Locative art
A framework within which to actively engage with, critique, and shape a rapid set of technological developments. Locative media are media of communication functionally bound to a location.Locative media works on locations and yet many of its applications are still location-independent in a technical sense. It is projected that in the near future locative media will develop to a significant factor in everyday life. Locative media projects use technology such as Global Positioning System (GPS), laptop computers, the mobile phone, Geographic Information System (GIS), Google Maps.
The technological background of locative media is sometimes referred to as location-aware computing . Design scholars Anne Galloway and Matt Ward state that various online lists of pervasive computing and locative media projects draw out the breadth of current classification schema: everything from mobile games, place-based storytelling, spatial annotation and networked performances to device-specific applications. A prominent use of locative media is in locative art. A sub-category of interactive art or new media art, locative art explores the relationships between the real world and the virtual or between people, places or objects in the real world. Notable locative media projects include Bio Mapping by Christian Nold in 2004, and Can You See Me Now? in 2001 by Blast Theory in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham. In William Gibson s novel Spook Country, locative art is one of the main themes and set pieces in the story. .
As described by Headmap author Ben Russell: Locative media is many things: A new site for old discussions about the relationship of consciousness to place and other people. Google Maps give a visual representation of a specific place.
Another important new technology that links digital data to a specific place is radio-frequency identification (RFID), a successor to barcodes like Semacode. Research that contributes to the field of locative media happens in fields such as pervasive computing, context awareness and mobile technology. Whereas GPS allows for the accurate detection of a specific location, mobile computers allow interactive media to be linked to this place.
Locative media is closely related to augmented reality (reality overlaid with virtual reality) and pervasive computing (computers everywhere, as in ubiquitous computing). A name for the ambiguous shape of a rapidly deploying surveillance and control infrastructure. The term locative media was coined by Karlis Kalnins.
Many locative media projects have a social, critical or personal (memory) background. While strictly spoken, any kind of link to additional information set up in space (together with the information that a specific place supplies) would make up location-dependent media, the term locative media is strictly bound to technical projects. A context within which to explore new and old models of communication, community and exchange.
The GIS supplies arbitrary information about the geological, strategic or economic situation of a location. Whereas augmented reality strives for technical solutions, and pervasive computing is interested in embedded computers, locative media concentrates on social interaction with a place and with technology.
The physical implementation of locative media however is not bound to the same location to which the contents refers. Locative media are digital media applied to real places and thus triggering real social interactions. As in the case of digital media, where the medium itself is not digital but the content is digital, in locative media the medium itself might not be location-oriented, whereas the content is location-oriented. Japanese mobile phone culture embraces location-dependent information and context-awareness.
While mobile technologies such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), laptop computers and mobile phones enable locative media, they are not the goal for the development of projects in this field.
