Executable Urbanisms: Messing with Ubicomp’s Singular Future

Abstract

This chapter consists of two parts. In the first part we take a brief look at how locative media coincide with a >Spatial Turn< in media studies. In the last dec- ades of the twentieth century the notion of a >third wave< of human-computer interaction technology from corporate research and development projects into the mainstream media. According to the technology discourse, information would soon become context-aware, acquiring something like its own >body< with which we might interact against the backdrop of architectonic space. We would thus move from the graphic user interface as desktop, to new metaphors of rooms, streets, cities and even the planet as a whole. While the concept of a mobile spatial interface has today become commonplace due to the integration of location-sensing technology into smartphones in the latter part of the first decade of the twenty-first century, we argue for a new consideration of this >Spatial Turn< through discussions in cultural geography as well as by practices in media art drawing on the metaphors of second nature, spatial practice, cog- nitive mapping, and traceability.