Locative Media

Today, AR apps for museums, archives, and cultural heritage sites enjoy increasing popularity among visitors and institutions alike. However, while such cultural production makes a significant impact on our engagement with cultural memory and narratives, such AR projects are usually discussed either in isolation or as a part of a larger consideration of the contemporary culture of digital heritage. Although both forms of discourse certainly contribute to our understanding of the social function of such mediated experiences of heritage, my paper offers another perspective as I examine AR cultural heritage apps in relation to one another. My goal is to identify the specific forms enabled and practiced through using AR in this context.
For this purpose, I adjust Rosalind Krauss’ scheme of the Expanded Field (1979) to map different forms of AR temporal convergence. Exploring projects like Mapping Ararat (2014), Wikiup (2017), and TimeTraveller’s Berlin Wall app (2014) I demonstrate how these in-situ, synchronized mobile interactions illuminate specific social and cultural conditions and spatial politics through the mixing of virtual and actual pasts and futures. Correspondingly, I propose that AR produces CR: Convergent Reality, in which the physical boundaries of spaces, and the well-established perception of linear chronology, are expanded and transformed.

Today, the commercial and aesthetic possibilities of AR are extensively explored by software corporations and cultural institutions alike, while designers’ aspiration to produce a tangible form of computing makes our world more augmented and less virtual. What this shift creates, I argue, is a sense of convergent reality, in which virtual content is accepted as an inseparable part of the actual lived-experience. Following this line, my paper explores the concept of the AR convergent space: a compositional space in which material and virtual aspects are united through the interactive experience offered by AR apparatuses.
My goal here is to identify the specific forms enabled by such AR spatial practice. For this purpose, I examine the different relationships and forms of synchronization between the actual and virtual elements in the AR environment, in tandem with Henri Lefebvre’s perception of space as a unitary practice that oscillates between abstracted and differential spatiality. Ultimately, I suggest three types of AR spatial convergence: controlled, open, and inclusive. Each type also contains two sub-categories, a diversity that exemplifies how AR is actually used as a practical tool for the social (re)production of space. Analyzing AR projects like ReBlink (2017), the Stedelijk Museum’s ARtours (2010-13), and Border Memorial (2012) I demonstrate how these in-situ, synchronized mobile interactions illuminate specific social and cultural conditions and spatial politics through the mixing of virtual and actual elements. While these projects expand and transform the boundaries of spaces, they also ask us to reconsider the relationship of reality, virtuality, and augmentation.

The current paper investigates the aesthetic, sensory and live aspects of sound through the conceptual and cultural impact of the flaneur and psychogeography in contemporary and technologically mediated walking practices in the city. Various approaches based on the traditions of flaneur, psychogeography and performative walking as art have reverberated throughout the 20th century, yet mostly they have been founded upon the visual. Culturally speaking, these approaches have not only made walking a dynamic process of aesthetic, poetic, sensory and political potential, but have informed later contemporary art practices by revealing emerging hybridities. This paper proposes a modern hybrid flaneur/flaneuse of the 21st century city, whose approach reconsiders, ‘orchestrates’ and curates the sensory qualities of walking (i.e. sonic, tactile) through hybrid constellations of technologies (i.e. audiovisual, locative), socialities and performative methodological frameworks. While a number of artists are mentioned in this paper, the sound-based walking artworks of Christina Kubisch and Janet Cardiff constitute the main platforms for reflection.

/ AVAILABLE ONLINE HERE /  [FULL PAPER HERE]
https://www.leoalmanac.org/walking-the-senses-curating-the-ears-towards-a-hybrid-flaneur-flaneuse-as-orchestrator-bill-psarras/


/ REFERENCE THIS PAPER /

Psarras, Bill. “Walking the senses, curating the ears: towards a hybrid flaneur/flaneuse as ‘orchestrator.'” In Sound Curating. Cambridge, MA: LEA / MIT Press, 2018.

/ INFO /

Published Online: December 15, 2018
Published in Print: To Be Announced
ISBN: 978-1-912685-55-4 (Print) 978-1-912685-56-1 (Electronic)
ISSN: 1071-4391
Repository: To Be Announced

ABSTRACT This article examines how location-based mobile media technologies are impacting the ways individuals experience the relationship between memory and place. We argue that location-based mobile applications that allow people to check in to places or record their routes represent new practices of place-based digital memory. Many individuals are using mobile media to mobilize place and memory together to create new forms of digital network memory from which they may begin to remember their pasts and to write their histories—a kind of rhetorical and poetic memory-making. To help illuminate these practices, we analyze applications such as Foursquare and MyTracks and draw upon research in mobilities studies, new media studies, and memory studies to introduce and advance concepts such as personal digital archiving and digital network memory. These practices of place-based digital memory have consequences for understanding the interrelationships among mobility, place, memory, and mobile media.

