Net_Dérive: Conceiving and Producing a Locative Media Artwork

The rapid uptake of mobile telephony, the high bandwidth network access afforded by 3G networks, and the increasingly powerful multimedia capabilities of modern mobile handsets have created a potential for new forms of creative cultural works to be conceived for, and deployed exclusively on, mobile devices and wireless infrastructures. However, commercial offerings in the area of mobile media at the time of writing, indicate a tendency to simply extend traditional media into the mobile sphere. Typical propositions include television on the mobile phone, and downloading music to the mobile. What are the forces and constraints that limit present day usage on the mobile to simply parallel what we do in the living room or on a stationary computer? Instead of replicating traditional media in a portable package, can we not look at the mobile phone and high bandwidth mobile networks as an artistic canvas on which to create entirely new forms of art? We broach this question with a focus on mobile music, and present Net_Dérive, a multi-user mobile artwork.