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| LEA
Vol 14 No 3 July 2006 |
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Introduction - Locative Media Special
Transport yourself into LEA‘s latest, that
peeks into the world of locative media. This extensive
issue offers a chock-full with insights of this
fascinating topic. Additionally, for the first time,
an associated curriculum section and bibliography
index is incorporated.
At the helm is guest editor Drew Hemment, and in
this installment, we look at eleven essays, each
exploring different angles in the field of locative
media.
Anne Galloway and Matt Ward, in
Locative Media As Socialising And Spatializing Practice:
Learning From Archaeology, "start to shape
questions about locative media representations of
urban mobilities, and begin to unearth some of the
struggles and tensions that exist within these fields
of operation."
In Trace: Mapping The Emerging
Urban Landscape, Alison Sant collaborates with
programmer Ryan Shaw and examines the layering of
physical space with the on and off zones of the
wireless network. The project seeks to blend the
corporeal experience of the city with the invisible
qualities of the network, creating a narrative mapping
of the hybrid space between them.
Leslie Sharpe then dives into a shifting or indeterminate
kind of public space - liminal spaces, haunted space,
and spaces and zones that are often 'misread' by
locative technologies - referred to here as 'grey
zones', with her essay Swimming
In The Grey Zones - Locating The Other Spaces In
Mobile Art.
Locative Viscosity: Traces
of Social Histories in Public Space by Lily
Shirvanee explores the social issues that emerge
when mobile technologies that have become increasingly
locative begin to exist in public spaces. A constant
thread throughout this paper is the concept of °viscosity°,
where physical deformations of a locative media
can also lead to social deformations of a space.
Julian Bleecker and Jeff Knowlton share their work:
Locative Media: A Brief
Bibliography And Taxonomy Of GPS-Enabled Locative
Media, which serves as an introduction to GPS-enabled
locative media, provides a few examples of both
GPS-enabled and other forms of locative media, and
launches a collaborative taxonomy and bibliography
project to annotate, index and catalog locative
media projects, in the broadest sense.
Next, Malcolm McCullough’s On
Urban Markup: Frames of Reference in Location Models
for Participatory Urbanism. He says, "Phenomena
such as embodiment, spatial ability, scale, and
persistent physical pattern provide deep bases for
a shift from universal mobility toward a more socially-centered
approach to situated computing, and from merely
positional media toward a semantic component of
location models." In this paper, he examines
that change as a challenge in bottom-up cultural
processes, and suggests "urban markup"
as a way to understand the goals in knowledge representation.
Then, in Asphalt Games:
Enacting Place Through Locative Media, Michele
Chang and Elizabeth Goodman turn New York into a
gameboard and website prompting play where players
conquer turf on an online map by performing and
documenting game moves on real-world streets. This
hybrid of physical and digital performance exists
through the interplay of social and spatial play
and suggests that locative media move beyond pinpointing
location to enacting place as a medium for expression.
In The Design and Experience of
the Location-Based Game Uncle Roy All Around You,
Steve Benford, Martin Flintham, Adam Drodz and Nick
Tandavanitj, Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr present the
design of a location-based game called Uncle Roy
All Around You that mixes elements of computer games
and live theatre to create an experience that is
accessed by both mobile and online inhabitants of
a city. Additionally, they summarize feedback from
street and online players, and draw out three general
design strategies for location-based games.
Lalya Gaye and Lars Erik Holmquist’s Performing
Sonic City: Situated Creativity In Mobile Music
Making is about a mobile music application that
turns the city into a musical interface. A study
with participants using this prototype in their
everyday settings showed how Sonic City mediates
a new type of personal experience of urban space
and embeds electronic music making in the everyday.
Sally Jane Norman’s offering Locative
Media and Instantiations of Theatrical Boundaries
looks at how theater has constantly remapped its
temporal and spatial boundaries, sometimes reviving
old models that resurge with acuity in this reshaping
process.
Homing Devices for Unhomely
Times is Misha Myers’ contribution, where
she looks at a socially engaged art project and
"critically consider[s] locative media in relation
to the wider context of forced migration and the
politics, ethical views and modes of radical potentiality
that emerge from this situation of human displacement."
Following that, indulge in the Locative Media Gallery.
Locative
Media, on and off the beaten track curated by
Suhjung Hur, Annie On Ni Wan and Andrew Paterson,
it explores this "hybrid and still emerging
media culture and research field, (which) includes
a rich spectrum of activities: collaborative mapping,
open technology experimentation, tactical/surveillance
critique, urban gameplay and subjective storytelling."
Works featured include Paula Roush’s Bowville,
a durational performance; Teri Rueb’s The
Choreography of Everyday Movement which envisions,
as a topographical mapping, the culturally inscribed
nature of our everyday travels using GPS; Angela
Piccini’s Guttersnipe:
On the Road to Helsinki, a 14-minute video/live-spoken-word
performance, which aims to explore the potentialities
and limitations of a photographic practice as archaeological
practice, archaeology in the modern world, and a
collaboration by John Anthony Evans, Drew Hemment,
Theo Humphries and Mika Raento - Loca,
an artist-led interdisciplinary project on mobile
media and surveillance that explores the shifting
boundaries between art practice, the event and data
systems.
Other novel projects are also showcased. In Long
March , artist Qin Ga, working with project
curator Lu Jie, participated in the project from
Beijing by remotely following the Long March team’s
movements by tattooing its progress on his back.
Add to this Planteundersøgelser
/ Plant investigations - a growing investigation
of plants in the city, by Jesper Dyrehauge,
Marie Markman and Nis Rømer; urban game Shoot
me if you can, by Taeyoon Choi, in collaboration
with I&P media art team; Jang-Won Lee’s
more than decade-long project sunTracer;
Mark Shepard’s The
Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] Toolkit, an open
source software platform for cultivating public
"sound gardens" in contemporary cities,
and Erika Block and Hilary Ramsden’s interdisciplinary
performance
The Walking Project for a true feast of locative
media nuggets.
For the first time, this special issue, also includes
an associated curriculum
section edited by Drew Hemment and the bibliography
index which Steve Bull, Elizabeth Goodman, Pete
Gomes, Derek Hales, Hana Iverson, Paula Levine,
Ann Morrison, Teri Rueb, Alison Sant, Leslie Sharpe,
Jen Southern and Nick West generously share. |
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