[-empyre-] Is "locative media" the same as "mobile multimedia"?

[Brett Stalbaum <stalbaum@ucsd.edu>]

GPS is probably the first digital locative user interface that was mass 
marketed and broadly available to a large public. (The .mil industry has 
had other digital systems for a long time...) Companies like Garmin and 
Thales (Magellan brand), have a close to a couple of decades of 
experience designing and deploying digital locative media interfaces. 
The diversity of these interfaces are mature and quite advanced - 
compare an aviation GPS system to a mapping system for drivers to hand 
held devices for hiking and climbing.

I have used GPS for many years and own more than one device. My favorite 
UI to a GPS device for most purposes is the Garmin geko interface - the 
most minimalist and unobtrusive UI, with the lowest resolution screen 
and most limited features. The entire reason I like it most is that it 
does the most to get out of my way, easily becoming a transparent, 
invisible interface. I don't go hiking to experience a digital UI, even 
though I *quite* enjoy being mediated by GPS as a location based service.

What I am proposing is that there is a critical/aesthetic distinction 
between "mobile multimedia" (designing user experience with digital UI 
that happens to use location data as triggers), and other potential 
forms of locative practice. The former is what I think most people refer 
to when the new meme "locative media" is being indexed today, while the 
latter may relate to any number of art practices such as land art, 
site-specific installation, and performance mediated by location aware 
technology. My issue with the former is that it implies "user interface, 
user iterface, user interface" and not "location, location, location."

Btw, all of these later terms (land art, site-specific) seem a little 
dangerous to me - in that they index a world of art ideas connecting to 
a lot of well explored 20th century practices. But I wonder of "mobile 
multimedia" and "locative media" don't suffer the same. Terms like 
landscape characterization, database, "land use interpretation" 
(www.clui.org), and "sublime profiling" (Joel Slayton), might be more 
appropriate.

hight@34n118w.net wrote:

> > I would have to say that it currently is both augmenting and competing
>
> in the sense that the screen has to be viewed at least to see where one
> is at and going .  I am very interested in solutions to this that
> minimize that periodic disconnect (like a pda or eventually smart
> eyewear so you don't even have to look down at all.
>
> The other side of it is that there is an opportunity for a lot of play and
> metaphor in the interface.  We use a map that is accurate but is acually
> many decades old (the buildings haven't changed ) and are interested in
> eventually using multiple layers that can, at times, slip.  Different
> senses of place and mapping, interface and data, references to time and
> usage with different ways of presenting information that could at times
> slip in and out at certain locations.
>
> We actually start the program and talk to the people at first , then let
> them go.  It is much more their experience and their ultimate authoring in
> a barthean sense of their path sets a sequence that they form (as we
> designed it to function).
>
> We watch them as they walk away and return and have learned a lot from
> that. We take drivers licenses as a deposit.

--
Brett Stalbaum
Lecturer, psoe
Coordinator, ICAM
Department of Visual Arts, mail code 0084
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gillman
La Jolla CA 92093