[-empyre-] locative city, annotated space

[Glenn Bach <gbach@csulb.edu>]

Jeremy, et al.

I'm interested in your thoughts on the slippage involved in the mediated 
experience of place, with the danger of the participant being so wrapped 
up in the interface that she loses sight (literally, figuratively) of 
the actual landscape surrounding her, something Andrea Moed briefly 
mentions in her "Annotate Space" essay: "[T]hey [location-based 
software] tend to narrow the experience of place.  Some cultural critics 
believe that location-based software can make people more indifferent to 
their environments--at home or away.  To the extent that a handheld 
device provides a consistent interface to all places, it eliminates the 
need to relate to a particular place on its own terms.  For example, 
where you previously would have asked a local to direct you to the 
nearest post office in a strange neighborhood, you can now punch the 
query into a street mapping program on your PDA . . ." (Moed, 5).
(http://www.panix.com/~andrea/annotate/research.html)

In the photographs on the 34n118w site, for example, in all but one of 
the photographs the participants are gazing intently down at the screen 
or off into middle space listening to the narrative. 
http://34n118w.net/htmldir/Descriptn.html

As a poet and sound/visual artist involved in mapping place, I'm all for 
annotated, locative place experiences, and I think it is a rich and 
inspired (and inspiring) means of renegotiating the landscape, but I'm 
wondering how far the PDA/tablet goes in replacing authentic experience 
with mediated experience (rather than augmenting), or does this 
technology function as merely a tool similar to a street map or tourist 
guide?  (And what is "authentic" place experience?)

Obviously, when the technology advances and the hardware shrinks, the 
annotated interface will become more ubiquitous, so perhaps this is just 
a matter of familiarizing ourselves with a new way of walking through a 
space that will someday be ordinary?

G.