How Locative Media Art Set the Agenda for Mobile Location Aware Apps (and Why This Still Matters).

This paper explores the connection between Locative Media (LM) a set of art practices centred on location aware technologies and current Location Based Services (LBS) and applications. To achieve this LM will be traced to the origins of the term and to the originary ambitions driving this unique mode of engagement with emergent location-aware technologies. This involves returning to the first principles of the Karosta Locative Media workshop, its associated texts and to Ben Russell\u27s Headmap Manifesto [1] to locate the intentions and ambitions embedded in the term itself. From its inception at the locative media workshop in Karosta, Latvia in 2003 it can be said that LM has set itself the task of defining modes of operation for emergent locative technologies. These emphasise the technology\u27s ability to augment space through revealing layers of meanings and associations which act to foreground the rich lived experience of place. With the growing ubiquity of locative technologies I propose that LM exerted a significant influence on these unfolding technologies shaping the application of the technologies resulting in a more user centred experience which opens the technology to a wider constituency beyond the realm of specialists. This influence goes beyond the specifics of similarities in approach between particular applications and artworks, representing a more fundamental conceptual shift in thinking about location which has far reaching implications for the future of locative applications

Locative Media as Remix

While data-driven art is not new, recent developments in technical, artistic, and social spheres have coalesced to produce new opportunities for artists and activists who remix data with space and place to form locationally specific political critiques of great power and flexibility

Forget the flâneur

This paper discusses the connections between the ‘flâneur’, Baudelaire's symbol of modernity, the anonymous man on the streets of nineteenth century Paris, and his contemporary digital incarnation, the ‘cyberflâneur’. It is argued that, although the fl neur could be successfully re-imagined as the cyberfl neur in the early days of the web, this nineteenth century model of male privilege no longer fits the purpose. It is suggested that it is time to forget the flâneur and search for a new model to consider the peripatetic nature of location-aware networked devices in the digitally augmented city

Forget the flâneur

This paper discusses the connections between the ‘flâneur’, Baudelaire's symbol of modernity, the anonymous man on the streets of nineteenth century Paris, and his contemporary digital incarnation, the ‘cyberflâneur’. It is argued that, although the fl neur could be successfully re-imagined as the cyberfl neur in the early days of the web, this nineteenth century model of male privilege no longer fits the purpose. It is suggested that it is time to forget the flâneur and search for a new model to consider the peripatetic nature of location-aware networked devices in the digitally augmented city

Forget the Flâneur

This paper discusses the connections between the ‘flâneur’, Baudelaire\u27s symbol of modernity, the anonymous man on the streets of nineteenth century Paris, and his contemporary digital incarnation, the ‘cyberflâneur’. It is argued that, although the flâ- neur could be successfully re-imagined as the cyberflâneur in the early days of the web, this nine- teenth century model of male privilege no longer fits the purpose. It is suggested that it is time to forget the flâneur and search for a new model to consider the peripatetic nature of location-aware networked devices in the digitally augmented city

Public goods: using pervasive computing to inspire grassroots activism

Pervasive computing technology enables social mapping and sharing of local knowledge to create relationships beyond established social and cultural boundaries; it also enables the development of new practices around place, identity, and community. For more than a decade, the authors have explored the potential costs and benefits of using pervasive computing to facilitate codiscovery with communities across London, with the aim of supporting grassroots activities that help urban communities take action toward environmental sustainability. A core ingredient of these explorations is the making of artifacts to provide both the focus for communal experiences and a way to create public goods--that is, tangible representations of the intangible things we value most about our communities. Specific projects explore alternative material representations of stories, skills, games, songs, techniques, memories, hyper-local lore, and experiential knowledge of the environment. In this article, the authors present work that investigates how public goods can provide the focus for the development of grassroots community groups focused on hyper-local concerns. They also show how creating objects constructed to communicate the activist message of these communities in a tangible manner provides more affective and illustrative ways to facilitate the codiscovery of uncommon insights. This article is part of a special issue on pervasive analytics and citizen science

