Locative Art as Existential Media in Post-Virtual Geophilia

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

As a point of departure for this thesis, I quote the following definition of locative media by Julian Bleecker in the special edition of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac on locative media:
locative media that is of most immediate concerns is that made by those who create experiences that take into account the geographic locale of interest, typically by elevating that geographic locale beyond its instrumentalized status as a 'latitude longitude coordinated point on earth' to the level of existential, inhabited, experienced and lived place. These locative media experiences may delve ‘into’ the historical surface of a space to reveal past events or stories (whether fictional, confessional or standing on consensus as factual). Locative media experiences may also cross space, connecting experiences across short or long geographic, experiential, or temporal distances. At its core, locative media is about creating a kind of geospatial experience whose aesthetics can be said to rely upon a range of characteristics ranging from the quotidian to the weighty semantics of lived experience, all latent within the ground upon which we traverse.
This thesis will announce early sightings of an emerging cultural sensibility: the expanding tendency to accentuate the geographic locale as a cause-and-effect reasoning, motivation, and inspiration for understanding and responding to conditions of the present moment. Artists, designers, architects, technologists and cultural producers have begun to respond creatively to the geographic depth of ‘here and now’. That prompted me to look for how this idea of location awareness plays out within contemporary locative art aesthetics proliferating through the work of media artists. This thesis is to provide a new context in which to interpret media art by examining the geographical proximity of media and the media users and in turn to elucidate the wider aesthetic implications of the ‘locativeness’ in media art. In order to do so, I will trace some of the developments as well as presenting my own work as a testing ground to take up ‘locativeness’ as a vector in directing thoughts, systems and experiences and to make this practice material and discursive at the same time.
The thesis establishes existential angst as a fundamental modus operandi for human curiosity and expressing our desire to ‘know’ and to ‘record’ where we are. Locative media that has been developed along this direction gives us an unprecedented degree of self-consciousness in time. It has the quality of representing a person at a particular time and space. This thesis will examine the relationship of philosophy especially of existential philosophy and the performativity of mobility and the way we experience locative art as a producer or instigator and also as an audience or participant. The theoretical structure of the thesis is based on a schema of observations on an individual at three distinct yet complementary levels of analysis: (a) micro-level, (b) meso-level, and the wider (c) macro-level. At the micro level, I focus on the mind where our consciousness arises from. At this level, the sense of being of an individual is perceived and represented in one’s cognition. In the mid-range or meso-level, I address the role of one’s body in embodied experience and discuss the performativity which is the action of an individual in an environment. The macro-level contains the spatial relational properties of large-scale complex environments. An individual in a large scale geographic space can only be observed and analyzed from a macro perspective afforded by a macroscope i.e. Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite. The macro-level analysis traces the outcomes of the dynamic interactions between individual, society, earth, media and locative technology. In the framework of autopoiesis, I explain a circular loop through which the macro-level phenomenon (e.g. map) appears as an aggregation of micro-level (e.g. spatial cognition) carried out at meso-level (bodily action), and through which macro-level (e.g. GPS satellite) affects micro-level agent (e.g. an individual agency). Paradoxically, Easton and Frazier shows the infinity of this micro-macro frame by painting a mental image of the invisible megastructure of geographic communication that is all around us as an image of ‘electrons orbiting an atom’. ,
In the 21st century, we are in thrall to the collective consciousness of movement and location awareness due to the pervasive operation of GPS-based technologies in everyday life. We see the growing application of locative technology in our day-to-day operations, ranging from professional use through commercial application to banal hobbyist use. The omnipresent internet connectivity in support of the constant communication of location and movement is increasing the fluidity between physical space and virtual space. Hence, we see spatially dispersed practices in everyday life. While technology is offering us a new mode of perception of our presence, this phenomenon presents us with an opportunity to rethink the mind-body problem and legacies of earlier existentialists’ approaches to mind, body, and phenomenon. On this discourse, I reinvented the cogito of ‘I move, therefore I am’ – movement becomes the primary activity of existence. The tautology is: I move so that I know I exist, and I know I exist because I move. I am giving priority to empirical or performative investigation over conscious reflection as the basis of subjectivity. The rise of global movement together with the effects of these developments begins to indicate why it is important to consider movement in relation to art and technology now.
