The Persistence of Surveillance: The Panoptic Potential of Locative Media

in Karosta, Latvia on an abandoned Soviet-era military city, united by a common interest in the social and cultural potential of mobile ad-hoc social networks, and location based technologies. The outcome of this meeting was the inauguration of locative media, which according to Finnish artist and activist Minna Tarka, is a sub-area within the ubicomp (ubiquitous computing) environment and is a loose term for artists, developers and activists exploring the possibilities of mobile, location-based technologies. According to the event’s organizing group, the idea behind the workshop was twofold: first, as “an explicit acknowledgment of Virilio’s idea that ‘one cannot understand the development of information technology without understanding the evolution of military strategy’; and second, as an attempt to locate the event outside of the global market from which these technologies have emerged” (Locative Media). Locative media connects to a longer tradition associated with communication technologies and the arts, notably artistic experimentation with telecommunications media in the 1970s. Yet, what sets locative media apart is a commitment, engagement, deployment and articulation to Lisa Parks’ query; “how might Western controlled satellite technologies be appropriated and used in the interests of a wider range of social formations?” (Parks, 2005, p. 10) In what