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Thesis Info

LABS ID
00927
Thesis Title
Locative Art as Existential Media in Post-Virtual Geophilia
Author
Lim Kok Yoong
2nd Author
3rd Author
Degree
Doctor
Year
2017
Number of Pages
175
University
Soongsil University
Thesis Supervisor
Professor Joonsung Yoon
Supervisor e-mail
dryoon AT maat.kr
Other Supervisor(s)
Language(s) of Thesis
English
Department / Discipline
Department of Digital Media, raduate School of Soongsil University
Copyright Ownership
Soongsil University
Languages Familiar to Author
English, Mandarin, Malay
URL where full thesis can be found
www.dropbox.com/s/eja9ikerrefgoj5/Thesis_limkokyoong.pdf?dl=0
Keywords
locative art; location awareness; spatiality; mobility; embodiment; performativity; presence
Abstract: 200-500 words
This thesis will announce early sightings of an emerging cultural sensibility: the expanding tendency to accentuate the geographic locale as a cause-and-effect reasoning, motivation, and inspiration for understanding and responding to conditions of the present moment. Artists, designers, architects, technologists and cultural producers have begun to respond creatively to the geographic depth of ‘here and now’. That prompted me to look for how this idea of location awareness plays out within contemporary locative art aesthetics proliferating through the work of media artists. This thesis is to provide a new context in which to interpret media art by examining the geographical proximity of media and the media users and in turn to elucidate the wider aesthetic implications of the ‘locativeness’ in media art. In order to do so, I will trace some of the developments as well as presenting my own work as a testing ground to take up ‘locativeness’ as a vector in directing thoughts, systems and experiences and to make this practice material and discursive at the same time. The thesis establishes existential angst as a fundamental modus operandi for human curiosity and expressing our desire to ‘know’ and to ‘record’ where we are. Locative media that has been developed along this direction gives us an unprecedented degree of self-consciousness in time. It has the quality of representing a person at a particular time and space. This thesis will examine the relationship of philosophy especially of existential philosophy and the performativity of mobility and the way we experience locative art as a producer or instigator and also as an audience or participant. The theoretical structure of the thesis is based on a schema of observations on an individual at three distinct yet complementary levels of analysis: (a) micro-level, (b) meso-level, and the wider (c) macro-level. At the micro level, I focus on the mind where our consciousness arises from. In the mid-range or meso-level, I address the role of one’s body in embodied experience and discuss the performativity which is the action of an individual in an environment. The macro-level contains the spatial relational properties of large-scale complex environments. The macro-level analysis traces the outcomes of the dynamic interactions between individual, society, earth, media and locative technology. In the framework of autopoiesis, I explain a circular loop through which the macro-level phenomenon (e.g. map) appears as an aggregation of micro-level (e.g. spatial cognition) carried out at meso-level (bodily action), and through which macro-level (e.g. GPS satellite) affects micro-level agent (e.g. an individual agency). In the 21st century, we are in thrall to the collective consciousness of movement and location awareness due to the pervasive operation of GPS-based technologies in everyday life. We see the growing application of locative technology in our day-to-day operations, ranging from professional use through commercial application to banal hobbyist use. The omnipresent internet connectivity in support of the constant communication of location and movement is increasing the fluidity between physical space and virtual space. Hence, we see spatially dispersed practices in everyday life. While technology is offering us a new mode of perception of our presence, this phenomenon presents us with an opportunity to rethink the mind-body problem and legacies of earlier existentialists’ approaches to mind, body, and phenomenon. On this discourse, I reinvented the cogito of ‘I move, therefore I am’ – movement becomes the primary activity of existence. The tautology is: I move so that I know I exist, and I know I exist because I move. I am giving priority to empirical or performative investigation over conscious reflection as the basis of subjectivity. The rise of global movement together with the effects of these developments begins to indicate why it is important to consider movement in relation to art and technology now. Artists making locative art has to experience the multiply effects in material and time as if they are performing their life, rather than to just simply represent life as an expression. The reciprocal relation between the artist and his life is inevitably fulfilled through movement in space over time. The coming into being of the locative art depends on the creator’s and participants necessary movement and this simultaneous juxtaposition of the destining of ‘being’ and the ‘doing of man’ is fundamental for Heidegger’s thinking. Heidegger explained the Greek word ‘thesis’ accounts for the meaning of ‘to do’ in relation to setting, place, position.6 Therefore, the cogito of ‘I move therefore I am’ can be interpreted as a very sentient way of perceiving one’s presence in the physical world. The production of locative art is a manifestation of a specific trend towards the domestication of GPS technologies and locative media within the cultural sphere. This thesis seeks to provide an interpretation into this genre of art making and the broader contextual implications of these media technologies in the society.