Location-based games use smartphones and other location-aware devices to incorporate their players’ actions in everyday, physical spaces – the streets and public spaces of the city – into the virtual world of the game. Scholars and designers of these games often claim that they reconfigure their players’ relationship with the people and environment around them. They argue these games either engage and immerse players more deeply in the spaces of the game or distance and detach them from the physical environment through the screen interface. To date, however, relatively few detailed empirical studies of these games have been undertaken to test out and critique these claims. This article presents a study of the 2017 iteration of the location-based augmented reality game Wayfinder Live, in which players use their phones to search for and scan urban codes hidden across Melbourne’s laneways, alleys, and public spaces. Players of the game were interviewed and invited to reflect on their experience. This article relates these experiences to the design and development of the game, particularly to five play design principles that characterize its approach to haptic play in urban space. We begin by outlining these principles and the motivations behind them. Then, drawing on an analysis of the player interviews, we evaluate the impact of the game on their perception of the city.

The integration of geolocative data and locative photography generates a new way of seeing: what is called ‘emplaced visuality’. This article explores the features and the research advancements in the direction of the visual aspects of locative media and geomedia to expand on the understanding of what appears to be a new visual regime. To do this, the text explores the developments of locative media and geomedia to link them to a series of disciplinary ‘turns’ that bridge areas of interdisciplinary thought within the knowledge ecosystem: from the spatial and mobility turns to the (visual) algorithmic turn. The paper points to current research strands in the field as a way of grasping the visual regime emerging from adding location to imaging. Exploring these features assists in mapping the expanding field of geomedia and visuality while also opening more opportunities for further research.

Location Sharing Motivations within the Framework of Uses and Gratifications Approach: A Qualitative Study on Foursquare and Swarm Today, the average number of daily check-ins in Foursquare and Swarm exceeds 9 million, even though all social networks have the ability of location awareness. This study aims to reveal check-in motivations of location-based social network users. In this study, a qualitative research is conducted within the framework of Uses and Gratification Approach and in-depth interviews are used for data collection. The participants consist of 10 users using both Foursquare and Swarm. The users motivations identified in the research are as follow: the functionality of LBSNs in the choice of place; the chance to save their place histories; the presentation of self via shared places ; socializing with new people and existing friends; establishing a sense of belonging and ownership ties with places through mayor-ship; and the game elements in LBSNs.

This book offers a critical analysis of the effect of usage of locative social media on the perceptions and phenomenal experience of lived in spaces and places. Drawing on users accounts of location-based social networking, a digital post-phenomenology of place is developed to explain how place is mediated in the digital age.

With the increasing proliferation of digital technologies into our daily routines, long-standing debates have resurfaced on the potential of prosthetic devices to extend our cognitive capacities and distribute intelligence across human and non-human agents. This article will propose ways in which we, as educators, can harness the distractions that new technologies can pose to teaching and research towards productive models of distributed attention and collective intelligence.

By reflecting on the relationship between play and pedagogy through critical theory, as well as on the benefits of hyper-connected and collaborative learning, this article hopes to expand the branch of Digital Humanities that Holly Willis terms as the “cinematic humanities.” Remixing, recontextualization, and the non-linear/non-sequential reconfiguration of information can provide us with new modes of distributed attention and critical making in the digital age.

This article focuses on low and no-budget process-oriented collaborative projects for Cinema, Media Studies, and Digital Humanities courses (adjustable to other subject matters) that incorporate remixing, social and locative media, and augmented reality into experimental modes of connected and collaborative learning. The first assignment is a live film scoring remix, where students collectively brainstormed on picking sound clips/samples to add new soundtracks to early silent films. Remixing practices can offer new insights into cinema's legacy and challenge ocularcentric notions of film spectatorship by, in this case, reversing the conventional hierarchy of image-sound into sound-image and reflecting on how our minds attempt to process the impulse of sensory synchronization in cinema. The second sample assignment proposes new ways of using easy-to-learn and accessible GIS (Geographic Information System) and AR (Augmented Reality) tools to create projects related to civic engagement and local/online activism.

