This a selection of a range of published and unpublished writing from the early period of 'locative' work. Some of the texts were written commenting about work I was making at the time, and the ideas that I was exploring, other were more formal commissioned articles.
For Simon Pope at Futuresonic [2004]
"Walking is a form of architecture;conscious and unconscious delineation and shaping of space through presence and movement;boundaries; axes; paths.
Natural environments physically respond to the pressure of bodies and feet and our movements leave trails – natural lines derived from physical repetitive action; footsteps in snow, sand or grass, or a worn forest path.
Urban environments are designed to resist marking by the physical presence of the body.
When I make work with walking and locations, they are often derived from my physical presence and movement in a landscape, and I make manifestations of the invisible.
My walking-drawings are about physical orientation, observation and augmentation of my environment. But they are also about my own psychological orientation, and the process for me becomes an intense dialogue with my Self and my environment, mediated through the action of drawing – a parallel physical and psychic process.
The material data produced is therefore equally about the imagination, unconscious and memory [the invisible], as it is about physical territories and notion of a trail [the visible].
The transient nature of a walked path is in direct opposition to art made with material, such as film.
Both film and walking practices involve time, spatiality, rhythm and movement, but former can result in a tangible fragment of time, motion and memory, viewable, playable, experiential to others, while the latter can result in absolutely nothing at all." [2004]
Notes on walking and drawing [circa 2004]
During my recent larger gps chalk drawings in London 2004 [e.g. "Location, Location, Location" in Bethnal Green and "SE8 v1.0" in Deptford] , I often write the main part of a GPS co-ordinate over a hundred times or more. I am often writing the same basic co-ordinate for over 7 hours.
So as I write a sequence of numbers on the ground, I am only changing the last few digits in relation to my new position, which might be and often is only a few steps further onwards each time.
The numerical changes are small. After I have been drawing for an hour or more I don't bother even looking at the GPS as I'm writing, until I get to the last few figures. So in some small sense I become more aware of the numbers in relation to specific locations. I do remember them and now recognise the shift in some numbers from one location to another in London especially. This is also true when I travel in other countries making similar drawings.
In terms of "knowing where you are", I always think about this as I draw. It preoccupies me.
I draw intensely and fast and often don't talk at all even in extremely busy urban environments.
I become very aware of my physical presence, my marking, and where I am walking to and from - but I have no idea exactly where I will write my next coordinate. But my primary feeling becomes one of my sense of Self and my own particular psychology during the period of the drawing. Locating myself in the landscape, my movement and physical and psychological presence. My trail of physical gps positions and their subsequent effect on other people as they walk through them also combines these two elements.
So the "knowing where you are" for me, is not only directly related to my exact drawn GPS position - my conscious action of drawing and leaving a physical trail, position and time, but to the "knowing where you are" in relation to a sense of my unconscious and psyche - and my physical and psychological presence in relation to my immediate environment and the effect and residues my actions have upon it. This also applies to other people as they walk through, or passed co-ordinates or if they see me writing them.
"knowing where you are" is a fusion and inter relationship of the fixed and the fluid and the physical and the psychic; a dynamic between variation, iteration and constants.
Notes written on a paper bag [circa 2004]
The ‘act’ or ‘action’ and the consequences, result or residue of the act are not the same thing. There is a parallel between the invisible made manifest, and coming to consciousness or coming to physicality of the drawn work.
Ordinarily the ‘act’ of making and the physicalisation of an idea is a private or hidden ‘invisible’ act. Documenting and including myself in the art work is more than an inclusion of my physical self. My experience of time and my utilization of motion, time and space effect how I make a work.
My absorption in the work makes it intensely interior, unconscious, invisible, subterranean.This live birthing of a physical trail of self has very little to do with notions of mapping or cartography. The marks made become symbolic acts, ways of marking time and space. My movement and the inter relationship of my immediate environment and physical space results in a coming to consciousness via drawing.
The act of drawing becomes an act of self balance – internal in terms of my own consciousness. Externally it is the residue of an action, that lasts a particular amount of time and traverses a particular space.
Short Text For Leonardo on work at the Architectural Association 1999-2005
"Within the realm of architecture, the notion of what became 'locative media' appeared to be a [techno] logical extension of existing architectural methodologies and concepts, and my Communications courses in Intermedia at the Architectural Association in London between 1999-2005, explored themes and ideas of Locative Media prior to the coining of the term.
Locative concepts are now finding anchors within a multitude of existing methodologies and theories; land art; performance; archeology; gaming; psychology; cinema and architecture and is becoming a catalyst for generating new mutant forms and fusions of practice based on location.
