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Walter Benjamin's criticisms of dwelling and the modern interior are well known. The middle classes retreated from the alienation of nineteenth-century city life into domestic seclusion, surrounding themselves with soft furnishings in a search for comfort. In Living Rooms (2022), Sam Johnson-Schlee uses objects typically found in the living room or lounge as his starting point for the development of Benjamin's ideas. Recognising the labour invested in domestic commodities would allow us to realise our dreams of connecting with others and escaping the confines of capitalism like roots breaking out of a plant pot. The personal observations used to support the arguments reflect the experience of Generation Rent. They inform an attempt to relate IKEA's 1996 'Chuck out that chintz!' advert to crucial changes in the British housing market. The emphasis on labour largely sidelines household labour and its gendering, with the exception of the activities of 'cleanfluencer' Mrs. Hinch. The link between domestic commodities and our longing for intimacy is effectively depicted using a combination of historical research, cultural references and family stories. Plants and flowers are used throughout to illustrate specific arguments and to serve as a symbol of a different, and better, life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our homes are our unwritten autobiographies, the places to which we are most emotionally attached. As such, our houses should be as unique as we are, satisfying our deepest desires and enriching our lives in our specific time and place. The purpose of this essay was to determine what factors, both physical and emotional, make it possible to design such unique houses for ourselves. For an architect-designed home, what information must be discovered and revealed to the architect to achieve this goal? The author discusses the process he employed over 40 years of designing houses that their owners loved and cherished, beginning with having clients remember and analyze their favorite childhood places. He suggests that "only a detailed, intimate, and uniquely specific description will tender a unique house," and that "the most valuable guide to what makes you comfortable" – more than photos, magazine clippings, or thousands of links to shelter websites – is the memory of that special childhood place. Determining what made that place so special, he concludes, is the beginning of our journey toward a new home that is as unique as we are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Living Rooms" by Sam Johnson-Schlee explores the relationship between domestic interiors and the lives of their inhabitants. The book delves into the concept of place versus space and the traces of human presence left in a space. Johnson-Schlee also draws connections between domestic spaces and dreams, highlighting the role of objects and design in our daily lives. The author emphasizes the ethical dimension of our domestic context and the relationship between our private space and the wider world. Overall, "Living Rooms" offers a thought-provoking exploration of the connections between our homes and our lives. [Extracted from the article]

For most of the twentieth century, consciousness was the elephant in the living room of science – we all knew it was there, but no-one wanted to talk about it. Aspirations for a science of consciousness faced an array of formidable philosophical, theoretical and methodological challenges, thought by many to be insurmountable. In recent decades, pessimism has been replaced by increasing optimism, as scholars and researchers from many fields, including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, AI and evolutionary biology have focused their trans-disciplinary efforts on understanding the enigma of how and why we are conscious of ourselves and the world around us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 7 November, 2020, legendary New York queer nightlife DJ duo The Carry Nation held a virtual dance party on Twitch, the interactive live-streaming service that emerged during the pandemic as an important venue for live performance. The party was called 'WORK from Home', and the flyer is telling: a yellow piece of paper with a stock image of a white woman wearing a headset, smiling into a webcam — presumably having a meeting. As Twitch became a major platform for live performance globally alongside early lockdown measures, in the New York queer underground The Carry Nation was among the first to embrace virtual parties. The crux of these virtual parties, however, was the 'Zoom Room' where the real party took place. The Zoom Room: a series of constantly rotating squares, and in them people in various states of undress are dancing, making dinner, talking, vibing, getting tattooed, performing, drinking, having sex, applying makeup, chilling in their living room, on the sofa, in their beds, sometimes with friends or partners, sometimes alone, dancing on stripper poles, stripping on camera, making cocktails and hanging out while the music plays. 'WORK! From Home: Queer Nightlife on Zoom' explores this queering of the Zoom link as noted by the queer dance and sex parties that emerged during the pandemic, from The Carry Nation to Scruff. How did Zoom, a corporate conference meeting tool used in part as a way to weed out candidates for academic positions, become a primary source of queer worldmaking, cruising and connectivity? Is a Zoom party a 'party' or is it something else? In the essay, I show that the speed at which queer nightlife moved from Bushwick, Hackney and Friedrichshain to Zoom highlights the significance of queer dance floors and the pursuit of pleasure as acts of queer worldmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, particulate matter and total volatile organic compounds in the air are the primary environmental concern of the world due to their health impact. Therefore, the present work was focused on the assessment of short-term exposure to particulate matter (PMs) in the air samples of different particle size (PM1, PM2.5, PM4, PM7, PM10) and total suspended particles (TSP), total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs) and trace elements in PM10 in the living room (a place where inhabitants spent more of their indoor time). PMs and TVOCs were measured by simple and portable