kyle /socailpricetracker /locativemedia

features of locative media

• people used as processors (as in .walk, where the users "calculate" the urban space as though they were a "peripatetic computer)
• real space can be marked and demarcated invisibly; physical space becomes annotated; the 'story' of history can become present in a site w/ out physically altering the site.
• typified over last 5 years by GPS enabled PDA; increasingly switching to smartphones/ iPhone.
• offers "a conceptual framework by which to examine the certain technological assemblages and their potential social impacts" (http://networkedpublics.org/locative_media/beyond_locative_media --the Net Publics? project at USC).
• Bruce Sperling's suggestion (in "Shaping Things") that the "internet of things" might be effectively détourned to bring more awareness of the ecological role of objects is implicitly present in locative media projects--though rarely is it explicitly palpable in the ways that the Social Price Tracker begins to suggest.

Examples of successful/applicable locative media projects:

• MILK project is of particular interest for its capacity to 1)convey a 'positive' view of the production/transportation of a commodity and 2)success in using GPS to let the commodity/object tell its own story.
• center for locative media in San Francisco; brings together Bay Area locative media projects with an aim of social good.

Useful links/ texts:

• essay from Netpublics that usefully fleshes out locative media in terms of both theory and practice, circa 2006.
• rhizome is a sort of clearing house of locative media and digital arts projects. We (theoretically) have "institutional access" via the University, though whenever I try to access it that way I get a 404 not found...