Locative media

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Locative media or location-based media (LBM) is a virtual medium of communication functionally bound to a location. The physical implementation of locative media, however, is not bound to the same location to which the content refers.

Contents

Location-based media delivers multimedia and other content directly to the user of a mobile device dependent upon their location. Location information determined by means such as mobile phone tracking and other emerging real-time locating system technologies like Wi-Fi or RFID can be used to customize media content presented on the device.

Locative media are digital media applied to real places and thus triggering real social interactions. While mobile technologies such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), laptop computers and mobile phones enable locative media, they are not the goal for the development of projects in this field.

Description

Media content is managed and organized externally of the device on a standard desktop, laptop, server, or cloud computing system. The device then downloads this formatted content with GPS or other RTLS coordinate-based triggers applied to each media sequence. As the location-aware device enters the selected area, centralized services trigger the assigned media, designed to be of optimal relevance to the user and their surroundings.

Use of locative technologies "includes a range of experimental uses of geo-technologies including location-based games, artistic critique of surveillance technologies, experiential mapping, and spatial annotation." [1] Location based media allows for the enhancement of any given environment offering explanation, analysis and detailed commentary on what the user is looking at through a combination of video, audio, images and text. The location-aware device can deliver interpretation of cities, parklands, heritage sites, sporting events or any other environment where location based media is required.

The content production and pre-production are integral to the overall experience that is created and must have been performed with ultimate consideration of the location and the users position within that location. The media offers a depth to the environment beyond that which is immediately apparent, allowing revelations about background, history and current topical feeds.

Locative, ubiquitous and pervasive computing

The term 'locative media' was coined by Karlis Kalnins. [2] Locative media is closely related to augmented reality (reality overlaid with virtual reality) and pervasive computing (computers everywhere, as in ubiquitous computing). Whereas augmented reality strives for technical solutions, and pervasive computing is interested in embedded computers, locative media concentrates on social interaction with a place and with technology. Many locative media projects have a social, critical or personal (memory) background.

While strictly spoken, any kind of link to additional information set up in space (together with the information that a specific place supplies) would make up location-dependent media, the term locative media is strictly bound to technical projects. Locative media works on locations and yet many of its applications are still location-independent in a technical sense. As in the case of digital media, where the medium itself is not digital but the content is digital, in locative media the medium itself might not be location-oriented, whereas the content is location-oriented.

Japanese mobile phone culture embraces location-dependent information and context-awareness. It is projected that in the near future locative media will develop to a significant factor in everyday life. [ citation needed ]

Enabling technologies

Locative media projects use technology such as Global Positioning System (GPS), laptop computers, the mobile phone, Geographic Information System (GIS), and web map services such as Mapbox, OpenStreetMap, and Google Maps among others. Whereas GPS allows for the accurate detection of a specific location, mobile computers allow interactive media to be linked to this place. The GIS supplies arbitrary information about the geological, strategic or economic situation of a location. Web maps like Google Maps give a visual representation of a specific place. Another important new technology that links digital data to a specific place is radio-frequency identification (RFID), a successor to barcodes like Semacode. [3]

Research that contributes to the field of locative media happens in fields such as pervasive computing, context awareness and mobile technology. The technological background of locative media is sometimes referred to as "location-aware computing". [4]

Creative representation

Place is often seen as central to creativity; in fact, "for some—regional artists, citizen journalists and environmental organizations for example—a sense of place is a particularly important aspect of representation, and the starting point of conversations." [1] Locative media can propel such conversations in its function as a "poetic form of data visualization," as its output often traces how people move in, and by proxy, make sense of, urban environments. [1]

Given the dynamism and hybridity of cities and the networks which comprise them, locative media extends the internet landscape to physical environments where people forge social relations and actions which can be "mobile, plural, differentiated, adventurous, innovative, but also estranged, alienated, impersonalized." [5] Moreover, in using locative technologies, users can expand how they communicate and assert themselves in their environment and, in doing so, explore this continuum of urban interactions. Furthermore, users can assume a more active role in constructing the environments they are situated in accordingly.

In turn, artists have been intrigued with locative media as a means of "user-led mapping, social networking and artistic interventions in which the fabric of the urban environment and the contours of the earth become a 'canvas.'" [6] Such projects demystify how resident behaviors in a given city contribute to the culture and sense of personality that cities are often perceived to take on.

