make up not only what atmospheres are but also what they should be.
