Locative Media

Locative technologies hold out the promise to transform literary space in all of its dimensions, including its represented spaces, reading interfaces, and the very spaces within which literature is produced and consumed. Yet, despite the growing use of location-based technologies, authors and readers alike have been slow to take to site-specific narrative due to limitations inherent in both the current design of locative media systems and our received notions of what constitutes the narrative experience.

Once the newness wears off, how useful is it?

China’s rapidly-expanding rival to GPS, called BeiDou, has become available to customers across Asia-Pacific for the first time. It aims to claim a fifth of the satellite services market in the region in just three years.

The Art of Walking: a field guide is the first extensive survey of walking in contemporary art. Combining short texts on the subject with a variety of artists work, The Art of Walking provides a new way of looking at this everyday subject.

The introduction relates peripatetic art now to a wide range of historic precedents, and is followed by a series of visually led ‘Walks’ dealing with seven overlapping themes: footprints and lines; writers and philosophers; marches and processions; aliens, dandies and drifters; slapstick; studios, museums and biennales; and dog walkers.

The guide includes newly commissioned art and writing, and many artists have been actively involved in the design of their respective pages. Contributors include Marina Abramović and Ulay, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Francis Alÿs, And While London Burns, Keith Arnatt, Franko B, David Bate, Dara Birnbaum, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Janet Cardiff, Marcus Coates, Jeremy Deller, Tim Edgar, Christian Edwardes, Jan Estep, Simon Faithfull, Alec Finlay, Hamish Fulton, Regina José Galindo, Al Gebra, Mona Hatoum, Akira Kanayama, Oleg Kulik, Peter Liversidge, Long March Project, Richard Long, Melanie Manchot, Conor McGarrigle, Bruce Nauman, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Ingrid Pollard, Simon Pope, Chloé Regan, Sophy Rickett, Fiona Robinson, Matthias Sperling and Siobhan Davies Studios, Susan Stockwell, Krzysztof Wodiczko and Catherine Yass.

David Evans is a writer and picture editor, based in Bournemouth, England. Recent works include Appropriation (The Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, 2009), László Moholy-Nagy: 60 Fotos(Errata Editions, 2011) and Critical Dictionary (Black Dog Publishing, 2011).

A woman trying to go 90 miles to a Belgian railway station instead ends up in Zagreb because she says that's what her GPS told her to do. Read this article by Chris Matyszczyk on CNET News.