A Study of the Performative Meaning of Locative Media Art as a New Genre of Public Art

This paper discusses the public art nature of locative media art. Locative media art is a type of artwork that unfolds based on networked multimedia technology media based on the location information of participants in a specific place. Therefore, it necessarily involves the elements of place and public, which are the central themes of public art and are connected to the idea of site-specificity and publicness. In locative media art, site-specificity is manifested as an embodied experience that appears in conjunction with the existence of technological media and physical subjects in a specific space. This involves physical movements such as looking into and looking around the medium, which, as a performance, turns the place into a space for speech. The public nature of locative media art can also be interpreted as a cognitive experience of others based on empathy with invisible others who have a constructive relationship in the adjacent space. This is done through the practice of sharing the current time and space as the basis of an intersubjective community. These characteristics can be seen as leading to a lineage of art that, as Suzanne Lacy has noted, is a new genre of public art that welcomes the other as a performative and relational work. Therefore, locative media art can be expected to play a role as a new genre of public art.