DR REGNER RAMOS
Spatial Practices/Digital Traces: Embodiment and Reconfigurations of Urban Spaces Through GPS Mobile Apps
M
y research explores the relationship
they suggest coupled themes that structure
technologies by studying the
digital peripheries, companionship/
between bodies, space and mobile
affective and spatial properties of three
GPS-based mobile applications - Grindr,
Mappiness and Waze. Discussions of how
newly constructed subjectivities experience
location, orientation and spatial movements -
both physical and digital - emerge throughout the work. The research addresses the
following questions: How are GPS-based
apps enabling the construction of new digital subjects and embodiments? How do they
the study’s analysis: physical boundaries/ wayfinding, embodiments/othering,
judgement/ confidence, gamification/
interface, intimacy/tactility and trails/digital residue. Guided by Cyberfeminist theories, the method of study is conducted through
three phases: personal empirical research, interviews with participants and the
designing of coded avatars/ impressions of the participants’ identities.
The work argues that there exists
enable users to perform these identities in
a mutual shaping between a person’s
new subjectivities create alternate forms of
these constructions affect how space is
space? How does the production of these
inhabiting urban spaces and alternate modes
of mobility? In what ways do GPS apps create new spatiotemporal relations for bodies, and how are these relations made visible by the
interfaces’ spatial and urban representations? To answer the questions, the three apps
- selected because of their GPS properties, strong link to urban space and relation to embodied performance - are treated as a series of material objects. Though each app’s particular purpose varies, as a set
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subjectivity and app-technology, and that navigated and perceived. These newly
constructed identities are assembled and
disassembled by their continuous negotiation between physical and digital boundaries.
The study rethinks how Grindr, Waze and
Mappiness enable alternate embodiments for performing identities in space, while seeking to discuss how they create new spatial organisations and socio-spatial manifestations.