geography is or is not destiny. discuss.: December 2003 Archives
Off a post in the informative Urban Tapestries feedback blog (which is good and refreshing reading for anyone considering a public trial of new mobile technology), I discovered Simon Pope's location-based media blog. Pope, who did some evocative "site specific" (in a truthful and nonliteral sense) work for the Venice Bienniale, has recently decided to take a closer look at location-based technology. Hence the blog.
A favorite entry
10. Previous notes: Why is location deemed so important right now?
I can tell i'm not in a specific location easily enough: if i watch the tiny symbols in the bottom left hand corner of my phone's screen, they're jumping about, turning from red to green to blue, displaying vertical bars of increasing length.
[...]
it knows that i'm moving, even though, whenever i look up, i see the same retail units: curry's, uci, tesco, morrisons, blockbuster...
the same location smeared all over the place.
Here we get to the significance of the name Pope has chosen for his blog: locative media. It's about locomotion as much as it is about location. I suspect Pope would refuse any hard and fast barrier between the two: part of a place is how you get there. I like his discussion of the differences between sedentary knowledge - the knowledge about places - and ambulatory knowledge - knowledge of the linkages between them. And I also like the way he jumps between the physical and the intangible, to see walking as hyperlink, and "location" as something that can be smeared like paint.
The Helloworld Project is a global interactive text installation combining language, landscapes and communication technology to create a visual dialogue. From December 9-12, 2003, people from all over the world will be invited to send in messages, either by sending an SMS to a dedicated number or by going to www.helloworldproject.com.
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These messages will be projected almost instantly onto mountains and buildings in Mumbai, Geneva, Rio de Janeiro, New York. Video images of the projections will be broadcast live on the project website and at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva.