Comobility: How Proximity and Distance Travel Together in Locative Media

ABSTRACT Mobile phones are becoming increasingly location-aware: they use and share positioning data through networks, across space, and between friends. This paper introduces the term “comobility ” to describe an emerging feature of mobile and located communication, and asks how increasingly popular locative applications are changing social and mobile ex-periences of place and proximity. This new sense of comobility, of being mobile with others at a distance, was produced and made visible in the collaborative creation-research of the author, in which art practice and social research co-exist in a mobile research methodology. Workshops and a performative walk are analyzed in relation to theories of proximate inter-action, to reveal how aspects of face-to-face communication are extended through locative technologies. KEYWORDS Locative media; Digital art; Research methods; Comobility; Research-creation RÉSUMÉ: Les utilisateurs de téléphones mobiles deviennent de plus en plus conscients de leur propre emplacement géographique; en effet, ils utilisent et partagent des données sur leur positionnement dans des réseaux, à travers l’espace et entre amis. Dans ce contexte, l’auteure propose le mot « co-mobilité » pour décrire une nouvelle caractéristique de l