In hindsight, each early embryonic practice made manifest a potential component of a future palette, before it's emergence into a field in its own right.
Some examples are: " Terraportal #1" [2000] which asked students to insert a location specific artwork, inside the then newly built Tate Modern building. The work could only be accessed and understood in-situ and on a mobile phone using words, bitmaps and WAP technologies; and "Portraits of a City" [2001] which made 18 location specific on-line documentaries about Soho in London, navigated by a map. Both projects were conceptually exploring embedding of media in the urban environment and looking at location specific material and its spatial and social effect on future cities.
The courses adapted each year and ultimately pointed towards a location based 'Cinematic-Architectural' practice culminating in parkbenchtv – which constructed a 'terraportal' in Central London examining social and physical change based on the establishment of a locally controlled broadcast media territory.
"Both Cinematic and Architectural fields appear to contain many of the existing conceptual elements needed to examine Locative ideas, but as Cinema and Architecture are mature, complex and multifaceted established practices, they offer a robust foundation for exploring Locative ideas, linking to a long and rich history, and my forthcoming module on 'Geo Cinema' explores this connection."
Park Bench TV examined how the emergence of future localised broadcast (in this case specifically wi-fi) will create territories and in turn identities across locations in the city; what I termed 'Terraportals'.
The project straddled architectural and broadcast ideas and speculated on the development of future local community media channels, offering location specific data and an open access transmission system for a community.
The method was embryonic and involved initial conceptual speculation, combined with practical work building and designing antennas and the establishment of a Wi-fi node on the roof of the Architectural Association sometime in 2000.
One concept, "Signage for the Invisible", examined how people will understand what data is around them, when they cannot physically see it, and a projection of possible media battlegrounds fighting for spectrum and ultimately cultural domination of physical areas. The 'signage' eventually evolved into the physical alteration of street furniture which denoted a media information territory.
Early work involved using laptops and software to physically mark wifi signals – a practical understanding of physical access to technology, but also conceptual formulations of new notions of boundaries based on things you cannot see with the eye, but will be able to 'see', sense or react to via your device. This connected to
ideas of physical materials and future possibilities of signal reflective surface. The marking of a physical 'territory' visualized the signals as a form of plan, allowing a direct connection to the existing language of the architectural diagram.
It can be a distinct disadvantage to concentrate on the specific use and application of "technology", and more useful to work in the manner of an architectural proposition, allowing variations of scale and scope; it is the visionary leaps which stand the test of time, providing a core conceptual idea that can be continually readapted,
rather than being so tied to specific solutions that the work is destined to be a technological period piece." [2004]
Text for Vodafone "Receiver" On line journal
WYSINWYG WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT YOU GET
Pete Gomes
Pete Gomes is a London-based artist exploring technology, space and our experience of
time with his films and media projects like "Work, Place." or the current "parkbenchtv.org".
In his essay he poses the question how the dataclouds produced by wireless technologies
and location specific content could shape our future urban and suburban landscapes. Could
they begin to cause physical changes within specific environments?
We live in an era of fiction science. Not a world of future invention and wild
speculation, but one of logical projection. We use the data around us to apply
current and emerging technologies to our future landscapes, both actual and
conceptual.
Our cities shimmer with waves from mobile phones, cell pools of information and
applied invisible structures that, having slowly pervaded our lives, now shape them.
The foundation had been laid by the mobile and will be built upon by the
forthcoming pocket technologies of the portable device and the dataclouds they will
create.
Voids, negative space, the great un-built. Information as architecture.
Clusters of users can form temporary networks; not diagrammatic conceptual flows
but tangible moving data. Two people sitting on a park bench with computers: a
network. All locations become information portals to areas, people, cultures and
psyches, portals rooted in physical locations and geographies: terraportals.
From Terraportals, Dataclouds and Networked Architectures
AA Files 44, Architectural Association Autumn 2001
© Pete Gomes
The crystallisation of the future is always a kind of negotiation, a sort of
compromise between what one thinks might happen, how quickly and whether it
actually does, and if it does, how far it shifts from any initial imagined course.
In this age, we live with the potential of many immediate futures from where we
stand some seem inevitable, but the actual manifestation of these potential futures
can always shift, left, right, up, down dictated and shaped by markets,
monopolies, users, current technologies and those unpredictable elements that
often retrospectively end up being key components in the final manifestation of
technology in our daily lives.
