Mobile Life: A Research Foundation for Mobile Services

The telecom and IT industry is now facing the challenge of a second IT-revolution, where the spread of mobile and ubiquitous services will have an even more profound effect on commercial and social life than the recent Internet revolution. Users will expect services that are unique and fully adapted for the mobile setting, which means that the roles of the operators will change, new business models will be required, and new methods for developing and marketing services have to be found. Most of all, we need technology and services that put people at core. The industry must prepare to design services for a sustainable web of work, leisure and ubiquitous technology we can call the mobile life. In this paper, we describe the main components of a research agenda for mobile services, which is carried out at the Mobile Life Center at Stockholm University. This research program takes a sustainable approach to research and development of mobile and ubiquitous services, by combining a strong theoretical foundation (embodied interaction), a welldefined methodology (user-centered design) and an important domain with large societal importance and commercial potential (mobile life). Eventually the center will create an experimental mobile services ecosystem, which will serve as an open arena where partners from academia and industry can develop our vision an abundant future marketplace for future mobile servíces

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones

Lifeworld Inc. : and what to do about it

Can we detect changes in the way that the world turns up as they turn up? This paper makes such an attempt. The first part of the paper argues that a wide-ranging change is occurring in the ontological preconditions of Euro-American cultures, based in reworking what and how an event is produced. Driven by the security – entertainment complex, the aim is to mass produce phenomenological encounter: Lifeworld Inc as I call it. Swimming in a sea of data, such an aim requires the construction of just enough authenticity over and over again. In the second part of the paper, I go on to argue that this new world requires a different kind of social science, one that is experimental in its orientation—just as Lifeworld Inc is—but with a mission to provoke awareness in untoward ways in order to produce new means of association. Only thus, or so I argue, can social science add to the world we are now beginning to live in

The Construction of Locative Situations: the Production of Agency in Locative Media Art Practice

This thesis is a practice led enquiry into Locative Media (LM) which argues that this emergent art practice has played an influential role in the shaping of locative technologies in their progression from new to everyday technologies. The research traces LM to its origins at the Karosta workshops, reviews the stated objectives of early practitioners and the ambitions of early projects, establishing it as a coherent art movement located within established traditions of technological art and of situated art practice. Based on a prescient analysis of the potential for ubiquitous networked location-awareness, LM developed an ambitious program aimed at repositioning emergent locative technologies as tools which enhance and augment space rather than surveil and control. Drawing on Krzysztof Ziarek\u27s treatment of avant-garde art and technology in The Force of Art , theories of technology drawn from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and software studies, the thesis builds an argument for the agency of Locative Media. LM is positioned as an interface layer which in connecting the user to the underlying functionality of locative technologies offers alternative interpretations, introduces new usage modes, and ultimately shifts the understanding and meaning of the technology. Building on the Situationist concept of the constructed situation, with reference to an ongoing body of practice, an experimental practice-based framework for LM art is advanced which accounts for its agency and, it is proposed, preserves this agency in a rapidly developing field

Locative Media: From Transcendental Technologies to Socio- Formative Spheres An Examination of the Interface between Place, Agent and Locative Media

Abstract This thesis is a theoretical-empirical study that investigates the consequences and implications of adopting locative media technologies in everyday situations, paying particular attention to the potential strengthening of relationships between locative media and spatial practices of architecture and urban studies. Locative Media is a type of media technology that relates information to location/place, provides sites and occasions for the development of new forms of environmental knowing, spatial and cultural understandings, and arguably constructs new spatial relations with place, place-experience and sense of place. Although there is a vast literature on the socio-spatial and cultural implications of media technologies, social media, social networking sites and other applications accessed through the Internet, there are limited numbers of studies that explore the shift in the ways we understand and relate to virtual materials/information following the emergence of location- based technology, and how those technologies might affect the conventional ways we develop relationships/associations with location/places, or perceive places, or understand spatiality. Tracing the emergence of locative media and the new implications of map/representation, the thesis takes locative media as the subject under scrutiny and investigates the assemblage and interrelationships of the three main ingredients of place/locative media/ agent. The interrelationship of those three ingredients and the social and behavioural norms of using Locative media in real time is explored through an empirical lens using two case studies (individuals using Foursquare/Streetmuseum applications), where three main categories of locative media applications (urban annotation/tagging applications, user-generated maps and social networking applications) are explored. The findings of empirical studies, and issues regarding implications of locative media, are then categorized into thematic chapters: locative media and Image of place, Place-making potentials of new media technologies, locative media and alternative flexible forms of sociability, and finally possibilities of relational place- understanding: In-group experiences. Since the field of locative media is very new, theories and ways of discussing related phenomenon are not yet strongly developed: thus whilst examining existing cases empirically, this thesis also contributes to on-going theoretical discourses regarding place-understanding after new media technologies (tracking the change in place-understanding), and the interconnected issues of spatiality resulting from mediation, embodiment, mobility, technology, and community. Therefore the findings of the empirical studies feed into the process of developing related theories, and construct an argument that locative media could be considered as both Transcendental Technologies (technologies that transcend spatiality, geography and territory) and Socio-Formative Spheres (technologies that form socio-spatial interactions) based on the frames of observation. It also provides an insight into the possible ways that new media technologies can be applied as tools or mediums for architects and urban planners to rewrite the city, to communicate with communities of users, or to adopt those media platforms as site analysis mediums, tools for collecting and sharing site-related information in new, practical ways