Design scholars Anne Galloway and Matthew Ward state that "various online lists of pervasive computing and locative media projects draw out the breadth of current classification schema: everything from mobile games, place-based storytelling, spatial annotation and networked performances to device-specific applications." [7]

A prominent use of locative media is in locative art. [8] A sub-category of interactive art or new media art, locative art explores the relationships between the real world and the virtual or between people, places or objects in the real world.

Examples

Notable locative media projects include Bio Mapping by Christian Nold in 2004, [9] locative art projects such as the SpacePlace ZKM/ZKMax bluecasting and participatory urban media access in Munich in 2005 [10] and Britglyph by Alfie Dennen in 2009, [11] and location-based games such as AR Quake by the Wearable Computer Lab at the University of South Australia [12] and Can You See Me Now? in 2001 by Blast Theory in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham. In 2005, the Silicon Valley–based collaborators of C5 first exhibited the C5 Landscape Initiative, a suite of four GPS inspired projects that investigate perception of landscape in light of locative media. [13]

In William Gibson's 2007 novel Spook Country, locative art is one of the main themes and set pieces in the story. Narrative projects which engage with locative media are sometimes referred to as Location-Aware Fiction, as explored in "Data and Narrative: Location Aware Fiction" a 2003 essay by Kate Armstrong. [14] This location-aware fiction is also known as locative literature, where locative stories and poems can be experienced via digital portals, apps, QR codes and e-books, as well as via analogue forms such as labelling tape, Scrabble tiles, fridge magnets or Post-It notes, and these are forms often used by the writer and artist Matt Blackwood. [15]

The Transborder Immigrant Tool by the Electronic Disturbance Theater is a locative media project aimed at providing life saving directions to water for people trying to cross the US / Mexico border. The project attracted global media attention in 2009 and 2010. Articles included a Los Angeles Times cover story focusing on Ricardo Dominguez [16] and an AP story interviewing Micha Cárdenas and Brett Stalbaum. [17] The articles focused on concerns over the legality of the project and the ensuing investigations of the group, which are still underway. The Transborder Immigrant Tool has recently been included in a number of major exhibitions including Here, Not There at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the 2010 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art.

Invisible Threads by Stephanie Rothenberg and Jeff Crouse is a locative media project aimed at creating embodied awareness of sweatshops and just-in-time production through a virtual sweatshop in Second Life. [18] It was performed at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. [19]

The first mobile game to combine both location-based data with augmented reality was Paranormal Activity: Sanctuary, published by Ogmento [20] in February 2011. Inspired by the hit film franchise, the game offered a unique setting where the player’s home town, office or neighborhood became the front lines of a supernatural conflict.

The application called Yesterscape was released for iPhone by Japanese company QOOQ inc. in 2013. This augmented reality camera App which can show historical photo of the space as if user look into the time tunnel. QOOQ inc also offers user to add their historical photos via web interface for them to show through Yesterscape. [21]

In December 2022, virtual band Gorillaz teamed up with Nexus Studios to create the "Gorillaz Presents" app to enable users to use Google's ARCore Geospatial API to watch a virtual performance of the band's song, "Skinny Ape" at Times Square, New York and Piccadilly Circus, London. [22]

See also

Related Research Articles

Ubiquitous computing is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear seamlessly anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing implies use on any device, in any location, and in any format. A user interacts with the computer, which can exist in many different forms, including laptop computers, tablets, smart phones and terminals in everyday objects such as a refrigerator or a pair of glasses. The underlying technologies to support ubiquitous computing include the Internet, advanced middleware, kernels, operating systems, mobile codes, sensors, microprocessors, new I/Os and user interfaces, computer networks, mobile protocols, global navigational systems, and new materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wearable computer</span> Small computing device worn on the body

A wearable computer, also known as a body-borne computer, is a computing device worn on the body. The definition of 'wearable computer' may be narrow or broad, extending to smartphones or even ordinary wristwatches.

Location-based service (LBS) is a general term denoting software services which use geographic data and information to provide services or information to users. LBS can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor object search, entertainment, work, personal life, etc. Commonly used examples of location-based services include navigation software, social networking services, location-based advertising, and tracking systems. LBS can also include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location. LBS also includes personalized weather services and even location-based games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Augmented reality</span> View of the real world with computer-generated supplementary features

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated 3D content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive, or destructive. As such, it is one of the key technologies in the reality-virtuality continuum.

