Reflecting on the Past, Speculating the Future: Feminist Interventions in Locative Media. By Andrea Zeffiro

Satellite image of Mont Royal park.

Illustration: R. Fenwick, Co&Co Design

Map showing game levels and location of the hotspots seeded with ghosts, The Haunting is an outdoor mobile game in the Mont Royal Park, in Montréal. Players find and capture ghosts along a park trail at night. For a detailed description of the game, please visit: http://www.thehaunting.ca/intro.html

Feminist interventions concerning technology address the difficulties concerning the ease of access to theoretical and practical domains associated with technology. Critical issues have been and continue to be informed by lived experience and participation, and notably a lack thereof.   While women have carved places within technological domains, the relationship between feminism and technology continues to evolve beyond questions of access.   In the context of this report, a feminist interventionist approach begins at the point of accessibility. This is to suggest that critique begin with access. In relation to locative media, the weight of the commercial sphere, the sacredness of the local, and the ability to circumvent institutional structures of dissemination, are but three areas requiring feminist intervention. In the following report, I briefly explain the manner in which the Mobile Digital Commons Network in general, and The Haunting project in particular, while not explicitly feminist projects, nevertheless provide anecdotal evidence to support larger and more concrete feminist interventions in the field.

Negotiating the Commercial Sphere

The first formal gathering of individuals interested in exploring mobile ad-hoc social networks, and location based technologies, occurred at an abandoned Soviet-era military city, in Latvia in 2003. This workshop, which instituted the conceptual framework for locative media, focused on plausible modes of harnessing technologies that evolved via military strategy and global market forces. In accordance to the workshop mandate, emphasis was placed on the appropriation and retooling of surveillance and control infrastructures with the hope of distributing these technologies beyond the ‘command and control infrastructure' (Hemment, 2004).

Locative media practitioners maintain that one of the field's defining characteristics is its separation from Location-Based Services (LBS), those corporate to corporate, business-to-business and business-to-user services, such as fleet tracking and in-car navigation. This distinction is significant given that locative media shares technologies with location based services, yet has a different agenda. The democratic potential afforded by locative media is that it, “at once exposes the operation of surveillance technologies, and reverses, multiplies and diffracts the gaze by giving people the opportunity to take ownership over the tools and the data generated”   (Hemment, p. 4).

In the first few years of MDCN, the Montréal team created experiences with PDAs using the Mobile Bristol toolkit. Spurred by an interest to create for mobile phones and in lieu of recent developments by the engineers working in Banff, the network abandoned the proprietary Mobile Bristol toolkit and began working on advancing a software development kit called the Mobile Experience Engine (MEE). The MEE was developed in part as a response to the state of the commercial mobile platform world. Mobile platforms, such as cell phones and PDAs run on as many as eight different operating systems. In turn, it is difficult to streamline for mobile devices as the tools must be continuously re-designed depending on the operating system. In other words, modifying mobile cell phone applications in the do-it-yourself tradition is labour intensive and, more importantly, requires a high proficiency in computer science. As a software tool, the MEE is a code generator, meaning that the program creates a layer of code that can be installed on a particular mobile device and compiled for different mobile platforms. Although using the MEE requires an advanced working knowledge of code, its importance lies in the fact that it circumvents proprietary software. Moreover, the MEE is to be released into the open source community in the hope that it will continue to exist as an alternative to the commercial sphere and allow for a larger community of practitioners to guide and shape its development.

Photograph: M. Longford.

The Haunting project implements cellular phones, Bluetooth beacons, global positioning satellite systems and is run by a software application created with the Mobile Experience Engine (MEE). Keeping with the ‘haunted' aesthetic, coffins were designed and created by Robert Prenovault. For more information, please visit: www.thehaunting.ca/tech.html

The Local

Photograph: Marit-Saskia Wahendorf

Map room.

Photograph: Marit-Saskia Wahrendorf

Mapping field work.

