makin' that paper, son! (draft 1)

John Rasmussen

5/12/08

Locaive media

A reflection on a semester of locative Media

This semester has shown me a lot about something I had previously no idea about, locative media. Before taking this class I had little to no experience in any sort of conceptual or technological arts. Thanks to this class I’ve gotten to dive head-long in to this new art form, by learning about different locative pieces, like MILK or .walk, and by actually constructing my own pieces using tools we’ve discussed in class. I’ve also learned a lot about where locative media came from, and hopefully where it’s going.

I started this semester having no idea that there was a 5th floor let alone a whole Conceptual arts department. That being said, it’s no surprise that I was completely ignorant to the world of locative media, even though I had dealt with it directly and indirectly several times. This semester opened my eyes up to not only the concept of locative media, but how maps define the space around us, and how locative media can help shift and redefine this areas. One of the most striking things I read in the begging of the semester was an article entitled “Beyond Locative Media” by Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis, which introduced the topic of locative media and its history as an art. There was one part that stuck out to me concerning the target audience, “unlike net art, produced by a priestly technological class for an elite arts audience, locative media strives, at least rhetorically, to reach a mass audience by attempting to engage consumer technologies, and redirect their power”. This spoke to me, and this is what really got my attention. The ability to not only reach normal people, who may have no idea what the term locative media even means, but to gain their attention and even change the way they relate to the world spatially. I experienced this first hand when we went to the Go Car trip. Although I had encountered GPS devices and used them, I had never used one quite like that. That trip really helped me see the possible extensions and applications of locative technology. Another resource from class, which extended my understanding of locative media’s applications, was the OpenMapping project. The OpenMapping project showed me how one can redefine space to fit the changing needs of society. That is to say, that one can shift the meaning or purpose of a place simply by redefining it on a map. This also changed the way I looked at maps, because it showed me that the people who make maps control the way we perceive the space they are defining. Another section of the reading that I found interesting and also really covered the topic of mapping and its designation of power was in the HeadMap manifesto,

“Control of land and freedom of movement are traditional measures of spatial power. Countries, borders, razor wire, checkpoints, property and prisons all reflect on how the space is subdivided and owned and how people are contained and controlled.”

The Headmap manifesto was the best reading of the semester, in my opinion, because it showed the far-reaching implications of defining space. That space, when defined, is ultimately controlled by those who define it, and if we accept those definitions we are essentially controlled by the people who made them. This really influenced my first project in the class, because I had had problems with this very situation. I had a run in with the police concerning where I could and couldn’t ride my skateboard, which ended up costing me about 100 dollars. After this, I realized it was the police an administration which had defined this area as anti-skateboarding, which is why I sought to re-define the areas around campus as skateboard friendly by making a map of all the good skate spots around campus.

I’ve also learned about the relationship’s that can be made with maps, and how interconnected people are despite geographical separations. The subject of “the Wall”, the separating wall which runs across parts of Palestine, really showed me the reality of the situation there by applying it to the place in which I live. By placing the wall over the city and overlaying the various encampments and neighborhoods, I was able to see where I could and couldn’t go, where I could shop or ride my bike, even which friends I probably couldn’t see any more. This juxtaposition of the two maps caused me to realize that peoples lives are dramatically changed when their space is defined so rigidly. I think this is one of locative medias strong points, its ability to relate 2 completely different environments and draw strong similarities so that people from those places might find they had more in common then they thought before. It essentially has the power to put you in another persons “shoes”, or environment, while remaining in your own, which allows you to see the similarities and provide an unmatched feeling connectedness.
This semester showed me a lot about the possibilities of redefining space, from reading about the enslavement of our world by the Cartesian coordinate system to actually constructing my own m-scape. It taught me that space is constantly being redefined, and that the best ting you can do is define your own space, rather then let someone else define it for you. It showed me that there is no longer a frontier on land, but within cyberspace. Most importantly, it has shown me that humans share a common bond, despite religious or geographic or national designation.