“Technologies of Location: Affect of Place in Artistic Uses of Mobile and Social Networks” presented by Mäkelä
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My paper investigates how an affect of place is constituted through a combination of senses, and in particular through remote sensing of the location. , I am arguing that some network culture theories extend that notion over geographic space. The resulting spatial imaginary already familiar from “cyber space” is re-enacted through location based spatiality as a trace, an ephemeral signifier often unable to grasp the affect of sociability, mobility, and place that participants in network practices experience.
In this presentation, I will focus on few works that deal in particular with location as a central axis around which media is authored, and games are played. Uncle Roy All Around you by Blast Theory combines a social play scenario with mobile performativity by its participants. A recent project by the same authors titled Rider Spoke sets participants on a dangerous bike ride in London with abstract questions to be recorded in a place where one can hide. While both projects are imaginative scenarios, I will discuss in detail how they fail to create an affect with place, but rather operate with abstract geolocations.