At the centre of the project was an interest in and commitment to the community. The goal of The Haunting was to create a locative media experience in which historical narratives spoke through the technology. This entailed extensive historical research undertaken by research assistants and included archival work, consultation with Les amis de la montagne 4 and spending a significant amount of time in the park, which in turn became an essential part of the production process.

The Haunting team - regardless of one's task in the production process, the day of the week or forecast   – visited the park weekly. At first, this involved exploring the space and mapping trails, observing the seasonal activities carried out by park visitors, and testing the various mobile devices for reception and range. As the team focused more intently on production, testing was held in the evening, given that the game was to be installed after sunset, and the focus shifted towards content development and debugging. The in-situ fieldwork enabled the team to confront challenges that might have not been apparent had production occurred solely in the lab. For instance, documentation was compromised in the winter because of batteries dying in extreme cold and due to the sheer challenge of gripping small technologies with gloved hands (Sawchuk 2007). These findings, given the technologies employed in game play, suggested that the winter was not an optimal season for locative media experiences. In addition, fieldwork was less welcome by park users in the winter as ‘trail work' interfered with cross country skiing paths.

Tour given to Mobile Digital Commons Network by Les amis de la montagne, February 2006.

However, this link to the local was not merely in terms of physical space. Rather, the project itself and those who were part of it were not merely accountable to the various groups and individuals sharing the space; it was also a question of negotiating the past (history of the area) with the present (present context of the park and the creation of the game), particularly in terms of content development. This meant a significant investment with the non-technological realm. While the technological component to The Haunting was significant in the evolution of the game, the technology became secondary or even, as a means of augmenting the social and cultural dimension of the park. And this is, I think, the strength of the project.

Photograph: Marie-Claude Landry

Interface designers document and map park trails, July 2006.

Photograph: Marit-Saskia Wahrendorf

Lead engineer participates in documentation process, July 2006.

Similarly, an investment in the local concerned the team itself. Weekly in-situ meetings contributed to numerous discursive disruptions; the team had to negotiate disciplinary boundaries and traverse divides that maintained the various intersecting fields, such as engineering, computer science, design, and media communication studies. For instance, team members observing the engineers test the technology allowed for the transparency in labour practices, and in turn, the frustrations with the volatility of the technology became shared sentiments. This prompted team members to learn simple tasks, such as resetting cell phone functions, which allowed the engineers to focus on more complex requirements during installation. Similarly, in the few instances where The Haunting demo was installed in-doors, team members assisted in the mantling and dismantling of the space. In other words, while all were specialists in a particular field or discipline, the transparency of labour practices nurtured an empathetic environment in which all were equal. In the end, we were able to understand the complexities involved in one another's work – if not perfectly – certainly with greater compassion and renewed appreciation.

Do-It-Yourself Aesthetic

The Evaluation, Mobility and Usability (EMU) 5 arm of MDCN worked closely with The Haunting project, particularly in the facilitation of workshops and field trials. In the larger context of the network, EMU was involved in collecting and compiling network related references such as conference calls, publications and research reports, and organizing this data so that it could be readily accessed and easily navigated. To add to the challenge, half of the EMU team was situated in Toronto and the other half in Montréal. The team settled on a wiki partially due to the fact that the MDCN website was created using wiki software. However, within a few months of use, not only did it ease the burden of the team's physical divide, it also succeeded in providing an easily accessible space for archiving and organizing data both on- and off-line.

Evaluation, Mobility and Usability resources page.

Within a year of collecting, managing and organizing its resources, EMU launched Wi: Journal of the Mobile Digital Commons Netowrk . 6 In part, the impetus for the creation of the journal arose from the do-it-yourself impulse of the wiki format and the congenital progression from collection and organization to dissemination. Given the experiences of the group – particularly the project leads – the team was cognizant of the various facets that comprise a journal, and during an afternoon meeting, the various tasks were distributed amongst the group and they began working on the inaugural issue.

