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

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

Yes .

Just now working this am on my carrizzo plains/earthquake work re merz_city
this morning and I read this fine note

Funny you (Jeremy)  should have just written this, I was just feeling so out
there with the extreme layering of content, sometimes I feel is it
problmeatic  as it is not 'new' as in fab tech? Only as fab as photoshop 7
and photoshop CS and final cut 4.   Yes its cool technically but the tech
goes straight to the content of the landscape and the human response (fear,
amnesia, nonchalannce, California dreamin') to the threat of earthquake, the
sense 'o' doom, big forces, etc. thanks for the interesting  comment.

Do you have refs for norman klein, online?

Brett, re your critical edge about distinguishing usages of the term
'locative'.  Just an anecdote, fascinating that very often people presume an
interacitivity technical interface  is in  'sublime/semiotic' landscape
'slipstreamkonza' .  I was surprised to notice this and realized that I
hadnt really challenged my own assumptions about explicitly building in a
participatory interactive interface -- or not. To do it or not to do it gave
rise to thinking about the problem of the 'self expressive' landscape.
Actually this has led to a really fun exploration in critical thinking as I
am in the midst deveoping the design prototype for this (as you call it)
'big data' work. I came to the conclusion that it didn¹t want to be
technically explicit interactive art, but that it certainly was aobut the
self expressive landscape and an aesthetic of (inevitably impossible) human
reaching towards understanding that expression as a language.  This is what
I am going to explore in the COSIGN paper and presentation next week in
Split (<www.cosignconference.org/>). However by no means are interactive and
location exclusive emphases. Its just very interesting as a cultural issue
to note how tripped out we are about a kind of fashion for 'interactivity'
when I agree with both you and Brett that it is the rich content that
matters, whether in the narrative archaeology of 34N1115 west or in the deep
sublime of C5's excursions.

One of the very cool things I heard recently was Ron Wakkary's exploration
of "Protoconvergence" (at the Victoria Film Festival/ New Forms Conference
last January) in what he calls participatory design in 'augmented reality'
situations.  I'll need to ask Ron offlist if I can quote a bit from this --
stay tuned.


christina

On 9/5/04 9:19 AM, "hight@34n118w.net" <hight@34n118w.net> wrote:

>> The Theorist Norman Klein in conversation with me referenced a new
> modernism. This is simply the idea of taking new media /locative media/a
> better term  beyond the works that are not developing enough of an end
> result and is more of the technology. The danger is in just rehashing
> previous works in the clothes of new tools and this is something to be
> very aware of, at the same time it can be useful to pick elements of
> previous schools and dynamics to see what they can bring to your content
> and what layers of concepts and elements of place you want to reference.
> 
> One of the things I teach in visual communication and multimedia is to
> cirumvent the shiny appeal and lure of the "new".  New gear always brings
> a sense of time as tilted toward a future and a hot present, but this is
> partially a presumption based on an accumulation of previous signifiers in
> time of future and tech.  The danger is that a lot of the work will look
> new as per a current asthetic or the edge of a developing asthetic but
> this will always recontextualize in time. Content needs to be emphasized
> and needs to be rich, and interface needs to be to highlight and reference
> content. There is a continuim of work that fades as its asthetic falls
> from favor as opposed to work that has more interesting content and form
> that can retain interest beyond the umbrella of a certain paradigm of
> design and "new" tech and layout.
> 
> There is a need for better terminology.
> 
> 
> 
> 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."
>> 
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-- 
 soundart performance videoinstallation multimedia painting theory


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