Locative media communities, social media and cultures of enthusiasm

ABSTRACT

Locative media art has been a popular topic to study, yet the focus tends to be on examining the artworks themselves, which have challenged us to think about the complex interrelations of space, place and time in novel ways. In this paper we offer a different view of locative media art by examining the community practices that can emerge through the production of this work. By highlighting how the social media platform, WhatsApp, facilitated communication and arts practice during a recent summer school on the theme of locative media, we demonstrate how cultures of enthusiasm can emerge from the adjacent digital spaces of locative media art. Our reflections highlight the ways that enthusiasm for locative media art and towards other participants was produced through WhatsApp spaces, through both enthusiastic language practices and atmospheres of enthusiasm. Ultimately, we aim to reveal that locative media is not only a technology that is used to shape our relationship to space, place and time, but that it is also a technology which encourages a set of community driven practices. In doing so we contribute to the literature on locative media art by giving attention to the communities of practice that form around it.

KEYWORDS:

• Locative media
• art
• social media
• enthusiasm
• community

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our thanks to the two anonymous reviewers of this article, whose comments greatly improved its focus and direction. We also thank Fred Adam, Geert Vermeire and all of the summer school participants, without which our interest in enthusiasm towards locative media would not have been recognised.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Based on an analysis of Hayle Churks app, created by Lucy Frears (see https://www.hayletowncouncil.net/2016/12/free-hayle-churks-mobile-app-on-itunes/).

2 The course was part of a wider research project called ‘Locally-global spatial narratives: exploring the potential of locative media as an educational tool for understanding climate change and forced migration’. Initially the summer school was designed to be held in a classroom setting in London, but due to COVID-19 we were forced to shift to an online-only model. By doing so we were able to attract participants from around the world, including people from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. All participants are anonymised in this analysis and have given us permission to use data collected about them during the course. The course and wider project have undergone and passed an internal ethical review process at King’s College London (ref: MRA-19/20-18577).

3 CGeomap is a locative media and mapping platform. See https://cgeomap.eu for details.

4 To see the finished map, see https://cgeomap.eu/earthlings/.

5 https://thisisnotaslog.com.

6 The process of formatting the word cloud graph of this particular WhatsApp group (Earth Team) we started by exporting the conversation from a feature of the App itself into a text format. Subsequently, we began the process of withdrawing from the file: names of participants, numbers, media (photos/videos/audios) and websites links. This step was fundamental in order to keep the material focused as much as possible in the written content of the conversation and avoid multiples names and numbers of participants that are commonly exported from the WhatsApp. Ultimately, after the file was ready, the word count and the word cloud graph were possible to be created.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the British Academy / Leverhulme Trust. Award reference: SRG1920\100813 and by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. We thank them for their support.

Notes on contributors

Cristina A. G. Kiminami

Cristina A. G. Kiminami is a PhD candidate in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London. Her previous research experience was in digital counter-cartography practice by contemporary artists and activists. Her current research is on spatial humanities, digital mediation relations and people perception of urban surroundings. Her Master's and Bachelor's Degree from the University of São Paulo on Architecture and Urbanism.

Mike Duggan

Mike Duggan a cultural geographer and a Lecturer in Digital Culture, Society and Economy in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. He has a PhD from Royal Holloway University of London, working in partnership with the Ordnance Survey on studying everyday digital mapping practices. He is primarily interested in the tensions and contradictions that emerge when we examine how digital society and technology is theorised alongside how everyday life is lived. He is the editor-in-chief of the Livingmaps Review, a bi-annual journal for radical and critical cartography, and a member of the recently established Mapping Futures Imaginaries network.