mobile technologies

The objective of this paper is to describe the potentialities of Mobile Tagging as a tool for increasing and spreading the effects of Mixed Realities in Electronic Literature. In this sense, we will start introducing the main concepts and some examples of Mixed Realities followed by the concepts and examples of Mobile Tagging, showing that they are connected and benefit each other and can benefit eLit as well. Mixed Reality (or MR) refers to the fusion of the physical and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-­‐exist and interact in real time. On the other hand, mobile tagging is the process of reading a 2D barcode using a mobile device camera. Allowing the encryption of URLs in the barcodes, the mobile tagging can add a digital and/or online layer to any physical object, providing so several levels of mixed realities related to that object. Although Mixed Realities technologies have already existed for decades, in the past they were very expensive. Recently, mobile devices have also become tools for mixed realities. Due their pervasiveness, their potentiality for increasing the dissemination of mixed realities is enormous and can be leveraged by mobile tagging. Since mobile tags are simple tags that can be placed on virtually any place, physical object or person, added to the fact that the cell phones with cameras have become a very inexpensive and common device, the mobile tagging process can be said as one of the easiest and simplest ways to create mixed realities. The uses of mobile tagging and the several levels of mixed realities have applications in many areas going from medicine and engineering to literature and arts. Mobile Tags work like physical links to the web, allowing so that virtually anything can be part of an expanded mixed reality environment, including printed books, e-­‐books, poetry and any kind of text. This paper/presentation will use examples in the fields of art and literature to illustrate the functionality of the mobile tagging to create mixed realities.

(Source: Author's abstract for ELO_AI)

With the move from personal computing to pervasive computing, electronic literature has inhabited physical sphere of ubiquitous computing. This study analyzes examples of narratives that employ mobile technologies (from cell phones to GPS receivers) to interact with site-specific electronic literature. Drawing from examples such as [murmur], PETlab’s Re:Activism project, and Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke, this paper argues for a spatio-temporal embodiment that is produced in correspondence with the mobile interface. [Murmur] is an oral history project utilizing mobile phones is currently running in 11 cities worldwide. Signs posted throughout the city prompt mobile phone users to call a specific number and record a narrative about that site. Other passersby are able to listen to the recorded narrative when the number is later called. Similarly, Re:Activism is a mobile phone story-game that has players restage scenes of contestation that occurred throughout New York City, led by SMS messages about the site. By reclaiming the social history of these locations (and chronicling it through mobile phone cameras in a scavenger hunt manner), the players revived the community history through story-game. Community narrative is also explored in Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke. This project had participants ride bicycles around the streets of London with a handheld computer along for the ride. With headphones plugged into the computer, the voice of Ju Row Farr guided participants through broadly constructed actions (such as “Find a place your father would like and record a message about it”). As participants found particular locations that corresponded to the broad directives, they would record their own narrative or description about the place and its relation to specified categories like family, taboo, and solitude.

This panel offers three academic papers that explore the use of mobile technologies in electronic literature. Organized from contributions that appear in the forthcoming collection, Digital Storytelling with Mobile Media: Locative Technologies and Narrative Practices, edited by Jason Farman, the impetus behind each of these papers is the ways in which mobile media are transforming the creation, dissemination, and experience of electronic literature.

The panel situates these mobile media narratives historically, acknowledging that mobile media have always affected the ways narrative is produced and disseminated. By locating mobile media historically and defining it broadly — yet simultaneously understanding the important impact of contemporary mobile technologies, especially locationaware mobile devices — this panel investigates the relationship between mobile technologies and narrative forms.

Drawing off of compelling examples of electronic literature that utilize location-based mobile media, we seek to develop a theoretical grounding for a meaningful analysis of mobile media narratives. Using examples such as TXTual Healing, [murmur], the Fort Vancouver Mobile Project, and student-designed electronic literature, these papers cover topics such as the transformation of reading interfaces from individual consumption to community engagement, the affordances and constraints of locative narratives, and practices of intermediality.

(Source: Author's abstract, 2012 ELO Conference site)