*LEA Special Issue: Locative Media*
Worldwide Call for Submissions
Guest Editor: Drew Hemment
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http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/LEA2004/authors.htm#lmedia
The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is inviting papers and artworks that deal
with the emerging data-based spatial practice of Locative Media.
Across a broad range of contexts the interface between data environments and location has
emerged as a central concern, reversing the trend towards digital content being viewed as
placeless, or only encountered in the amorphous space of the internet. An emerging field of
creative practice is coalescing around artists and technologists who are exploring the use of
portable, networked, location-aware computing devices for social interfaces to places and artistic
interventions in which geographical space becomes a canvas. Artists have long been concerned
with place and location, but the combination of mobile devices with positioning technologies is
opening up a manifold of different ways in which geographical space can be encountered and
drawn, and presenting a frame through which a wide range of spatial practices may be looked at
anew. Locative Media as an emergent culture is further characterised by an emphasis on the social
and user led, and as a site where technological utopianism rubs up against a critical
understanding of Locative Media's own axiomatic of control.
Submissions are sought which foreground not the technologies but rather issues to do with
participation, perception and process, and that explore the critical context of Locative Media. What
is Locative Media's relationship to dominant logics of representation, and how does it forces a
reassessment of accustomed ways of representing, relating to and moving in the world? How may
methodologies within Media Art and other disciplines be developed to meet a convergence of
geographical and data space, and a practice that works across international boundaries, mediums
and genres? How can collaborative or user-led mapping and cartography offer new possibilities
for community organisation? What metaphors are available for these new kinds of spatial
experience other than mapping and navigation? How may artists respond to the abstraction
inherent in Locative Media as a data-based form, and look beyond the reductive understanding of
location that comes from Geographic Information Systems - in which place is considered as a set
of geographic coordinates or a wireless cell - to explore, for example, context, co-location and
material embodiment? What is the relationship between this emerging critical art practice and both
the surveillance and control technologies it deploys and wider mechanisms of domination? What
taxonomies of Locative Media projects can be discerned, and how may terminology evolve to meet
this new interdisciplinary environment?
Locative Media is in a condition of emergence, simultaneously opening up new ways of engaging
in the world and mapping its own domain. For this issue, submissions that present the exploratory
movements of Locative Media in historical context are of equal interest to submissions that offer a
snap shot or polaroid of its current state of emergence.
Topics of interest might include (but are not limited to):
- Antecedents and historical context
- Taxonomies of Locative Media projects
- Art and technology collaborations
- Social applications
- Critical analyses
- Cultural analyses
- Scalability and ownership issues
- etc …
LEA encourages international artists / academics / researchers / students / practitioners /
theorists that engage with locative media to submit their proposals for consideration. We
particularly encourage authors outside North America and Europe to send proposals for essays /
artists statements.
As part of this special, LEA is looking to publish:
- Critical Essays
- Artist Statement/works in the LEA Gallery
- Bibliographies (a peer reviewed bibliography with key texts/references in Locative Media)
- Academic Curriculum (LEA encourages academics conducting course programmes in this area to
contact us)
Expressions of interest and outline should include:
- A brief description of proposed text (300 words)
- A brief author biography
- Any related URLs
- Contact details
In the subject heading of the email message, please use “Name of Artist/Project Title: LEA Locative
Media Special – Date Submitted”. Please cut and paste all text into body of email (without
attachments). Detailed editorial guidelines at: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/submit
Deadline for expressions of interest: 7 March 2005
Timeline (please note the timeline is subject to changes)
7 March 2005 - submission of abstracts
11 March 2005 - short-listed candidates informed
1 April 2005 - contributors to submit full papers for peer review
Please send proposals or queries to:
Drew Hemment
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and
Nisar Keshvani
LEA Editor-in-Chief
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http://lea.mit.edu
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