From location-based services, mobile HCI, and augmented reality, to experimental geography and site-specificity, researchers, software developers, and media artists – and increasingly, large tech corporations – have been considering the role of place, space, and landscape in public life and creating software and hardware tools to engage with these concepts.

However, many projects in what has commonly been known as "locative media" seem to exhibit a needless over-reliance on digital technologies, at the expense of accessibility to the broader public. At what point do screens (and I use this term loosely, to indicate the use of mobile computing devices as well as other mobile technology strategies) simply interfere with directly engaging with a place or a space? Furthermore, in projects that attempt to engage in some degree of activism (e.g. mobile environmental sensing systems), at what point does the technology simply get in the way of meaningful political action?

In this presentation, Jordan Dalton will explore some of his recent work that engages with place and participation. He will present, and critique, some related projects by others that exemplify, and complicate, the seeming contradiction presented by the concept of a "placeful screen."

Bio:
Jordan Dalton (http://www.jordandalton.com/) is a media practitioner, freelance web/software developer, experimental geographer, fish listener, urban gardener, and environmental and food justice activist. His work explores sound as a tool for research and storytelling, ecologies (built, hidden, and otherwise), and the situated use of media to educate and activate. He is an MFA candidate and Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Media Study, SUNY at Buffalo.

For more information, visit http://nokia.lmc.gatech.edu/