Context awareness refers, in information and communication technologies, to a capability to take into account the situation of entities, which may be users or devices, but are not limited to those. Location is only the most obvious element of this situation. Narrowly defined for mobile devices, context awareness does thus generalize location awareness. Whereas location may determine how certain processes around a contributing device operate, context may be applied more flexibly with mobile users, especially with users of smart phones. Context awareness originated as a term from ubiquitous computing or as so-called pervasive computing which sought to deal with linking changes in the environment with computer systems, which are otherwise static. The term has also been applied to business theory in relation to contextual application design and business process management issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mixed reality</span> Merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments

Mixed reality (MR) is a term used to describe the merging of a real-world environment and a computer-generated one. Physical and virtual objects may co-exist in mixed reality environments and interact in real time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ambient intelligence</span>

Ambient intelligence (AmI) is a term used in computing to refer to electronic environments that are sensitive to the presence of people. The term is generally applied to consumer electronics, telecommunications, and computing.

Mscape was a mobile media gaming platform developed by Hewlett-Packard that could be used to create location-based games. The development of Mscape was discontinued on March 31, 2010.

Supranet is a term coined at the turn of the 21st century by information technology analysis firm Gartner to describe the fusion of the physical and digital worlds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual graffiti</span> Graffiti only visible through augmented reality software

Virtual graffiti consists of virtual or digital media applied to public locations, landmarks or surfaces. Virtual graffiti applications utilize augmented reality and ubiquitous computing to anchor virtual graffiti to physical landmarks or objects in the real world. The virtual content can then be viewed through digital devices. Virtual graffiti is aimed at delivering messaging and social multimedia content to mobile applications and devices based on the identity, location, and community of the user.

A pervasive game is one where the gaming experience is extended out into the real world, or where the fictional world in which the game takes place blends with the physical world. The "It's Alive" mobile games company described pervasive games as "games that surround you," while Montola, Stenros, and Waern's book Pervasive Games defines them as having "one or more salient features that expand the contractual magic circle of play spatially, temporally, or socially." The concept of a "magic circle" draws from the work of Johan Huizinga, who describes the boundaries of play.

A projection augmented model is an element sometimes employed in virtual reality systems. It consists of a physical three-dimensional model onto which a computer image is projected to create a realistic looking object. Importantly, the physical model is the same geometric shape as the object that the PA model depicts.

In computing, 3D interaction is a form of human-machine interaction where users are able to move and perform interaction in 3D space. Both human and machine process information where the physical position of elements in the 3D space is relevant.

Spatial contextual awareness consociates contextual information such as an individual's or sensor's location, activity, the time of day, and proximity to other people or objects and devices. It is also defined as the relationship between and synthesis of information garnered from the spatial environment, a cognitive agent, and a cartographic map. The spatial environment is the physical space in which the orientation or wayfinding task is to be conducted; the cognitive agent is the person or entity charged with completing a task; and the map is the representation of the environment which is used as a tool to complete the task.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Location-based game</span> Game which reacts to the players location

A location-based game is a type of game in which the gameplay evolves and progresses via a player's real world location. Location-based games must provide some mechanism to allow the player to report their location, usually with GPS. Many location-based video games are video games that run on a mobile phone, using its GPS capability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Far-Play</span> Software platform

Far-Play was a software platform developed at the University of Alberta, for creating location-based, scavenger-hunt style games which use the GPS and web-connectivity features of a player's smartphone. According to the development team, "our long-term objective is to develop a general framework that supports the implementation of AARGs that are fun to play and also educational". It utilizes Layar, an augmented reality smartphone application, QR codes located at particular real-world sites, or a phone's web browser, to facilitate games which require players to be in close physical proximity to predefined "nodes". A node, referred to by the developers as a Virtual Point of Interest (vPOI), is a point in space defined by a set of map coordinates; fAR-Play uses the GPS function of a player's smartphone — or, for indoor games, which are not easily tracked by GPS satellites, specially-created QR codes— to confirm that they are adequately near a given node. Once a player is within a node's proximity, Layar's various augmented reality features can be utilized to display a range of extra content overlaid upon the physical play-space or launch another application for extra functionality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tango (platform)</span> Mobile computer vision platform for Android developed by Google

Tango was an augmented reality computing platform, developed and authored by the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP), a skunkworks division of Google. It used computer vision to enable mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to detect their position relative to the world around them without using GPS or other external signals. This allowed application developers to create user experiences that include indoor navigation, 3D mapping, physical space measurement, environmental recognition, augmented reality, and windows into a virtual world.

