by Lily Shirvanee
Department of Media Arts and Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Architecture, Cambridge University
Darwin College, Silver Street
Cambridge, CB3 9EU
United Kingdom
lilys [@] media [dot] mit [dot] edu
KEYWORDS
locative media, public space, 'underground public art', collective intelligence, viscosity, social networks, mobile artifacts.
ABSTRACT
This essay is an exploration into the social issues that emerge when mobile technologies that have become increasingly locative begin to exist in public spaces. A constant thread throughout this paper is the concept of °viscosity°, where physical deformations of a locative media can also lead to social deformations of a space. In this article, I describe the antecedents to locative media along with several recent locative media projects. I will assert that the social networks and collective attention created by location-based media are also an attempt to respond to, in Walter Benjamin's terms, a state of distraction and disconnectedness that is thought to exist in the contemporary urban life. This essay examines a thickness in space - linkages between people using external artefacts through which strangers and non-strangers alike may leave traces of themselves and communicate their desires, anxieties and histories in the shared places that they inhabit.
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