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This article explores how people choreograph spaces to feel particular ways through material objects and intangible phenomena like light and sound. Drawing on theories of atmospheres and ethnographic fieldwork in Copenhagen, we argue that while there has been a proliferation of research on atmospheres in urban studies, we also need to attend empirically to the processes through which they come into being, consolidate and coagulate. Through exploring the interplay between domestic and urban spaces, we highlight the volatility and inherently social character of atmospheres. This entails how people's dynamic positioning within an urban atmosphere comes to matter for people's sense of the city. We exemplify with one such sensation of the city through the concept of 'midding', as the feeling of comfortably being on the perimeter of a situation. Exploring atmospheric positionings and processes enlightens our understanding of the urban atmosphere and shows how shared atmospheric moments connect people in time and space, stressing the importance of urban design to allow for such sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the use of light in Denmark as part of shaping atmospheres. It discusses how the words informants use to express a particular atmosphere may have multiple connotations and in essence be defined more by their vagueness than by their clarity. The article argues that, rather than focusing on clear ontological statements, taking informants' lack of clarity at face value offers new ways for the ethnographer to gain insights into material aspects of social life through the concept of atmospheres. Atmospheres denote a sensuous ‘something’ that takes place in-between things and people. They may be ontologically difficult to grasp or to contain, yet they play an important role in ordering spaces and social life. With a focus on the ‘ecstasy’ of things – in this case a light source – as a sensuous encounter of presence, the article argues that both the contemporary focus on the ontology of things within anthropology as well as a post-ANT perspective on performativity, though analytically useful, overlook methodologically how the vagueness of atmospheres foregrounds the contemporaneity and entanglement of matters, minds and cultural preferences of sensing places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the use of light to stage atmospheres in a residential area of Copenhagen, Denmark. Both natural and electrical lights enable visibility but they also impart a certain sense of place that influences the way people behave and feel. The article investigates how light is about more than individual perception and plays a crucial role in orchestrating a sense of community, solitude and ‘secureness’ at home. Such staging of atmospheres, it is argued, importantly relies on cultural premises and notions of intimacy, informality and relaxation, encompassed in the Danish term hygge , or cosiness. Light frames such sense of secureness and cosiness by allowing for visual oscillations between separation and connection of people, places and things. In this way, investigating the use of light in shaping atmosphere offers a lens to explore how connections and networks of people, emotions and things, shape the home and links interior and exterior spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]