ABSTRACT
Our trajectory through the city and our sense of place in it seems to be altering from that of perceived fixed nodes to a more fluid experience—one constantly diverted by location-based hyper-structured information linked to social media. Mapping technologies and push media accelerate this changing sense of place being no longer a fixed terrain, but an amorphous space of human potentials. The chapter will examine artists’ responses to these new affordances and changes in public behavior particularly those prompted through spatial and location sensing technologies. The chapter will draw on case studies from a broad range of artist-led projects in the newly formed genre of ambient literature (Kate Pullinger’s Breathe); pioneering location-based works by Teri Reub (No Places with Names and Drift); Blast Theory (Rider Spoke) and Esther Polak (Milk) and work from the author’s own oeuvre performed in Athens (Codes of Disobedience and Digital Urban Narratives). Considering artists’ use of location-aware mobile communication in public space linked with social media, recreating a sense of “place” with emergent pervasive technologies, the chapter will interrogate how artists can adequately understand the changing nature of pervasive and mobile media and use this to enhance communication with its performative potentials for a mobile audience.