A transreality game, sometimes written as trans-reality game, describes a type of video game or a mode of gameplay that combines playing a game in a virtual environment with game-related, physical experiences in the real world and vice versa. In this approach a player evolves and moves seamlessly through various physical and virtual stages, brought together in one unified game space. Alongside the rising trend of gamification, the application of game mechanics to tasks that are not traditionally associated with play, a transreality approach to gaming incorporates mechanics that extend over time and space, effectively playing through a players day-to-day interactions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kubity</span> Cloud-based 3D communication tool

Kubity is a cloud-based 3D communication tool that works on desktop computers, the web, smartphones, tablets, augmented reality gear, and virtual reality glasses. Kubity is powered by several proprietary 3D processing engines including "Paragone" and "Etna" that prepare the 3D file for transfer over mobile devices.

Commercial augmented reality (CAR) describes augmented reality (AR) applications that support various B2B (Business-to-Business) and B2C (Business-to-Consumer) commercial activities, particularly for the retail industry. The use of CAR started in 2010 with virtual dressing rooms for E-commerce.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Hamilton, Jillian. "Ourplace: the convergence of locative media and online participatory culture" (PDF). Retrieved 3 June 2012.
  2. ↑ Galloway, Anne; Ward, Matthew (July 2006). "Locative Media As Socialising And Spatializing Practice: Learning From Archaeology". Leonardo Electronic Almanac. Vol. 14, no. 3. MIT Press. ISSN   1071-4391. Archived from the original on 2008-04-20. Retrieved 2008-09-19.
  3. ↑ "Visualize your data on a custom map using Google My Maps". www.google.com. Retrieved 2022-12-06.
  4. ↑ Harle, Robert K.; Hopper, Andrew (2005). "Deploying and Evaluating a Location-Aware System" (PDF). University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory (published 2005-07-21). Archived from the original (PDF) on July 10, 2007. Retrieved 2005-11-13. Location-aware computing is an emerging field where the location of people and objects can be used by machines to derive contextual information with which to enhance and assist users in all aspects of their lives.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. ↑ Diamantaki, K. "Towards Investigating the Social Dimensions of Using Locative Media Within the Urban Context" (PDF). Retrieved 3 June 2012.
  6. ↑ Hemment, Drew. "Locative Arts" (PDF). Retrieved 3 June 2012.
  7. ↑ Galloway, Anne; Ward, Matthew (2005). "Locative Media As Socialising And Spatializing Practice: Learning From Archaeology (DRAFT)" (PDF) (published 2005-10-26). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-10-07. Retrieved 2005-11-13.
  8. ↑ Hemment, Drew (August 2004). "Locative Arts". Archived from the original on 2007-06-27. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
  9. ↑ Smith, David (2006-04-16). "How I took my emotions out for a walk". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
  10. ↑ "SpacePlace: Art in the Age of Orbitization - Press Release (English)". Orbit. May 27, 2006.
  11. ↑ "Net politics is all rock and role". BBC News. 2008-12-15. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
  12. ↑ "Projects". Wearable Computer Lab, University of South Australia. Archived from the original on 2010-10-10. Retrieved 2008-09-19.
  13. ↑ Paul, Christiane (2008). Digital Art. New York: Thames & Hudson. pp. 220–222. ISBN   978-0-500-20398-9.
  14. ↑ "TrAce Online Writing Centre - Opinion". Archived from the original on 2010-11-26. Retrieved 2010-12-16.
  15. ↑ http://mattblackwood.com/
  16. ↑ Marosi, Richard (2010-05-07). "UC San Diego professor who studies disobedience gains followers -- and investigators". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-07-08.
  17. ↑ Spagat, Elliot (2009-12-29). "Artists aim to help illegal immigrants with GPS phone". San Diego. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2010-01-02. Retrieved 2010-07-08.
  18. ↑ Hudson, Dale and Patricia R. Zimmermann (2009) "Taking Things Apart: Migratory Archives, Locative Media, and Micropublics," Afterimage36 4 (January/February): 14–19.
  19. ↑ "Sundance Institute".
  20. ↑ "Paranormal Activity: Sanctuary". GamesIndustry.biz. 2011-02-28. Retrieved 2023-02-14.
  21. ↑ "Yesterscape a photographic Time Machine".
  22. ↑ "Gorillaz turn the world into a stage with augmented reality". Google. 2022-12-14. Retrieved 2023-02-20.
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