The drifts from pre-determined learning outcomes are meant to be active disruptions to any prescribed limitations that delimit what digital humanities should or should not be, and other issues that often undermine the potential contributions to digital humanities that derive from the intellectual and material labor that happens in the networked, expanded and distributed classroom. The remix aesthetic, the “unfinished” and makeshift nature of these projects is something that I find adds value to this kind of process-oriented pedagogy because it remains in touch with the pre-institutionalized experimental ethos that prompted the formation of the digital humanities and other disciplinary cross-pollinations.

Research across the social sciences testifies to an ongoing relationship between queerness and digital technology. This article tracks how different online spaces for queer men have changed as the internet has developed over the past 30 years. It argues that queer spaces have become increasingly dominated by, and predicated on, internet technology. I review early interpretations of cyberspace as a liberatory space freed from heteronormativity and later more critical assessments of its potential, positioning arguments for and against the internet's status as a protective space. I then evaluate the huge popularity of mobile phone‐based dating and hook‐up apps such as Grindr and Tinder. These platforms have developed from static desktop offerings including
Gaydar and PlanetRomeo, but emphasise a distinctly hybridised socio‐technical experience in partner seeking. Finally, I consider the impact of locative media on more traditional queer concepts of cruising and community, concluding that contemporary apps refigure both structures in distinctive ways reflecting larger changes in sexuality and space studies.

En el contexto de la era del Big Data, de la hiper-exposición y los sistemas de vigilancia biométricos, es imposible deshacerse del rastro que los cuerpos desprenden en el espacio público online y offline. El deambular anónimo por el espacio virtual quedó suplantado por los registros que quedan latentes en las actividades de los usuarios en la red: como metadatos compuestos por la dirección IP (Internet Protocol) e infinidad de información adicional sobre los comportamientos y re-acciones.

Resumo: O presente estudo realiza um exame da plataforma para jogos locativos, particularmente Pokémon GO. A hipótese sustenta que Pokémon GO introduziu uma alternativa para suporte de jogos locativos; além do espaço e mídia locativa, outros atores passam a interferir nas interações, dentre eles dispositivos chamados computadores vestíveis. Desta forma, Pokémon GO pode oferecer um legado importante para futuras experiências envolvendo jogos locativos. Para desenvolver esta discussão, utilizou-se um método misto com base na teoria-ator rede e na proposta formulada por Espen Aarseth. A pesquisa foi realizada na cidade de Copenhagen, na Dinamarca, durante o verão europeu de 2017. Abstract: This study examines the platform for locative games, particularly Pokémon GO. The hypothesis holds that Pokémon GO introduced an alternative to support for locative gaming; besides space and locative media, other actors are interfering in the development of actions, such as devices called wearable computers. In this way, Pokémon GO can offer an important legacy for future experiences involving locative games. To develop this discussion, a mixed-method based on the theory-actor network and in the proposal formulated by Espen Aarseth was used. The research was conducted in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, during the European summer of 2017.

This paper presents a methodology approach for locative games studies using as reference the actor-network theory. The hypothesis supports that actor-network theory could be useful because it focuses on agencies between humans and non-humans; by the same way, it provides useful categories to support the researcher in the description of an emerging phenomenon. Locative gaming is a fruitful experience to use concepts from actor-network theory because it is connected to many humans and non-humans actants. In the attempt to achieve a research method for locative games using actor-network theory, this study provides a description of some game sessions of Pokémon GO played in Copenhagen during the summer of 2017.

The what3words commercial geocoding system, founded in 2013, allows to locate geographical positions through the algorithmic assignation of a combination of three words, a textual tag that replaces the uncomfortably numerical lat-long coordinates. Each position has a resolution of 3x3 meters, and this means that every movement in space results in a new word sequence. With the possibility of a literary approach in the background, which pairs the what3words app with experimental poetry, I will draw a connection with Locative media art, specifically in its “annotative” form, which gives priority to the digital enrichment of physical spaces. In this context, the immediacy of human language earns a position of absolute importance: moving between the opposing poles of criticism of an artistic system that makes use of government technologies, and the possibilities of intervention in everyday life, Locative art seems to have traced the path for several commercial operations since the early 2000s. The what3words service represents an extreme example of the circulation of human language in the neogeographical space of digital cartography. All of this will be reconstructed taking into consideration fundamental artworks, inscribing them in the outcome of commercial geotagging applications and linking with some categories of twentieth century critical thinking: activism, graffiti, or concepts evoked by the International Situationist, such as dérive and détournement, which still today seem to represent actualized aspects of public art.