(Dis)enchantments and perambulations: 'walking-with' intangible cultural heritage, coerced walking and reluctant heritage

This submission presents findings and makings drawn from an emergent hybrid participatory walking and multi-media arts practice, contextualised within and around specific heritage narratives. The thesis features two walking arts case studies: "Honouring Esther" (2015-17), a project based on walking the route of a Nazi Death March, and "Sweet Waters" (2017), a cycle of walks exploring the legacies of slaveownership in Bath. In both case studies, registers of walking are juxtaposed in a creative exploration motivated by a social justice desire to realise agency in heritage as process. Honouring Esther represents an early iteration of walking-with exploring dissonant interventions to stimulate empathic dialogues. "Sweet Waters" develops a further iteration of the approach as a critical creative unsettling of an authorised heritage narrative. In the Humanities, an interest in affect, sensation and the corporeal, described broadly as the ‘affective’ turn, has unfolded a space valuing contributions from artistic practice. This Creative Practice as Research undertaken in that intradisciplinary space contributes to the ‘creative’ turn thus afforded; this is a walking arts engagement with the practices of heritage. The submission brings together activist concerns underpinned by a focus on the walking itself. Through developing an understanding of the somatic, embracing an alertness to the more-than-representational, a co-creative walking and multi-media approach has emerged. Attending to matter and the power of things, drawing on embodied experience and curated content, a critically questioning and retelling of heritage narratives begins. Grounded in the body and bodies in motion, walking and questioning, new knowledge and understandings are produced as part of an intangible cultural heritage process. Walkers become critical story carriers. The submission presents iterations of 'walking-with' as an emergent walking arts practice exploring particular heritage contexts. In these contexts 'walking-with' generates empathic dialogues and builds solidarity in attending to difficult, reluctant, heritages. In addition to indicating new directions for this creative practice and observations of possible interest to research in related fields, I propose 'walking-with' as a non-confrontational approach of potential value for working creatively with other dissonant and complex heritage narratives

Mobile nodes: mobile and locative media, everyday life and sense of place

This thesis presents an analysis of the relationship that exists between the use of place-specific information in mobile communication technologies and the different aspects of place-making and self-presentation in London. Through a study of empirical data collected from seven focus groups, during which a total of 38 participants were asked to draw sketch maps of London to shed light on social and spatial interactions in the urban space related to the proliferation of mobile communication technologies and their location-aware features. To this end, the development of locative media within specific types of location-aware mobile devices and services is shown to be intimately interrelated with different aspects of place-making and self-presentation in London. This thesis demonstrates that mobile and locative media serves as a platform through which the user can communicate different aspects of themselves and their relationship with specific places, while also constructing a sense of those places by sharing individual narratives of their everyday lives. Highlighting the significance of sharing and retrieving locational information through mobile and locative media, this study not only analyses the use of mobile and locative media in everyday life, but reflects also on how the perception of places is transformed as a result of social and spatial interactions, and the practices of sharing and remembering, as well as navigating. Employing a holistic approach in the framing and research of locative media, and introducing sketch-mapping as a creative methodology in the form of focus groups for a research into communication and media, this thesis makes an original contribution to existing literature, especially in the field of mobile and locative media