Mobile/locative paradigm: Embodiment and Storytelling in Digital Media

This paper examines how the advent of the mobile/locative paradigm redefines the role of the body (embodiment) in the cultural processes of Digital Media, extending the notion of storytelling from a simple author–text–user relationship, mediated by the screen interface, into a complex narrative project that positions the body and its media competences within a precise physical space characterized by geographical, historical and cultural coordinates. The mobile/locative paradigm is based on the sum of the technological, perceptive, emotional, cognitive, behavioural, cultural characteristics that are determined by the ever increasing spread of smartphones, used not so much as interpersonal communication devices but mostly as devices to access the net and hence media products. It is a decided change in paradigm compared to the static fruition that has always typified the relationship with the mass media (cinema, TV, performing arts, desktop computer), since the mobility of the media end-user gives a strong relevance to the location in which the fruition takes place. Geo-positioning, end-user tracking, the enormous amount of encyclopaedic data that can be associated to the presence of that body in that place in that moment determine a profound change in cultural processes: with the diffusion of Digital Media space becomes text, since it is automatically read and written by the body of the user; and at the same time text becomes space, since the textuality of Digital Media is characterised by immersiveness, interactivity, multidimensionality, and thus by the accessibility which is typical of spaces be they real or virtual (Lughi 2013).