Abstract

Visualising the Locative Experience

Chris Bowman, Teresa Leung

With the accessibility of GPS enabled technology, artists, designers, architects and technologists are rapidly increasing their use of GPS to create innovative ways of codifying the locational data as visualisations of time and space. The methods of visually transforming and representing this data are diverse and represent a rapidly emerging field of visual practice that enriches our understanding of human interaction with a given location.

This paper provides a summary of the field and explores some of the emerging theory that underpins our understanding of the codification of GPS data by visual practitioners. The authors support the view that, in general, these current practices create a reductive understanding of spatiality that results in a distancing from the embodiment, physicality and context from which the locational data is derived. We propose that new ways of visualising locative data are required to allow for an enhanced experience of physical specificity that goes beyond the indexical simulation of time and space.

Current examples of GPS visualizations achieve a certain aesthetic value but remain static and one dimensional in their interpretations. However, new means of transforming GPS data are emerging that bring these illustrated journeys into a new light. Importantly, these new works explore geographic and temporal elasticity by introducing systems of representation that extend beyond Cartesian X, Y, and Z coordinate mapping. For example, elasticity is explored by using interactivity to reveal layers of experience in a non-linear system or by exploring systems that favour time and experience over geographic representation. Ultimately, we propose that GPS data must be augmented by other contextual information (eg. the cultural and historical interpretation) in combination with new ways of visual representation to successfully support an enhanced experience of physical specificity.