Visualizing Play: A Case Study of a Camera Phone Game for Playful Re-imaginings of Place. (May 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hjorth, Larissa
• Other Names: Verhoeff Nanna guest-editor.; Cooley Heidi Rae guest-editor.; Zwicker Heather guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Television & new media. Volume 18:Number 4(2017)
• Page Start: 336
• Page End: 350
• Publication Date: 2017-05
• Subjects: mobile media -- camera phones -- urban cartographies -- ambient play -- performance -- participation; Télévision -- Aspect social -- Périodiques; Télévision -- Aspect économique -- Périodiques; Médias -- Publics -- Périodiques; Civilisation -- Histoire -- Périodiques; Television broadcasting -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Digital media -- Periodicals; 302.234505
• DOI: 10.1177/1527476416667820
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1527-4764

Abstract

This article explores the unofficial role of camera phone practices in visualizing everyday forms of play as part of emergent urban cartographies. I argue that camera phone practices—especially in an age of timestamping—are creating their own cartographies of place that overlay the visual with the ambient, social with the geographic, emotional with the electronic, in new ways. By focusing upon the playful qualities of camera phone practices, we can begin to understand places as sites for ambient meandering and co-presence. Having outlined the notion of performative cartography as part of what has been defined as "critical cartography, " I consider how camera phone practices can be understood through ambient, co-present play. I turn to a site-specific mobile game, keitai mizu (mobile water), made for a post-Tokyo tsunami and Fukushima disaster context (known as 3/11), to explore the ways in which cartography can be performed.