TRANSGRESSIVE MAPPING

Transgressive Mapping: A Look at Mobile Device Art, User Participation, and the Creative Potential of Social Networking in Screen Based Media

CHLOE H. JOHNSON (York University)

Following, sharing, liking, tagging, and commenting are all actions social media sites encourage its users to make as a way to contribute and engage with various online digital content. However, this paper will look at the ways in which users are engaging with social networking sites as a way of exploiting its day-to-day purpose to get users involved with creative processes. I will discuss the ways alternative uses of social media works to re-contextualize these sites as creative spaces capable of generating innovative artworks that extend our understanding and experience of art and everyday spaces. As digital and social media impacts on the arts, we begin to question the institutionalization of art, which in turn is leading us to an interrogation of the existing methods of spectatorship, distribution, and media praxes. 

 

I will refer to theorists who address issues pertaining to digitextual aesthetics, alternative uses of network culture, and the aestheticization of public space via mobile interfaces (such as Geert Lovink, Bernard Stiegler, and Michael Bull). I will make reference to screen based artworks that are designed specifically to include users in the creative process and focus on art for mobile devices projects that create visual and interactive art with the use of convergence devices. Hector Leiva’s The Matter of Memory (2011-Ongoing) project will form the basis of my presentation. Leiva’s project requires users to check into an actual place they are physically in using Google Maps and record an audio clip no longer than 3 minutes describing why that place is important to them using the specially designed The Matter of Memory app. These types of ongoing participatory art projects incorporate a range of media (QR codes, audio recordings, filmed footage, site specific and community art pieces, apps, various networking methods, GPS technology). By sharing their encounters with the world and actively participating, this type of user-generated art demonstrates the ongoing breakdown between public and private spaces. We are now finding ways to theorize these newfound art forms that rely almost exclusively on the mutual involvement of, and the reciprocal relationship between creator and user to the point where the distinction between artist and audience is becoming somewhat redundant. And so, what impact do these digitextual aesthetics and creative processes have on the arts today? And what methods can we, working in media studies, use to better understand the ways in which individuals are engaging with each other, and more importantly, what tactics they are adopting to negotiate contemporary socio-cultural structures? This discussion will hopefully lead to a better understanding of the socio-political relevance of screen based media and mobile interfaces in identity forming processes within current cultural praxes.