Our eyes view the horizon line like technological weather forecasters,
understanding what might be possible, but rooted and contained by practicalities.
Inside, we are mentally seduced by an ideal, seamless world of future speeds,
smaller devices, more functions, more flexibility and a greater integration with the
technologies we currently use.
Our future is propelled by the research, rumours, hopes and hearsay of our
oncoming and sometimes unproven technologies and their final resting place and
popularity within the commercial world.
Wireless Internet technologies, the birth of location specific media and how they
shape our future urban and suburban landscapes are one of those futures: real,
immediate, revolutionary and inevitable. Their final form, their precise technology
and ultimate shape are being formulated now, by companies, technologies,
investment, enthusiasm, politics, ideas, people and actions.
The initial division between the Internet and the mobile phone is slowly diminishing,
but as always with technology, the gap between our vision of a future and its
actuality is grounded within the current available and usable technological means.
Mobile wireless Internet technologies look set to reshape and revolutionise how we
perceive our living environments and ultimately how we interact and think about
them; work, leisure, shopping, entertainment, social dynamics, communities and in
turn our own identities in conjunction and combination with all these elements.
Wireless technologies, alongside the parallel functional expansion of our mobile
phones and a physical reduction of our computers, are the final components in the
pervasion and expansion of the Internet. These developments shift the Internet
away from inside our houses, offices and buildings, towards outside, into the
streets, roads, cities, parks, beaches and countryside.
This concept of the wireless world is currently being marketed and presented to us
as the freedom of mobility with computers, being able to access the Internet from
anywhere, unconstrained by wires an expansion of the way we now use mobile
phones, and a freedom from the constraints of our desktops.
The critical element of the arrival of Wi-Fi into our lives is yet to be fully examined.
As the wireless world silently and invisibly extends across our environments, it is
the organisation, manifestation and control of new social-entertainment structures
that will come to augment our existing physical environments, and may become the
most profound aspect of external wireless Internet uses.
The oncoming wireless Internet can be seen from two developing perspectives
the first is a commercially dominated landscape of our high street and shopping
environments. Dataclouds of wireless intermedia, triggering our portable devices as
we walk through an area, will begin to determine how we perceive locations, how
we conduct ourselves, spend our money, and how and where we physically move in
our future city landscapes. These wireless infrastructures will supplement and
augment our existing perception of commercial space, streets, entertainment and
commerce.
These hybrid guides become like Wi-Fi 'Meta-Malls' a commercial overarching
wireless network that will ultimately function as a means to navigate specific
pathways in commercial environments using our own portable devices. Imagine a
future Oxford Street in London, or a Times Square in New York, with consumers in
the midst of a corporate and brand filled datacloud of information and products
infotainment guiding us to shops and tempting us with offers or products and
tokens being sent directly into our mobile devices.
This is the real and inevitable future of Wi-Fi in the context of business and high
streets devices branded by companies in partnership with retailers, which begin
to determine how, where and why we might go on our shopping trips. Consumers
guided by signals emitting from shop windows, and inside buildings, a fusion of the
suggestive, invasive, essential and useless. Shopping by search and navigation, via
devices a physical network, with people and their signals constantly shifting, as
we move in and out of invisible and adaptive pathways. These guides and trails,
targeted to us or shaped by ourselves, become specific to our own interests,
desires and needs, our own pathways, habits and movements mapped for
convenience.
The second scenario is the creation of areas based on locality and shaped by the
people who live and work in the area. These are also determined by wireless
Internet technology, but not dominated solely by a primary commercial imperative,
and in fact necessarily rooted in local community, local decision and empowerment.
It is the balance of these two kinds of wireless intermedia areas that look set to
shape our future commercial and community landscapes variation on types of
terraportal sometimes determined by commerce and sometimes by community
and most likely a fusion of the two, defined by each location.
The birth of what I have defined as a "Terraportal" will begin to shape our lives as
we walk into and out of this new wireless real estate. As such, these info zones do
not yet exist, and neither does the mass quantity of specific devices to access
them, which will ultimately make these scenarios a possible dynamic reality. But all
the components appear to be in place the technology, the desire, the enthusiasm
and the consumers. It seems to be an inevitability.
The question then is not if it will happen, but when it does: What form might these
info zones actually take? Who will control them? How will visitors to these areas or
local occupants think about and use the locations they are in?
Clusters of specific information accessible by wireless devices, using media, audio
and video, will start to be a new component that shapes and augments our
perception of those areas. The information will begin to be a cultural access point
into areas and in turn may formulate an identity for those areas, becoming a key
way of fully understanding a locality.
