Mapping Footprints

Abstract

/ Mobile, location-aware technologies are cultural tools for the re-enactment, re-embodiment and recontextualization of history and memory in our everyday life. The transformative potential of spatial practices that creatively employ these technologies can renegotiate our experience of place by allowing us to co-inhabit past and present storied spaces of different cultures. The research project Mapping Footprints explores alternative means of knowing and making place through a spatial practice which mediatizes heritage conservation sites with archival records. In the context of Elvina site, a heritage place of Aboriginal culture in Sydney, we experiment with a place-making practice where the re-storing of memory renegotiates archived oral histories and the geography of the site. We will look at the role of mediation, performativity, and representation in shaping both the development process and the experience of this augmented, storied landscape.