Galloway and Ward (2006) - Locative Media as Socializing and Spatializing Practice
From Inventiopedia
Galloway, Anne and Matt Ward (2006) "Locative Media As Socialising And Spatializing Practice: Learning From Archaeology", in Leonardo Electronic Almanac, vol. 14, no. 3. Available from http://leoalmanac.org/journal/vol_14/lea_v14_n03-04/gallowayward.asp.
The authors aim to understand locative media through comparison with archaeology. In all honesty, I found the comparison somewhat vague and I'm not sure that I've understood exactly what the authors mean - perhaps because I don't know enough about archaeology, perhaps because the authors are just not being clear. Anyway, here's what I got out of it.
They support the claim of Russel that "[t]he term 'locative media' was coined by Karlis Kalnins as a "test-category" for processes and products coming from the Locative Media Lab [13], an international network of people working with some of the technologies above." The reference is to a webpage that seems to have been connected with the TCM project Russel is writing for, but the webpage is now only available in the internet archive.
Although place-based arts have long and rich histories, Pope suggests that "the novelty of [locative] projects seem to be in the way they extend the human community to include an array of agents, arranged in space which includes antennae, rooftops, trees, buildings, masts and the like" [14]. Albert further explains locative media as "artwork that utilizes media that can express an index of spatial relationships" and claims that locative media practitioners "are keeping the technologies close to the ground, available for hacking, re-wiring and re-deploying in non-authoritarian ways" [15].
just as in archaeology, the spaces and cultures of locative media represent and perpetuate particular interests and values; the choice of what tools to use, what to map or how to classify, as well as how to collect and curate cultural objects, are also of central concern to both fields of practice.
Conclusion:
In addition to learning from its world-building potential, archaeology offers two major contributions to the understanding and practice of locative media arts. First, the question of authorship compels us to look not just at who is currently able to create and use locative media, but at who will be able to re-create and re-use locative media in the future. Second, the question of ownership requires us to be aware that most locative media projects require large databases and these data are subject to the same curatorial issues as any cultural collection.
Probably most interesting about this article is the reference list, with a number of references to interesting locative projects (as well as manifests, theorists etc). In particular it brought to my attention the 34 north 118 west project set in Los Angeles, with a very similar topic to our NarraHand and Tekstopia projects.
