Mobile Interface Theory ─ Embodied Space and Locative Media

Mobile media – from mobile phones to smartphones to netbooks – are transforming our daily lives. We communicate, we locate, we network, we play, and much more using our mobile devices. In Mobile Interface Theory, Jason Farman demonstrates how the worldwide adoption of mobile technologies is causing a reexamination of the core ideas about what it means to live our everyday lives. He argues that mobile media’s pervasive computing model, which allows users to connect and interact with the internet while moving across a wide variety of locations, has produced a new sense of self among users – a new embodied identity that stems from virtual space and material space regularly enhancing, cooperating or disrupting each other. Exploring a range of mobile media practices – including mobile maps and GPS technologies, location-aware social networks, urban and alternate reality games that use mobile devices, performance art, and storytelling projects – Farman illustrates how mobile technologies are changing the ways we produce lived, embodied spaces.

Jason Farman is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park in the Department of American Studies and a Distinguished Faculty Fellow in the Digital Cultures and Creativity Program. He received his Ph.D. in Performance Studies and Digital Media from the University of California, Los Angeles. Farman's research focuses on embodied space in the digital age, including studies of mobile media, mapping technologies, videogames, digital storytelling, social media, digital performance art, and surveillance.

Introduction: The Pathways of Locative Media 1. Embodiment and the Mobile Interface 2. Mapping and Representations of Space 3. Locative Interfaces and Social Media 4. The Ethics of Immersion in Locative Games 5. Performances of Asynchronous Time 6. Site-Specific Storytelling and Reading Interfaces 7. Conclusion: Movement/Progress/Obsolescence: On the Politics of Mobility