Nearly a decade on, artistic experiments with context-aware mobile interfaces are seen as the forerunners of an entire ecosystem of locative apps, gadgets and navigation services. There has been a proliferation of the different technique through which one can be located. No longer primarily based on the absolute coordinate system of GPS, a range of location-aware protocols now exist from geo-targeting IP addresses, to augmenting objects with RFID tags, to device-centric positioning via gyroscopes.
If Locative Media has become identified with its art-historical origins in GPS-enabled tracking, today locative practice might thus emphasize a more integrated and relational concept of location, combining the topographical with the topological. What are the ontological implications of every conceivable discrete physical object in the world – from the city to the cell – becoming locative?
New practices of traceability makes it possible to create new association between apparently dissimilar places and things with implications from everything from climate science and urban planning to nanotechnology and biopolitics. As precursors for the reorganization of established ontological distinctions between humans, things and signs Locative Media once again appear as the avant-garde of a control society.
This seminar wants to discuss the social effects, cultural meanings, aesthetic theory and political economy of locative traceability in this expanded field. Participants from all relevant disciplines are invited, especially students in art and architecture, social science, computer science, media and cultural studies.
- Dozent/in: Tristan Thielmann