Spatial Practices of the Second Offline

Abstract

How we represent a space deeply affects how we live in that space. Representations of a location (how we visualize it in our media) directly impact the ways that we think about that space, and thus ultimately practice everyday life in that space. In the second offline, how we layer our space through technology shapes the ways that we live in those spaces and even image what is possible in those locations. One important way that this is done is through the ways we can represent data in (and about) our spaces. Data, in the mobile media age, has become site-specific. This site-specificity affords users a new window into the meaning of complex data and ideas. This chapter draws on a range of examples in augmented reality (AR) and mapping visualizations to demonstrate how location-aware mobile media work as signifying tools for how we think about the world and how we orient our bodies in these spaces. Rather than functioning as two distinct spheres, the “virtual” of the digital interface and the “material” of the physical space are mutually constructive, functioning in a co-constitutive relationship that produces each other.