Augmented Interventions: Re-defining Urban Interventions with AR and Open Data

This chapter proposes that augmented reality art and open data offer the potential for a redefinition of urban interventionist art practices. Data has emerged as a significant force in contemporary networked culture from the commercial commodification of online presence as practised by internet giants Facebook and Google to the 2013 revelations of the unprecedented scale of the US Government’s data collection regime carried out by the NSA (Gellman and Piotras, U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program, http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us- internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845- d970ccb04497_story.html, 2013). Big data and its effective deployment is seen as essential to the efficient running of any enterprise, from city governance to commercial enterprise and, of course, government intelligence services. In parallel to developments in big data open data sources have proliferated opening access to myriad data sources previously only available to Government and corporations. We have seen advances in techniques of data scraping and manipulation which have democratised the ability to parse, analyse and effectively manipulate data, developments which have powerful implications for artists and activists. This chapter examines the possibilities for redefining the activist art practice of urban intervention with data and augmented reality to introduce new hybrid techniques for critical spatial practice (Rendell, Critical spatial practice. http://www.janerendell.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/critical-spatial-practice.pdf. Accessed 18 September 2017, 2008). The combination of AR and Open Data (in the broadest post-wikileaks sense) is seen to provide a powerful tool-set for the artist/activist to augment specific sites with a critical, context-specific data layer. Such situated interventions offer powerful new methods for the political activation of sites which enhance and strengthen traditional non- virtual approaches and should be thought of as complementary to, rather than replacing, physical intervention. I offer as a case study this author’s NAMAland project, a mobile artwork which used Open Data and Augmented Reality to visualise and critique aspects of the Irish financial collapse

Locative Histories: exploring the continued influence of early Locative Media Art

This paper, which draws on aspects of my doctoral research, traces the influence of early Locative Media Art on the current form and application of location-aware technologies. The mechanisms and impulse for this influence are introduced and analyzed and it is proposed that they point to new approaches in the consideration of the agency of Locative Media art. I return to the origins of Locative Media at the Karosta workshop and the ambitions of early practitioners to argue that the practice was based on a prescient analysis of the potential for ubiquitous networked location-awareness. From this analysis was developed an ambitious program aimed at repositioning emergent locative technologies as tools which enhance and augment space rather than surveil and control. It is demonstrated that Locative Media art projects have foreshadowed all of the key categories of current location-aware applications and services. This is not co-incidental but is, I suggest, the result of an intentional desire and associated actions to shift the meaning of these technologies. As location- awareness has become part of the everyday I advance that the forms it takes and the ways in which it is employed are co-constructed by Locative Media art practice and that this continued influence represents the agency of Locative Media Art. Drawing on Krzysztof Ziarek\u27s treatment of avant-garde art and technology in The Force of Art (2004), STS, software studies and their surrounding debates, I build an argument for this agency and explore the mechanism for this influence. While this influence is historical I contend that once its pathways are fully understood it can be sustained or renewed with future emergent technologies and propose that this approach offers new paths for the consideration of media art

Augmented Resistance: the possibilities for AR and data driven art

This article discusses the possibilities for Augmented Reality (AR) as a driver of data based art. The combination of AR and Open Data (in the broadest post-Wikileaks sense) is seen to provide a powerful tool-set for the artist/activist to augment specific sites with a critical, context-specific data layer. Such situated interventions offer powerful new methods for the political activation of sites which enhance and strengthen traditional non- virtual approaches and should be thought of as complementary to, rather than replacing, physical intervention. I offer as a case study this author’s “NAMAland” project, a mobile artwork which uses Open Data and Augmented Reality to visualise and critique aspects of the Irish financial collapse. The project, overlayed Dublin with an activist derived data-layer which supported and enabled physical interventions, making visible/concrete abstract financial dealings through situating them in real space, enacting a virtual layer of critique which facilitated and catalysed wider debate

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