Wi: Journal of Mobile Media

The Evaluation, Mobility and Usability team was astounded and quite pleased with the response to Wi . The journal was featured on a number of blogs and websites and, in turn, the publication reached an audience that it might have not otherwise. Although EMU researchers were quick to praise the wiki as a collaborative research tool, and while they were able to benefit from the democratic publishing formats supported by the Internet, the research team was cognizant of the fact that what proved to be successful for EMU may not fulfill the needs of others. Moreover, the team recognized that as a group, they were privileged in the sense that they had access to and knowledge of the necessary technologies to facilitate the processes. Nevertheless, the importance of this experience is the accessibility of similar tools support collective organization and action beyond the grasp of corporate structures. 7

Speculating the Future

It has been a year since the project ended and only recently have I started interpreting the vast amount of data – visual and written – amassed while working with the Mobile Digital Commons Network, as part of The Haunting and Evaluation, Mobility, Usability. Temporal and physical distance from one's work offers greater ease in data digestion and, in my particular case, a more informed sense of the necessity of feminist interventions in locative media and in turn, the exigency and sustainability of such a presence.

The paradox of locative media is that, while it maintains its place at the periphery of commercial and military institutions, the technologies developed by these institutions are necessary in its formation. In addition, access to the field is limited by financial constraints and skill-set requirements. In other words, not only is technology costly, one also requires specialized knowledge to create the various facets of a locative media experience. It would seem then, that locative media is largely inaccessible. However, enabling technologies such as cellular telephony, GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth, are encountered by millions of people daily. Acquiring the necessary gadgetry or skilled labour does not – in my opinion - mark feminist interventions in locative media. A critical pedagogical approach - in which social, political and economic factors are made apparent prior to production – will sharpen the necessary tools, enabling feminist curiosities 8 to excavate locative media.

Notes:

1. From 2004 to 2007, the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN), a collaborative and cross-institutional research network involving Concordia University (Montréal), the Banff New Media Institute   (Banff), the Ontario College of Art and Design (Toronto) and York University (Toronto), created location based interactive experiences for mobile communication devices, such as cell phones and PDAs. For more information on the Mobile Digital Commons Network, please visit www.mdcn.ca.

2. One of the MDCN projects completed for Montréal was The Haunting, a locative media experience developed for and tested in Mont Royal Park. For more information on The Haunting, please visit www.thehaunting.ca.

3. For a list of The Haunting team members, contributers and sponsors, please see:
www.thehaunting.ca/teams.html

4. Les amis de la montage (or Friends of the Mountain) is dedicated to protecting and enhancing Mount Royal through community involvement and environmental education.
Please see: www.lemontroyal.qc.ca/en_quoideneuf-detail.html

5. Team members included: Dr. Barbar Crow (York University), Neil Barratt (Concordia University), Alison Harvey (Concordia University), Ganaele Langlois (York University), Janice Leung (York University), Dr. Kim Sawchuk (Concordia University), Andrea Zeffiro (Concordia University). For more information on EMU, please visit:
www.mdcn.ca/tiki-index.php?page=resources

6. The journal has transitioned to Wi: Journal of Mobile Media (www.wi-not.ca).

7. An excellent example is the work of Antoni Abad. For more information on Abad's projects: www.zexe.net. To read a recent interview with the artist, “Registering Realities, Parasiting Networks: An Interview with Antoni Abad” conducted by Kim Sawchuk in the latest issue of Wi: Journal of Mobile Media (www.wi-not.ca).

8. For a recent publication concerning feminist approaches to media and communication studies, please see: Sarikakis, K., & Shade, L. Eds. (2008 ). Minding the Gap: Feminist Interventions in International Communication .   Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

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Biography

Andrea Zeffiro is a doctoral candidate in Communication at Concordia University and senior editorial assistant for the Canadian Journal of Communication (www.cjc-online.ca). She worked with the Mobile Digital Commons Network (www.mdcn.ca) on Interactive Parks and Evaluation, Mobility and Usability (EMU), and is currently managing editor of Wi: Journal of Mobile Media (www.wi-not.ca) and a member of the Mobile Media Lab.