Locative art owes its name to its emphasis on ‘location’. ‘Location’ and ‘movement’ has a cause and effect relationship: movement is the transition from one specific position to another. It takes a body agency to actively generate location coordinates. Following Heidegger's existential phenomenology, Pepperal explained that consciousness, body, and environment are all continuous: ‘A body without an environment, like brain without a body, ceases to function – consciousness stops’ . The Cartesian duality is subjected to ‘boxed body’ fallacy – a notion of the body as a discrete entity separated from the environment. Precisely because the human body is not and cannot separate from its environment, we have to accept the continuity between body and environment for it is the dynamic interactive processes with the environment from which our consciousness emerge. By transforming this performative intensity into the action-based perception that in turn is embedded in our relations with the techno-world, our presence perception in locative media environment changes dynamically as we move through and interact with the world in real-time. In light of this, I object the primitive Cartesian model of consciousness where the mind is nested in the brain and the rest of the reality lies outside.
Artists making locative art has to experience the multiply effects in material and time as if they are performing their life, rather than to just simply represent life as an expression. The reciprocal relation between the artist and his life is inevitably fulfilled through movement in space over time. The coming into being of the locative art depends on the creator’s and participants necessary movement and this simultaneous juxtaposition of the destining of ‘being’ and the ‘doing of man’ is fundamental for Heidegger’s thinking. Heidegger explained the Greek word ‘thesis’ accounts for the meaning of ‘to do’ in relation to setting, place, position. Therefore, the cogito of ‘I move therefore I am’ can be interpreted as a very sentient way of perceiving one’s presence in the physical world. The production of locative art is a manifestation of a specific trend towards the domestication of GPS technologies and locative media within the cultural sphere. This thesis seeks to provide an interpretation into this genre of art making and the broader contextual implications of these media technologies in the society.

국문 초록 (Abstract)

본 논문은 현 순간의 상황을 이해하고 대응하기 위해 인과 추론(cause-and-effect reasoning)과 동기 부여(motivation) 그리고 영감(inspiration)으로서 지리적 위치의 중요성을 강조하는 경향이 커지고 있는 최신의 문화적 감성의 초기 목격들을 발표할 것이다. 예술가, 디자이너, 건축가, 기술 전문가, 그리고 문화 프로듀서들과 같이 다양한 분야의 창작자들은 ‘여기와 지금(here and now)’이라는 지리적 깊이(geographic depth)에 관해 창조적으로 반응하기 시작했다. 이러한 현상은 내가 미디어 예술가들의 작업을 통해 현재 확산하는 현대의 위치예술 미학(locative art aesthetic)에서 위치 인식(location awareness)에 대한 아이디어가 어떻게 작용하는지를 연구하도록 자극했다. 따라서 이 논문은 미디어와 사용자들의 지리적 근접성(geographical proximity)을 조사하고, 미디어 아트에서 ‘위치함(locativeness)’의 폭넓은 미학적 함의를 밝히기 위한 새로운 맥락을 제공하기 위한 것이다. 이를 위해서 나는 생각과 시스템 그리고 경험을 지시하는 벡터로서 ‘위치함(locativeness)’를 받아들이며, 동시에 이 실행(practice)을 물질적이고 논리적인 것으로 만들기 위한 시험장으로서 나의 작업을 소개할 뿐만 아니라 새로운 사건들의 일부를 추적할 것이다.
