Upon reading the paper "Beyond Locative Media", I was struck at what a time capsule it is. Locative media as an art form was formulated when people had little experience using PDA’s or handheld GPS locating devices. This art movement is an outgrowth of artists who were loosely organized under the title net.art. Although their art had nothing to do with each other, all of their art work involved the use of the internet and could not exist without it.(Tuters)

Although I am an artist who stays pretty current with trends in art, I was not familiar with Locative Media art nor was I familiar with net.art, so it was interesting to find out about both. I do remember reading the Headmap manifesto, when it was published in 1999.

"location aware, networked, mobile devices make possible invisible notes attached to spaces, places, people and things...computer games move outside and get subversive.

Sex and even love are easier to find.

Real space can be marked and demarcated invisibly.

”¦what was once the sole preserve of builders, architects and engineers falls into the hands of everyone: the ability to shape and organise the real world and the real space.

Real borders, boundaries and space become plastic and maleable [sic], statehood becomes fragmented and global.

Geography gets interesting.

Cell phones become internet enabled and location aware, everything in the real world gets tracked, tagged, barcoded and mapped.

Overlaying everything is a whole new invisible layer of annotation. Textual, visual and audible information is available as you get close, as context dictates, or when you ask."(Tuters)

Having used hand held GPS devices in employment situations to map landmarks, it was strange to read the development of this movement. It is interesting to see how these devices have become integrated into society in the 10 years since the .walk project at the 2004 Transmediale festival in Berlin or 15 years since the Headmap manifesto was written.

In trying to find a use for using GPS devices as an art movement, the author proposes that they be used to track the development of products because people up till now do not have an idea about all of the people involved with the production of something as simple as cheese. Most people are aware about the process that it takes to manufacture objects or food. They are also aware of the implications of manufacturing products where workers have good working conditions vs subhuman working conditions. In the mid 1800's, Dickens wrote stories to protest working conditions and the use of child labor. More recently, stories about working conditions in factories in Bangladesh as an example have come to light since the 1970's. These reports keep people aware of many factors which affect the labor force.

Recently, there was a story about an app created for phones to keep track of data used in cattle ranching. Rather than having to carry around many pieces of paper, the farmer could enter vital data on his phone, thereby making his task easier.

What I find more interesting as people become more familiar with PDA's and mobile devices they find real uses which give more control and change lives. It is no longer Descartes wondering whether he is asleep or awake and whether he can trust the information that his senses give him. People use nanny cams to determine if their children wake from naps or even if their children are being abused by caretakers. There is clothing designed with sensors combat infant death syndrome to tell parents if  their child is having breathing difficulties. 

Rather than a dark world where people are just keeping track of objects, many of these devices can provide critical information which can assist with decision making. Soon we will wonder how we ever functioned without them.

References:
Networked Publics Book  

edited by Kazys Varnelis, MIT Press 2008

What counts as literacy and how literacy changes in response to the new media landscape

There is a huge push in the gaming industry to promote games as learning tools. However, most gaming companies do not produce educational games. In the paper,”Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture”, it was pointed out that games such as Civilization present a false or distorted view of history. With huge budgets to work with to create content, some people actually believe that these games create historically accurate scenarios. (Jenkins, 22, 2009) When my son played these games, he thought that they were historically accurate. When I viewed the material, it was apparent that although fun to play, the narrative had nothing to do with history. I encouraged him to question the story line. Being able to distinguish between fiction and fact is another part of literacy when using any media.

 Having a sense of skepticism is part of literacy that should be developed as one uses new media. New inventions have occurred since the dawn of time. Understanding how media is created, being able to see the ghost in the machine can help to develop that skepticism. In creating new media content, one uses similar skills to creating content in other media. One types, photographs, creates films, art work etc. All forms of media have many influences. Film makers create films from history or fiction. Art work can use other media, historical or fictive sources as inspiration for subject matter. Not knowing what these works are, not connecting new media to previous media can create a false sense that the computer is a magic box. Literacy about content from a broader cultural perspective bridges the gap between “new” and “old” media.

A computer is a tool. In conjunction with the internet, it has many capabilities. One can read text on the screen. One can store books using the memory of the hard drive. It is a word processor. There are websites where one can self-publish. Understanding what this tool can do increases literacy. Being able to harness this tool to increase the self-actualization of each individual implies that the rights of individuals need to be upheld. This requires literacy about intellectual property which may or may not be an unrealistic expectation in education, depending on the age of the individual. 

 References

-S. Bennett & K. Maton, “Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate: Towards a more nuanced understanding of students’ technology experiences”,, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, Sydney, Blackwell Publishing, 2010.

-Crystal, David, Language and the Internet, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

-Henry Jenkins with Ravi Purushotma, Margaret Weigel, Katie Clinton, and Alison Robison “Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture, Media Education for the 21^st Century”, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, 2009.