Within areas that already have a strong identity as a fashionable location, or an
area already known for a particular reason, for example, the new wireless data will
expand and supplement the information that is already known competing clubs
broadcasting music before you get inside, information about art galleries and so on.
But it will be in the new areas entering the oncoming wireless real estate where the
most profound changes may occur.
Could wireless technology along with location specific content begin to cause
physical changes within specific environments? Might this not only cause a new
perception of a location, but also result in physical adaptations, in signage, even in
building? Could this in turn be a new way of engaging a physical community? Could
this become a useful component of regeneration?
The project parkbenchtv.org is beginning to examine these questions by applying
and experimenting with some of these ideas in a working project in Central London.
It is a physical wooden park bench within range of a rooftop wireless node, set up
by the project to give a free Internet signal for public access.
Straddling community project, technological experiment and public artwork,
parkbenchtv.org is the culmination of a series of projects I have run over a number
of years in conjunction with students at the Architectural Association in London,
each exploring aspects of technology and location.
These began with a location specific Internet documentary in Soho, progressing to
WAP and location specific tours at the Tate Modern London (including a series of
WAP wireless artworks inserted inside the gallery which were only accessible by
mobile phone). The setting up of a Wi-Fi node in the centre of London using
802.11b and working with Consume in London, and the mapping of our Wi-Fi
signals using chalk in the winter of 2001, continued the process.
This latter activity was the earliest manifestation of what has become known as
"War Chalking". Our group used chalk stencils to signal where a Wi-Fi signal existed
and could be received. Our aim was to show to ourselves exactly where we could
and could not receive a Wi-Fi Internet signal using laptops. It was a temporary
signage. This work culminated in a wireless action and artwork called "Work, Place."
"Work, Place." was conceived to examine how wireless technology affects urban
space and our future perception of external space, in the context of Wi-Fi. It
created a temporary 'room', using the drawn boundaries of an 'office space' using
chalked lines on a pavement. We worked from laptops connected to the Internet,
inside the lines of a drawn 'office' space on the street.
Although on one level surreal and ironic, it was also a simple and profound
demonstration a glimpse of how we might perceive our wireless future. It is on
record that it was this piece of work in June 2002 that inspired "war chalking" the
mapping of access points for people wanting to use Wi-Fi and laptops to access the
Internet although the origins of our chalked marks to show wireless signals in fact
began in exactly the same location the previous year.
One of the most important elements of "Work Place." was to make the invisible
visible to create a location that visibly indicated that you were inside an area of a
wireless Internet signal and conceptually give a function to specific territory or
particular physical space. This idea is expanded and developed in parkbenchtv.org,
as it extends the idea of location specific media and begins to form a model of how
wireless media might affect a specific area.
http://www.parkbenchtv.org is attempting to create and fuse a physical network
and an on-line network into a combined interrelating system, which can be fluid
and move from local to non local, combine physical activity and on-line discussion,
and be of interest to both local people and also a world wide audience. It aims to
combine wireless access, regeneration, recycling, and community.
The elements of the project are: a Park Bench within range of a Wi-Fi signal; a
discussion forum, available from the web site to both local people and other users:
a media channel streaming content specifically about the area; a printed newsletter
aimed at local people, and the Wi-Fi node allowing access to the Internet.
parkbenchtv.org centres around a single park bench in central London. The bench
itself is used widely in the area throughout the year, but dependent on the
severity of the British weather. It is used by local workers and residents, but also
by tourists and passers by, for reading, eating lunch, and pausing during the day.
The park bench along with some outline instructions about access to the node acts
as signage. The bench itself was in need of repair and we replaced and fixed the
seating, and included some information, including the web address about the
project and simple information about the nearby access point.
This forms a new focal point for a local community, alerting them to the fact that
the bench now rests within a specifically created Wi-Fi zone. The bench becomes
the symbol of the physical node, of visible regeneration, and gives access to and
awareness of the node, which is otherwise invisible to passers by, those from
outside the area and those who are unaware of it.
As a key part of the project, we have cut a new oak plank of wood for the park
bench where one was previously missing. The plank has been carved with the latest
Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) Router, with complex, precise and beautiful
carvings which run the full length of the bench. The oak plank, consisting of GPS
co-ordinates, information about Wi-Fi along with the URL of the project and its
presence itself, turns the location into signage, and the bench becomes a form of
portal into the project. This new plank is a key component; it indicates that you are
within a wireless area, but also acts as a localised symbol. It is a way of getting
people from outside the area and the project to understand it and become part of
the work, and also begin to gain insight into the locality.
