LOCATIVE MEDIA

‘We have demonstrated the ability to selectively deny GPS signals on a regional basis, particularly when our national security is threatened.’ (Lt. Jeremy Eggers, 50th Space Wing, Schriever AFB, Colorado)

Myriorama explores position- and motion-tracking at widely different scales: across the city, and inside the venue. The wanderer’s location in the city is reported by satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS), and fed into the venue’s local network via a cellphone network (GPRS) and the internet. Inside, the data are manipulated and transformed in real time by the dancer's gestures, using a wireless sensor system.

The emergence of cellphones, GPS, and other location-aware devices seems to favour the local and contextual over the global. However, most of the communication networks that these devices operate in remain centralised and closed.

The widespread availability of accurate position data has triggered a wave of media art and activist works focused on novel cartography; many of these are process-based or involve public participation. The term locative media encompasses all such works that use position-fixing mobile technologies. Some works are being appropriated by the ‘creative industries’, especially gaming. But locative media, as informed, for example, by the Situationist International, can also be a locus of resistance.

"myriorama" : A picture made up of several smaller pictures, drawn upon separate pieces in such a manner as to admit of combination in many different ways, thus producing a great variety of scenes or landscapes.