9th November 2016 Southern, J. (2012). Comobility: How Proximity and Distance Travel Together in Locative Media. Canadian Journal for Communications, 37(1), 75–91. Chaired by Monika Buscher.
Abstract Mobile phones are becoming increasingly location-aware: they use and share positioning data through networks, across space, and between friends. This paper introduces the term “comobility” to describe an emerging feature of mobile and located communication, and asks how increasingly popular locative applications are changing social and mobile experiences of place and proximity. This new sense of comobility, of being mobile with others at a distance, was produced and made visible in the collaborative creation-research of the author, in which art practice and social research co-exist in a mobile research methodology. Workshops and a performative walk are analyzed in relation to theories of proximate interaction, to reveal how aspects of face-to-face communication are extended through locative technologies. …
4-5PM, Bowland North B37 (Mobilities Lab).
Everyone is invited to attend and join in the discussion. If you can’t be there in person, Skype is possible. Please contact p.drinkall@lancaster.ac.uk for a copy of the reading.
Image: Jen Southern