The on-line forum is the mechanism for ongoing engagement within the locality and
its inhabitants. It is essential that the forum engages people and allows them to
become involved initially and quickly with the project and locality.
In addition to that, the media channel allows access into the local community by
local people as well as by people outside the area. The aim is to engage local
people with content about their immediate location and also begin to develop a way
for visitors to gain an insight into an area. For example, the open access software
will allow tourists to make a short video, encode it themselves and upload it directly
to the schedule.
The newsletter and print material become a way of initially engaging with the
immediate locality, avoiding a complete reliance on technology at the expense of
simple communication, and it may also involve people without computers. It is
aimed at the area to address local community issues.
The Wi-Fi node itself is set up and specifically installed to allow access for users
outside in the street; it is a potential local community and tourist service and also
focal point for access, a way of encouraging a change of use and re-perception of
the locality.
The establishment of a Wi-Fi node in the area has remained relatively unknown for
over a year. This project intends to reverse this trend by concentrating on the local
community and also people outside the area to use the location and also engage
with it, specifically to create on-line content. The only rule for adding content to the
media channel is that all content must be about or take place within the locality
the square, the people, the workers and the location in and around.
We are using the media scheduler "The Frequency Clock" which enables a channel
to stream content at specific times from any server and also from a range of
media types a cross platform media player.
The first stage of content is made by ourselves, but the aim is that local and non
local people begin to create content about the area. The first location specific
material is in the form of short documentaries about the gardeners who run the
square, and about the key local problem of drug users.
parkbenchtv.org aims at beginning to make a specific location identifiable by its
locality and in turn by its physical local community. The knowledge of a free access
point in a central London square is bound to give momentum but whether this
manifests itself in a re-perception of the location and a change of identity remains
to be seen. The project is a working model rather than a theoretical one, a first
attempt at realising a working terraportal.
From the book Transcultural Mapping
'Signage For Invisibility'.
My intermedia work over the last few years has been examining and investigating the visualisation of invisible signals. The works to date comprise a series of plan drawings using white chalk, which manifest, delineate or invent boundaries stemming from different forms of technological signals. I think of these as poetic actions, that resonate against on coming and developing ideas, in and around locative media and mobile computing.
The most recent drawings take existing physical urban structures and augment them into new geometries using chalk lines and a Global Positioning System (GPS), resulting in globally referenced longitudes and latitudes marked directly onto streets. These temporary drawn manifestations of invisible electronic signals create navigation, boundaries, and in turn new territories, building layers of points and planes which are unmistakably architectural and stem from their urban setting. Using the satellite network, exact positions and times are plotted by drawing directly onto the ground, fixing elements in the urban environment, making this both the subject of, and the surface of the work.
Rather than have clear intention and precise preconceived meaning prior to the work being made, the works are often made from an instinctive idea, with meaning emanating from the work itself, unravelling slowly and ultimately pointing to subsequent directions that could be explored. Viewers are effectively 'immersed' in the drawings and physically walk through them. These locative works prompt the viewer to re-look at their immediate environment. My initial area of exploration was firmly rooted in the field of architecture, stemming from my teaching at the Architectural Association in London. I have often thought of these works as a form of conceptual architecture rather than soley conceptual art.
The drawings are labour intensive, with the most recent large ones taking more than 7 hours to complete. The drawings themselves remain for any time between a few hours to a few days, depending on the weather. Rain can (and often does) wash them away almost immediately. All the drawings to date are documented as real time split screen video lasting somewhere between 1-4 hours. Two presentations of this work in 2004; Location, Location, Location a solo show at Eventnetwork Gallery in London and a lecture and drawing at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; allowed a synopsis of my current ideas and an opportunity for me to begin to examine and view the pieces as a growing body of work and research.
I purposely use the term ‘research’ as each work is as much investigation as demonstration. These works ask questions rather than give answers. They do not advocate locative technologies, they state and present poetic examples that allow a viewer a conceptual window into the world of our immediate, oncoming and imagined futures. They are attempting to provide an experiential sense of how our movement through a landscape of the future might alter our presence, thinking, ideas and feelings.
Location, Location, Location my London solo show, was also the title of the largest plan drawing to date, a 1km sq. that guided the viewer from an underground station in Bethnal Green in East London to the gallery space. On arrival in the space, there was a triptych of plan video projections; a projected video of the recent drawing, which was still physically outside; two earlier works; a chalked drawn map of the route of the drawing outside drawn directly onto the gallery floor; a library of texts on the theme of ‘location’, donated by selected, writers, thinkers and architects.
