Locative Media are media of communication bound to a location. They are digital media applied to real places and thus triggering real social interactions. While mobile technologies such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), laptop computers and mobile phones enable locative media, they are not the goal for the development of projects in this field. Rather:
"Locative media is many things: A new site for old discussions about the relationship of consciousness to place and other people. A framework within which to actively engage with, critique, and shape a rapid set of technological developments. A context within which to explore new and old models of communication, community and exchange.
Locative media is closely related to augmented reality (reality overlaid with virtual reality) and pervasive computing (computers everywhere, as in ubiquitous computing). Yet, where augmented reality strives for technical solutions and pervasive computing is interested in embedded computers, locative media concentrates on social interaction with a place and with technology. Hence the reason why, many locative media projects have a social, critical or personal (memory) background.
While strictly spoken, any kind of link to additional information set up in space (together with the information that a specific place supplies) would make up for location-dependent media, the term locative media is strictly bound to technical projects. Locative media works on locations and yet many of its applications are still location-independent in a technical sense. As in the case of digital media, where the medium itself is not digital but the content is digital, in locative media the medium itself might not be location-oriented, whereas the content is location-oriented.
Locative media has brought about new innovative ways in which users can be engaged by there surroundings and given additional information whilst on the move via GPS. GPS is a fast growing media source that is vastley used in all new technolocial devices from as small as a mobile phone to a PDA.
The technology used in locative media projects is e.g. Global Positioning System (GPS), laptop computers, the mobile phone, Geographic Information System (GIS), Google Maps. Whereas GPS allows for the accurate detection of a specific location, mobile computers allow interactive media to be linked to this place. The GIS supplies arbitrary information about the geological, strategic or economic situation of a location. Google Maps give a visual representation of a specific place
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