본 논문은 인간 호기심(curiosity)의 근본적 방식(modus operandi)으로서 존재적 삶에 대한 고뇌와 우리가 어디에 있는지 ‘아는 것(to know)’과 ‘기록하는 것(to record)’을 표현하고자 하는 우리의 욕구를 규명한다. 이런 방향에 따라 개발된 위치미디어(locative media)는 우리에게 전례에 없을 정도의 자의식(self-consciousness)을 부여하며, 특정한 시간과 공간에서 인간을 대신하는 특성을 가졌다. 본 논문은 철학, 특히 실존철학과의 관계, 이동성(mobility)의 수행능력(performativity), 그리고 우리가 위치예술(locative art)을 제작자나 선동자(instigator)로서 또는 관객이나 참가자로서 경험하는 방법들을 검토할 것이다.
위치예술은 문화적 영역 내에서 GPS 기술과 위치미디어의 익숙해짐(domestication)을 향한 특별한 경향의 징후이다. 이 논문은 이러한 장르의 제작 활동과 사회에서 이러한 미디어 기술들의 광범위한 맥락적 함의에 관한 이해를 제공하고자 한다.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH x
• ABSTRACT IN KOREAN xvi
• CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1
• 1.1 Research Background and Objectives 1
• 1.2 Research Compositions 4
• CHAPTER 2 The Convergence of Geo-technology and Site-responsive Art Practice 8
• 2.1 An Introduction to Locative Media as Information System 10
• 2.1.1 Data 14
• 2.1.2 Technology 18
• 2.1.3 Application 22
• 2.1.4 People 25
• 2.2 An Introduction to Site-specific or Site-responsive Art Practice 29
• 2.2.1 The Dialectic of Place: Site vs. Non-site 33
• 2.3 Locative Media and Its Site-specificity Influenced by Art and Science 37
• CHAPTER 3 The Rise of Locative Art 40
• 3.1 Mobilities Paradigm 40
• 3.2 The Commercial Outlook of Locative Art 42
• 3.2.1 "Geo-" Hyphenation 45
• 3.3 The Creative Uptake of Locative Media 46
• 3.4 Locative Art Taxonomy, Growing Still 47
• 3.4.1 Digital Cartography 52
• 3.4.2 Experiential Mapping 54
• 3.4.3 Object Tracking 56
• 3.4.4 Geo-spatial Annotation 59
• 3.4.5 Locative Game 62
• 3.4.6 Drawing or Painting for Digital Space 64
• 3.4.7 Artistic Critique 72
• 3.5 The Geophilia of Locative Art 75
• CHAPTER 4 The Performativity of Locative Art 80
• 4.1 Performativity of Locative Media 82
• 4.1.1 Minimal Embodiment of Locative Media 89
• 4.1.2 Autopoiesis in Locative Media 92
• 4.2 I Move, Therefore, I Am 94
• 4.2.1 Performative Movement 95
• 4.3 I Move Not, Therefore, I Am 98
• 4.4 Negotiating the In-between 105
• CHAPTER 5 Drawing in the Space between Mind, Physical Space, and Virtual Space: The Aesthetic of Mapping 111
• 5.1 A Case Study of GPS Drawing 111
• 5.1.1 Drawing by Moving in Space 112
• 5.1.2 Dropping Digital Breadcrumbs with OpenPaths 113
• 5.1.3 Drawing with Processing 114
• 5.2 Automatic Drawing 121
• 5.2.1 Generative Psychogeography 125
• 5.3 Crowd-drawing or Participatory GPS Drawing 128
• 5.4 Map as Interface 133
• 5.4.1 Mental Map 135
• 5.4.2 Mapping and Cartography Practice 141
• 5.4.3 Inverse Presence in Mapping Practice 143
• 5.5 The Form of Embodied Movement 145
• CHAPTER 6 Conclusion 148
• 6.1 Summary of Dissertation 148
• 6.1.1 Toward a New Ideology 148
• 6.1.2 Locative Art as Existential Media 150
• 6.1.3 Toward a New Cultural Form 153
• 6.2 Limitation and Future Research 155
• REFERENCES 158