The listserv empyre is having a discussion this month with Mobile Media artists.
Mobile Media are increasingly present in our daily life because networks are more flexible and widespread. Currently, connecting is not only about accessing something that is /not here/, but also about moving along with the flow. /From here to elsewhere/: beyond browsing (which was the Web approach), towards physical traces of relational data. Real time maps of cities allow people to exchange and retrieve information based on its location. GPS games explore the possibilities of mixing urban and data landscapes. Mobile phones become moving infotainment platforms. By using such devices, our culture is shifting even further towards nomadic procedures that blur the boundaries between frontiers and stable knowledge.
Space becomes an important category, since making sense of this continuously moving and interweaving collections of text, image, sound, video and binary depends on an understanding of their trajectories. But there is a dark side of this moon: such devices allow tracking and surveillance, making their user more and more exposed. RFID tags are, probably, the most evident example of a new, distributed panoptic. This month, Paula Roush, Joanna Callaghan, Luis Silva, Heather Corcoran, Marina Vishmidt and, time permitting, Lucas Bambozzi will discuss how mobile media is affecting our culture.
You can sign up to participate or lurk at the empyre list. They have great themed discussions every month but for some reason the website hasn’t been updated for a while. š You can check out the archives though. Here is the listing of the invited guests (though everyone can discuss):