sensors, respectively. The elemental composition of PM10 was analysed by using inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). The geometric mean (GOM) of PMs in the living room ranged from 5.68 to 99.0 µg m−3, whereas the TVOCs were found to be 289 µg m−3. The health risk due to exposure to PM2.5, PM10, and TSP was performed according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency prescription using hazard quotient calculation (HQ) and hazard index calculation (HI). The results showed that HI and HQ for PM2.5, PM10 and TSP were less than one indicating that the non-carcinogenic effect is not significant. The levels of trace elements (Fe, Cd, As, Cr, Pb, B, Ni, Co, Sn, Cu, and Zn) in PM10 were found in the range: 0.001–0.026 µg m−3. The carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks due to elements in PM10 exposure were also not significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the shift in 1970s Britain towards a pornography based not only on popular consumption but popular participation too. Focusing on the 'Readers' Wives' genre of magazine features, it suggests that the making of soft-core pornography offered readers the possibility, through home photography, to document a 'liberated' sexual domesticity with growing cultural currency. This process involved the eroticisation of a broader turn to ordinariness in British culture, as well as the public transgression of the zone of sexual privacy carved out by the Wolfenden Report and the liberal sexual settlement of the 1950s and 1960s. The article therefore tracks the emergence in the late twentieth century of a new model of sexual selfhood that could be sparked into being through new ways of looking and being looked at. Especially for women, 'Readers' Wives' linked sexual objectification and subjectification in a new and profound way. Overall, the development of a pornography of participation and a new erotics of ordinariness are framed in the article as constitutive of the sexual visuality of the 'Sexual Revolution'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the use of everyday objects as new media for enriching digital storytelling experiences, especially as they pertain to viewing television narratives in living room environments. Through a design ideation workshop, we develop a strategy for augmenting television narratives using interactive home appliances. The ideas obtained through the workshop revealed that interactive home appliances connected to television systems can serve as both input and output channels capable of delivering narrative elements as additional output and can support active viewer engagement in narrative manipulation. Another strategy involved mirroring the environments of television narratives with the physical world to enable spatial immersion into such narratives. Based on the strategies, we discuss the criteria valued by the designers when it comes to designating interactions between home appliances and television narratives and the critical aspects that should be considered in further configurations and applications of such strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cries have been loud and silent. Destruction and Stillness. Most of us have not seen our patients in person for close to a year. The tables have seemingly turned. The ways of being connected to our patients and ourselves have shifted. Who do we "see" in our electronic devices? What do our patients "see" when they encounter us in sessions? What could we not "see" in each other when we sat in the same room? What is the role of Relational Psychoanalysis in helping us "see" a way forward? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shared room housing is a growing private rental submarket, which offers flexible and affordable rental sub-lettings for sharing a bedroom or living room with non-related tenants. However, research exploring the living experiences and home-making practices of shared room tenants is sparse. Drawing on an empirical base of shared room housing experiences in Sydney (online survey n = 103, in-depth interviews n = 35), this paper provides insights on how these residents strive to achieve the material, social and emotional elements of home while dealing with insecure occupancies and maintaining multiplex relations with non-related roommates and housemates. In response to shifting spatial, material and social configurations, home in shared room housing emerges as an ever-changing process of (re)making and unmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proceeding from the notion of scenography as atmosphere or ambience, this article explores scenographic design elements aimed at a range of American middle-class living rooms during the early-twentieth century when these newly configured domestic interior spaces replaced Victorian parlors, libraries, and drawing rooms as gathering places for both private family activities and those social occasions when friends and guests were invited into the home. Looking to the period's theatre with its realistic, natural portrayal of family life as unfolding in the living room, spokespersons for the emerging professions of interior design and illumination engineering spearheaded a call for replicating the aesthetics of theatre atmosphere in living rooms through the manipulation of artificial light at a time when rapid innovations in electric lighting were beginning to transform public and private spaces. Through the utilization of the new "color science" housewives could create the proper atmosphere for any occasion through an inviting scenographics of illuminated fixtures, decorative furnishings, and wall treatments that radiated a pleasing harmony of refinement and relaxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on ordinary people's political talk the paper contributes to the study of deliberative democracy from a systemic perspective. By examining citizens' everyday communication, it focuses on an object that is rarely studied from a deliberative perspective, but crucial for the deliberative system's democratic character. By investigating the couplings between different arenas of political talk between citizens, ranging from informal private, semi-public and public conversations to formalized discussions at public events, it provides evidence on the appropriateness of the systemic conception of deliberative democracy. Analyzing data from two