From mannerist situationism to situated media

A decade ago, the convergence of GPS with mobile telephony first allowed media artists to map the city’s psychogeography. With such technology having now become widespread, the artistic novelty of this approach has somewhat diminished. While the field of ‘locative media’ has been and continues to be productive of both work and of critique, this essay questions some of its conceptual commitments and critical interpretations. As the technological assemblages upon which locative media are based are themselves constantly shifting, the essay considers adapting conceptual approaches accordingly. To this end, an argument is put forth for expanding the concept of locative media, built upon Bruno Latour’s recent engagement with new media and design practices which he characterizes in terms of the act of assembling rather than debunking. Drawing further on actor-network theory, an alternative interpretation of the metaphor of cognitive mapping is developed in which a core concept of locativity, that of proximity, is redefined in terms of tracing the connections of networked objects, this as opposed to the often repeated association of locative media with Situationist psychogeography. An assembly of practices are examined which trace logistics and give voice to multiple nonhuman ontologies.