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Comobile perspectives

‘Comobile Perspectives’ is my contribution to a specialist book on the field of locative media that has emerged in the arts over the past decade. Contributors to the edited volume are key academics from the field and include: Marc Tuters & Michiel de Lange (Amsterdam University College/ Utrecht University, The Netherlands), Johannes PaBmann & Tristan Theilmann (University of Siegen, Germany / Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US), Teri Rueb (University of Buffalo, US), Jeremy Hight (U.C. San Diego, US), Hana Iverson & Siobhan O’Flynn (New York University & Drexel University, Philadelphia, US/ University of Toronto, Canada) and Larissa Hjorth (RMIT University, Australia).

My chapter contributes an account of how aerial perspectives are being combined with views on the ground within locative media applications, through a discussion of aerial perspectives in 1786, 1939 and 2010, and analysis of empirical data produced through creative work with the Comob Net iPhone app. I suggest that the insertion of live locational data of the viewer into aerial perspectives re-figures the aerial perspective as an embodied view from above through which responsibility for action at a distance becomes more immediate.

I also explored these themes in the paper ‘Lines of Flight: Place-making in Motion’ presented at the 15th International Symposium on Electronic Arts, Belfast, UK (2008), and at the 2009 Annual Research Day for the world-leading Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University, UK.

I explored the same themes of flight and live aerial perspectives in relation to locative media in exhibitions: A live video work titled Air/field (2010) for the project Field Broadcast by Rebecca Birch & Rob Smith at Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn, Cambridge and an installation titled Here (2010) for the exhibition Save Us, Macclesfield, UK.