high-quality face-to-face surveys by means of structural equation modeling the paper demonstrates how these venues are connected to one another. The linkages between these discursive spheres create opportunities for bottom-up information flows from informal everyday conversations into formalized public discussions. To some extent, informal conversations also empower citizens for participation in these more demanding organized discussion events. Informal political conversations between strangers, a type of political talk largely neglected by extant research, emerge as a crucial nexus that funnels the motivational and capacity-building influence of everyday political talk within people's social networks into active participation in formalized public discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from an EFL (English as a foreign language) graduate research methods course (N = 384) was used to assess the effect of flipped instruction on students' exam performance over one academic year. Participants, who were enrolled in two different universities in Algeria, were randomly assigned to a flipped course (n = 192) and a conventional course (n = 192). Both the treatment and control groups took one semester (16 weeks) of traditional instruction in fall 2016. In spring 2017, the treatment group took a flipped course (16 weeks) while the control group continued to take a traditional course (16 weeks). Exam performance was assessed via three in-class measurements: four 45-min quizzes, one midterm, and one final exam. Flipped students exhibited statistically significant gains in exam scores than their non-flipped counterparts, implying the efficacy of flipped teaching, if carefully implemented, in optimizing students' exam performance over traditional instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1970s, Zen in the United States remained a fledgling new religious movement, characterised by small, informal meditation groups or living room sanghas, and only a handful of larger practice centres in major metropolitan areas. Existing groups were experimenting, tentatively exploring possibilities to adapt Zen for an American context; groups' continued survival was precarious. In retrospect, the American Zen movement was actually on the cusp of four decades of dramatic growth and change. This paper analyses data preserved in an unpublished study from 1973, and provides an overview of basic patterns such as membership size, geographical distribution, lineage affiliations and the place of teachers. It identifies and profiles the basic types of Zen organisations and their stage of institutional development, with special attention to group longevity, identifying factors that supported future growth and those that placed groups at the greatest risk for dissolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remembrance in the Living Room is a Jewish-Israeli social initiative providing an intimate format for commemoration on the eve of Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance day, in the privacy of people's homes. This initiative, which was launched in 2011 soon overshadowed other alternative ceremonies. The article analyses the way these gatherings differ from the performative acts of canonical and alternative ceremonies and suggests new strategies for audience engagement. These gatherings alter the role of the public and transform individuals from passive spectators into agents of Holocaust memory who represent various perspectives, themes, and insights. Its success indicates that this new performativity is reviving the fading interest of Jewish-Israelis (especially the younger generations) in the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day ceremonies thus creating a contemporary Israeli version of the pledge to 'never forget'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students' sense of belonging is known to be strongly associated with academic achievement and a successful life at university. To achieve a comprehensive understanding of belonging, this study collected data via the 10 Words Question. Responses from 426 participants were analysed using a sequence of analytic methods including In Vivo coding, systematic coding, clustering, and contingency analysis. The results show that, in addition to academic and social engagement, there are two additional domains of belonging which are often neglected: surroundings and personal space. Surroundings equate to participants' living space, and geographical and cultural location, while personal spaces refer to life satisfaction, life attitudes, identity and personal interests. Both positive and negative data demonstrate the complex and multi-dimensional character of belonging in higher education. The study concludes that policies for student engagement in higher education should reflect all four domains to support the full range of students' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1950s television was the hot new broadcast media. The post-war economic boom meant that more and more American households were purchasing televisions, and television programming was growing to meet demand. The moment was rife with the potential to reach more and more people through the dazzling allure of television. Many American museums saw the potential to expand their audiences beyond their building to reach people who had never stepped foot inside a museum, effectively expanding the reaching of the museum into American living rooms. This idea was not without controversy. In fact, larger debates circulated at the time about whether or not television could be educational as well as entertaining. This essay examines three museum television programs that debuted in 1951–1952 and were amongst the first television program produced by museums. Produced by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Penn Museum, and The Museum of Modern Art, each program reveals individual approaches to the use of emerging technology for educational purposes. This essay considers the value of history in understanding and responding to contemporary debates about technology and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a meta-analysis of hourly indoor summertime temperature datasets gathered during the summer of 2013 (May to September) from 63 dwellings located across the UK. The sample consisted of unmodified dwellings (existing), dwellings with varying levels