Confusing the Locative Medium

As with any emerging new media art form, countless definitions and delineations are conjured from individuals who deem themselves avid practitioners, and the art community engages itself in a civil war of research papers until a single idiom is accepted by a majority. There is a grave need for a new method, a new form of scientific representation of defining new media of this sort. Unfortunately, I do not possess the necessary method, so I, too, fall in line to wage war on deciphering the very nature of what is known as Locative Media.

The three major elements in locative media are the user, the user’s environment, and the user interface that binds them together. The media generally refers to the developed interface or the specific usage of a developed interface in an artwork. However, any locative work that fails to incorporate the user and that user’s location, in turn, fails to capture the qualities of locative media. Julian Bleeker, in his essay concerning WiFi.Bedouin, highlights this point, stating that “simply providing access to the Internet via a WiFi node is not particularly innovative at this point in the evolution of access technology.” It is the context of the space providing the access, however, that can offer innovation, rendering it a work of locative media.

Contemporary technology has opened many new doors of possibility for artists in all fields. The most coveted technologies, for their accessibility and easy application, are those involved in Web 2.0, as described by Tim O’Reilly. It is in the use of these technologies that many artists strive to create locative works of new media. Yet, the simple usage of such applications does not infer any relationship to the space that the user occupies. That is the endeavor of locative media; to understand the spatial relationship between ourselves and the world around us.

Fellow practitioners, beware of art that claims locative roots while merely using elements of Web 2.0. While such applications can be stimulating and works of art in their own right, they lack the spatial insight that locative media requires. Think, calculate, design, program, but above all, explore the world around you.