The two earlier works presented were; Work Place (2002) – a 1:1 scale office plan drawn in chalk outside the Architectural Association in London, where I worked within its drawn confines as an ‘office’, and connected to the internet via laptop using an 802.11b signal; and Here, here and…here (2003) – where I globally positioned the entrance to the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, drawing an entire GPS screen, including all the satellites diagrams. This was prior to my talk on Locative Media and Performance, which immediately followed the first locative media workshop in Karosta, Lativa in 2003.
Inside the gallery, a dotted line, with a longitude and latitude bisected the entire space and traversed from inside the gallery, ‘through’ the wall and outside, creating a drawn section line, not bound by physical objects or material. The GPS co ordinates of the line were written on both sides of a wall, interior and exterior – but it was only possibly to imagine, rather than see them both at the same time.
This show was the first time any of these works had been presented in a gallery setting. The title drawing was actually made on the day of the opening, over a period of 6 hours. Many attendees to the show were not aware that the work effectively started 1km away from the gallery at the station entrance. As visitors walked in the street, many observed the white chalk marks and co-ordinates, but believed them to be technical markings to designate on coming road works. Many reported being surprised as they slowly realised the markings were, in part, a form of navigation towards the gallery and drawn specifically as the central part of the gallery show. Rather than drawing an image to seen from above, all these drawings are designed to be journeyed through at ground level; a low-no-tech mimicry and emulation of an imagined urban augmentation.
I work very fast and spontaneously, only having planned my route. I never pre fix exactly where I will draw or why, preferring to respond and be surprised by my immediate environment. On conclusion of the drawing, elements from them resonate back to me in different ways, displaying varying approaches and emerging methodologies. I position fixed objects; pillar boxes, bus stops, benches. I extend and manifest existing boundaries; drawing the “safe” space around cash machines; drawing a fourth and ‘closing’ wall, on a three sided bus stop; extending and joining parking bays; drawing lines emanating from a doorway dimension. I invent or imagine new boundaries; the pollen and blossom fallen from a Ceanothus bush onto a pavement; drawing a dotted section line across an entire road; grouping a series of paving slabs into a single marked ‘territory’.
The drawing Location, Location, Location was a significant development in my ideas, thinking and practice. During this piece I positioned groups of rubbish bags on the pavement. These were temporary obstructions (or maybe constructions) occupying physical space similar to a post box, not fixed, but fluid, with time and inevitable change built into their presence. Each cluster was marked with a time, date and co ordinate, I would sometimes return later to find the rubbish collected and gone and only my dotted boundary outlines remaining, with my hand written Time Code and Place Code identifying the spot. These small changes and movements in the urban landscape are one single example of transient, fluid and ephemeral moments which could have been cars, data or people.
Many of these emerging ideas have been clarified and in part tested via a series of on going and extended conversations with the writer Ben Russell. These exchanges often articulate, clarify and solidify complex ideas. Our presentation at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam 2004 allowed these works and ideas to find an initial placement and lineage within the context of contemporary art practise. The invitation to present work within this fine art context, allowed me to look at the development of my own emerging ideas, and also to look at their progression in parallel with, the formation and acceptance of locative media as a significant and growing area of exploration and practise. What emerged was my recognition that the current use of the term ‘locative’ actually expands beyond the limitations currently imposed by its intrinsic links with technology.
Locative, in fact, embodies any essential visual and conceptual link to notions of location: Canelletto; Monet; Cezanne; Gaugin; – each of them clearly linked within a field that fuses, painting, landscape, location; more recently: Christo; Robert Smithson; Joseph Beuys; Richard Long to name a few. Viewed in this way, ‘Locative’ becomes a mechanism to re-view location and art, and frees the term locative to become fluid, and incorporate, art, architecture, technology and literature. Locative work is not a new idea, but is a current and profound extension of a concept that has preoccupied and absorbed artists from the very earliest manifestations of creative civilisation.
Imagine a room. It is a bright sunny day, and sunlight streams through a small window. It creates a sharp square shape on the ground, drawn in light. A movement in the room causes dust to rise; tiny particles swirl and float and for a moment a beam of sunlight is solid, like a cone, fixed and solid. You can see what it is. You can observe it. You can walk through it. You can feel its warmth. Then, the sun is obscured by a passing cloud, and the square window shape and the solid beam of light fade slowly and disappear. They are gone.