of fabric improvements (retrofitted), and dwellings constructed to higher levels of the Code for Sustainable Homes (new). Indoor and outdoor temperature data from bedrooms and living rooms from these homes were collected at 5-min intervals using temperature sensors. These data were processed and analyzed for summertime overheating, using both static criteria (CIBSE Guide A) and the criteria associated with the EN 15251 adaptive thermal comfort model (CIBSE TM52). The results show that despite a relatively cool summer, sufficiently high temperatures were found in a high proportion of dwellings, which were overheated according to the static criteria, although the prevalence of overheating was found to be much lower when assessed by the adaptive method. Considerably higher temperatures were found in bedrooms, much higher than those in living rooms. Interestingly, dwellings with higher levels of insulation experienced overheating twice as frequently as uninsulated dwellings. It is necessary to consider the overheating risk during the design and retrofit of homes to avoid air-conditioning in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sound absorption coefficient of three different diatom mud and latex were measured. The models of two typical living rooms were established to study the influence of living room type, floor materials and curtains on indoor reverberation time, and the results were compared to the reverberation time with latex paint. The average sound absorption coefficient of three diatom muds was higher than that of latex in the measured frequency range. The improvement effect of diatom mud on the independent living room was more obvious. Ground materials and presence of curtains also affected the improvement effect of the diatom mud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the notion of "museum-salon" and the changes in its perception and practices in the context of Turkish middle-class home cultures. Many authors have discussed the meaning of a prestigious living room allocated for guests only and addressed the existence of this room as an isolated space, detached from the household's everyday routines. Constructing these rooms with Western-style furniture and objects has been tied to Turkish modernization and the attempts to create modern civic identities and lifestyles, especially following the founding of the Republic of Turkey. This study questioned the role of an iconic living room with unused displays as a means to modern living, arguing, in fact, that the museum-salon both sustained and negotiated traditional domestic practices. Interpretation of the qualitative data gained through fieldwork conducted in Istanbul contributes to the ongoing discussion in which utilization of the living room for everyday life was considered an objectification of modernity and an internalization of individuality. Through the rejection of the isolated living room through use and customization around notions of individuality and anti-communitarianism, it traced the changing local notions of modern living. The changes and differences are related to the idea of habitus, as discussed by Bourdieu (1984), rather than simply being viewed as generational preferences. Open living rooms that were subservient to everyday life now defined the modern habitus, whereas closed ones were associated with being traditional and local. It could be inferred that this is the result of a belated modernity in the context of Turkish living rooms as people cultivate themselves, satisfy their everyday needs, and use the largest space in their homes according to their autonomies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I am sitting in my parents' living room, sharing a cup of tea and a slice of lemon drizzle cake. It is my father's 86th birthday. We are discussing the neighbour's parked car that blocks the view of the street from my parents' window.By Eric Villanueva Dela Cruz; Gillian Dyson; Renata Gaspar; Sozita Goudouna; Tasha Haines; Eero Laine; Birgit Larson; Vahri McKenzie; Jimena Ortúzar; Sandamini Ranwalage; Anna Tzakou and Evelyn WanReported by Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author [Extracted from the article]

This article uncovers the fierce inter-war debate provoked by the British Government's decision to remove state subsidies for building larger "parlour-type" houses in 1923. Examining the various defences that were put forward in support of the working-class parlour it argues that the parlour was seen as a key marker of respectability in working-class communities with the potential to shape the behaviours and outlook of its inhabitants. Drawing on a variety of contemporary and autobiographical sources it suggests that the occasional use of the parlour, a keystone of its opponents' criticisms was precisely what gave most value to the room for its owners. Recent controversy over the bedroom tax in Britain suggests that "extra" space remains a contentious issue in subsidised homes today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article departs from the observation that in many living rooms of elderly Kinois (inhabitants of Kinshasa), old and defunctive radio and television sets are put on display. When their primary function, to inform, has been rendered obsolete, we are faced with the question why people continue to display these objects, often next to newer models, in their living rooms. The main argument is that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) commodities, old and new, defective and repaired, are primarily social objects that are embedded in complex webs of practices and expectations which unsettle the taken-for-granted associations between technology and time. ICT objects are shown to be metonyms of dynamics in social relationships between owners of these ICT goods and others; and, although seemingly paradoxically, these same objects, even when damaged, inhabit promises for a better future. The article thus offers an alternative perspective on electronic modernity, and in particular, the role of Africa therein. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Loneliness and connection play in the analyst's mind like light and shadow from a candle. "Ah Bartelby, ah humanity" writes Herman Melville at the end of his story of a lonely law firm copier who secretly lives in the office - shockingly universalizing his character's outsider suffering. [Extracted from the article]

