Digital Connections to Outdoor Space: Entangled Politics of Vision and Space in Augmented Reality of Pokémon GO
Topics: Cultural Geography
, Digital Geographies
, Landscape
Keywords: augmented reality, cell phones, digital connection, outdoors, politics of space, politics of vision
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 27
Authors:
Neriko Musha Doerr, Ramapo College
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Abstract
This paper seeks to subvert the common binary opposition found in digital-space linkages—“digital disconnection-outdoors” vs. "digital connection-sedentary indoor life”—through text analyses of an augmented reality game, Pokémon GO. Although its players have decreased (233 million players globally in 2016 to 150 million in 2020; Iqbal 2021), Pokémon GO’s mapping of fantasy world onto physical world continues to offer a new relationship to space. Walter Benjamin (1968) argued that the technology of photography allowed individuals to gain the optical unconscious, like the Freudian unconscious, giving them new ways with which to relate to the world, seeing things like surgeons rather than painters. If digital technology separates individuals from physical space by providing another (i.e., digital) world, augmented reality technology re-connects them in new ways and reveals entangled politics of vision and space. Fantasy worlds are often mapped onto a physical space—e.g., ghosts appear in “haunted” spaces. Who can see these fantasies involves politics of vision. The fairy world in Victorian England was a subversive world of the rural working class, which was destroyed by Cottingley fairy Photographs coopted by middle-class men (Silver 1999). Playing Pokémon GO (i.e., “seeing” only Pokémon) in an “inappropriate” space (e.g., cemetery) highlights social meanings of space. An African American Pokémon GO player fearing a call to the police for roaming in white neighborhoods indicates the racialization of space. Analyzing this entanglement of the politics of vision and space, this paper suggests the game’s potential in creating awareness about multiple subject-position-informed viewpoints.
Digital Connections to Outdoor Space: Entangled Politics of Vision and Space in Augmented Reality of Pokémon GO
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
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