ROWAN, W; GOGGIN, G. Locative Media – Definitions, Histories, Theories.

In:
_____ (Org.). Locative Media. New York: Routledge, 2014. P .1-19.

SILVA, A. S; FRITH, J. Mobile interfaces in public space: Location privacy, control,

and urban sociability. New York: Routledge, 2012, p.09.

Os autores iniciam com exemplos de usos de tecnologias locativas. Sejam redes

sociais de encontros, usos de GPS, seja pelo reconhecimento de uma localidade pela
policia por meio de equipamentos eletrônicos. Ou outros usos.

Em seguida os autores afirmam que “broadly speaking, locative media involves

the use of information, data, sounds, and images about a location.” (p.1-2) Mas que “in
reality, as we shall discuss in this chapter and as will be borne out in this book, the
definitions of both ‘locative’ and ‘media’ turn out to be much more complex, fabulous,
prosaic, frustrating, and disappointing than they might seen” (p. 2). Ou seja, apesar do
uso repetitivo desses termos por teóricos, seus conceitos são menos óbvios do que
aparentam.

Sendo assim

locative media envolve not just global positioning stellites (GPS), cellular
mobile phones, location-based services (LBS), social networking applicatinos,
and so-called check-in applications from Dodgeball and Foursquare, through
Facebook Places, Twitter, adn Weibo. It is turning out that locative media are
the harbinger of the emergente media of our time, from big data to drones, from
the Internet of Things to logistics, all with their urgent cultural, social, and
political implications (p. 2)

As mídias locativas englobam um grande grupo de práticas em que a tecnologia é

apenas um lado da moeda em que o outro lado é composto por uma série de implicações
sociais, culturais, políticas, econômicas e etc.

O segundo conceito discutido nesse capítulo introdutório é o de “location”. Os

autores afirmam que “the concept of location (like the related concepts of place and space)
has developed according to a diverse and complicated set of etymological trajectories that
include legal use (with location understood as the action of letting for hire) and gramatical
use (where it refers to a particular case form). (J. A. SIMPSON; E. S. C. WEINER, The
Oxford english dictionary, 2nd ed., Vol VIII, OXFORD: Clarendon Press, 1989, p.
1082)” (p.2) Uma outra concepção afirmada pelos autores é a de “land settlement
practices, as well as to processes of emplacement and ‘the action of discovering, or the
ability to discover or determine, position of a person or thing’ (J. A. SIMPSON; E. S. C.
WEINER, The Oxford english dictionary, 2nd ed., Vol VIII, OXFORD: Clarendon Press,
1989, p. 1082)” (p. 2). Rowan e Goggin declaram que é em relação às duas ultimas
acepções que o termo “location” é aplicado em relação as tecnologias de mídias móveis.

Rowan e Goggin citam Silva e Frith (2012) sobre o uso do termo “locations” em
relação as mídias digitais, de acordo com os autores “Locations are still defined by fixed
geographical coordinates, but they now acquire dynamic meaning as a consequence of
the constantly changing location-based information that is attached to them.” (p. 3). Os
autores continuam que antes “location” significa o espaço sem significação, esse conceito
pode agora ser interpretado como assumindo “complex, multifaceted identities that
expand and shift according to the information ascribed to them (SILVA; FIRTH, 2009)”
(p. 3).

A adoção do termo “locative” ao invés de “location” foi realizada por Karlis

Kalnins “is more than mere semantics; it is deliberate insofar as, for him, it strategically
repositions media arts practice by shifting the emphasis off the site of action (actual place
or locations) and onto the agency and actions of subjects and onto the temporal
dimensions of these actions.” (p. 3). Os autores endossam essa decisão porém declaram
que “our preference is for that the two – action and the sites in which these temporally
based actions occur – be kept in a productive tension that also accounts for the various
tchnological (cellphone towers, radio signals, handsets, wi-fi, etc.) and other
infrastructures (not the eleast of these being corporate arrangements) that mediate our
locationally situated technosocial interactions” (p.3-4)

As tecnologias locativas têm o primeiro passo nos sistemas de GPS militares,

sendo, posteriormente, utilizadas comercialmente. Na década de 1990 foram realizados
diversos estudos e experiências com a tecnologia. Mas foi no início dos anos 2000 que a
tecnologia locativa teve um aumento grande de usos. Os autores falam em
“experimentation with location and mobile devices across art, urban design, ubiquitous
and pervasive computing, and strands of gaming cultures. These experiments included
locative art, performances, activist interventions, location-aware fiction, location-based
games, annotation, and storytelling.” (p. 4)
 Os autores então reafirmar que “’locative media’ is the term that is used to capture
this diverse array of location-aware Technologies and practices. The therm ‘locative
media’ (that is, media of communication that are functionally bound to a location) is
preferred for the simple reason that it is economical and expansive but also precise”. (p.
4). O uso desse termo é justificado tanto por seu histórico quanto por estar ancorado no
campo da arte em novas mídias.

Sobre esse campo os autores afirmam que “the field of new media arts has been
at the vanguarda of exploring both the crative possibilities and the critical implications of
locative media, and it is where the bulk of the literature on locative media to date is found”
(p. 4). O campo de arte em novas mídias, entretanto, não é o único a discutir sobre mídias
locativas, alguns questionamentos relevantes são “how locative Technologies mediate the
relationship between technology use and physical/digital spaces; exploration of the
representation of space and spatial practice through locative media; and concern for what
might be described as questions of power and the politics of location and locatability” (p.
5). O que evidencia possibilidades de estudos interdisciplinares sobre e por meio das
mídias locativas.

Para Rowan e Goggin próximo ao início da década de 2010 três grandes

desenvolvimentos aumentaram o interesse em mídias locativas. O primeiro desses três
“new kinds of locative media emerged through the ‘geoweb’ – the combination of the
Internet with mapping, place-making, and locational Technologies”. (p. 5) O segundo é
“the phenomenal growth of smartphones following the launch of Apple’s iPhone and
Google’s Android platforms in 2007-2008, the mobile Internet firmly took hold” (p. 6).
E por último “an enormous growth in personal, private, and machine-based information
and processing has been associated with a wide range of consumer and entreprise
technologies and networks, which adds significantly to mass personalized user, device,
and netowrk data concerning location.” (p. 6)