Traditionally, the Mexican domestic interior has been characterized by a propensity to accumulative decoration and solemnity in the public areas of the house. The present study of residents of a central area of Mexico City shows that this situation has changed as forms of urban lifestyles, environmental attitudes and house ownership have developed that affect the use and decoration of the house. Here, I will focus on those changes that affect the public rooms of the house (living room, dining room, kitchen) with the aim of describing new forms of domesticity in the lifestyles, consumption practices, leisure and home life that no longer respond to the model of the traditional bourgeois home, but to life patterns in which the symbolic experience of home suits a particular spatial and economic reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time, the Dutch family living room has been the most prestigious domestic space, reflecting in its furnishing and decoration the status and class of the male breadwinner without any material indication of the presence of children in the household. In the latter part of the twentieth century, children were increasingly acknowledged as family members in their own right and allowed to extend their play into the living room. More recently, the situation has developed into the extreme opposite of the pristine family living rooms of yore. Nowadays, with baby equipment visibly predominant, the living room of a young family looks more like a day-care center, the playpen taking a focal position, surrounded by large toys and baby furniture. This article presents a sociological explanation of the material transformation of the living room in its relation to the rise in labor participation of young Dutch mothers over the last two decades, as well as a cultural interpretation of the material living room as a reflection of Dutch family life in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to argue that instead of analyzing kitsch from the view of taste, the same material needs to be comprehended from the experience of those who possess it and live through it. The author also presented a case study that emphasizes sentimentality, which he says is often the most belittled aspect of kitsch. Moreover, he gave a detailed examination of the ornaments of one living room and a study of how and why they were collected, and the role they play in the life of their owners.

The article picturises the studio ruins of the artist, Francis Bacon. After his death the studio was dismantled and transported to Dublin and reassembled in Hugh Lane Gallery. All the things are preserved in their own places appearing as if the artist has taken a break from his work. The article provides an interior view of the art room as well as the living room.

“Urban Threads” was an architectural installation that explored the ways in which those without land, money, and power shape the urban fabric, in particular the private territories that are staked out in the public realm and the spatial practices that connect them. All creative works in the installation were produced by women who were homeless in the context of a support group, TimeOut @ The Place, run by a collaboration of welfare agencies in Melbourne. Nine sites, located in minor lanes and alcoves in Melbourne’s Central Activities District, each housed “bedrooms” and “WAR(d)robes,” a “dining room,” and a “Living Room.” The “Path of Most Resistance (and Least Distance)” was marked out between them. The installation was conceived of and curated by the author as part of a PhD by Creative Works. The question “to what extent can architecture be ‘tactical’ (de Certeau’s definition)” is at the basis of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What remains in my memory from those days is Deborah's warm but serious manner, her keen curiosity, and her gift for quietly penetrating those unconscious places in my shared field with my patients that I hadn't dared to explore on my own. Deborah's gifts to our community have been prodigious, particularly in relationship to the written word. I've seen the impatient whip of Deborah's tail when someone has expressed something a bit too facile at a Society meeting, but I've hardly known anyone more palpably ego-less in her engagement in communal dialogue. [Extracted from the article]

Margaret Ryan was a gifted copy-editor of many books, but most significantly for me, for over thirty years, she was the copy-editor for the Jungian journal I Psychological Perspectives i . In those early years, Ernie, Margaret, and I took a number of trips together, hunting down material for the journal. In the morning we ate peach pie (which Ernie bought before we went to see Pribram to break the ice) with Karl Pribram and a colleague in his Stanford office. [Extracted from the article]

I try to read the signs (the things me myself define as such) – the little fliers taped to a window frame, the deliberately curtainless windows (left so to allow admirers to watch the sunsets, so perfectly placed on the other side of the horizon every evening when there are no clouds), the big-eyed paper puppets which (for lack of another studio) I keep in my house, the hat-cathedral, a representative of the kind of models which I am too attached to throw them away even after their being built out of the actual material, the jars in the kitchen, full of multicolored spices, and so on and so on until we reach the terrace to which there is no door (and if you want to reach it, you have to use one of the windows pretending not to be a thief if there are curious neighbors on the other side), a terrace that encircles the whole building where my apartment is situated and which east side is decorated with false ancient-looking columns, ideal for dance-shootings. The best thing, however, about home and scenography, is the variety – variety of homes, each and every being different from the other like their owners are from one another, and also – like Russian dolls – on a smaller level the variety inside one's home – variety of objects (functional and not, beautiful and not), colors, spaces (rooms, terraces, rooftops, stairs), and so on. Variety compared only with the one existing in our bodies and their cells, organs, veins. May be we are such things that scenography is made of. And we also live in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]