Kissing and making up: time, space and locative media

Abstract

This article explores the temporal phenomena associated with networked and locative media. Whilst many of the practical opportunities of locative media are biased toward space and place, the author introduces the importance of time. The article explores the loss of time from space that was compounded during the age of Enlightenment, and how many locative media platforms rely heavily upon the traditional articulation of space without time. However, as a form of recovery, the author suggests that since maps have become handheld and are able to locate us ‘upon’ them in ‘real-time’, time has once again began to feature as a characteristic of experience. The author compares our temporal consciousness with the development of representation of space to describe how time and space were once intimately linked, became separated through the Enlightenment project and modernity, but are recently showing signs of a renewed connection in locative media.