As one reflects on the totality of the Digital Cities experience, it is well noted that predominant to the themes encountered are the notions of physicality, virtuality, a sense of place and identity, in the playful meandering through space mediated by mobile technologies. Such notions seem to have reached a noticeable fulcrum in the sphere of mobile gaming, which embraces a redefinition and “interruption/disruption of everyday practices” (Hjorth, 2011, p.361) in the spaces of urban life. Urban mobile games which encompass the three forms of mobile games, namely location-aware, location-based, and hybrid reality games, emphasize bodily movement through urban spaces, connected to virtual environments enhancing the embodied experience of locality and place. One connects with the concept of place as being “constructed by an ongoing accumulation of stories, memories and social practices” (Harvey, 2001 cited in Hjorth, 2011, p.358). Such an interaction of experiential processes is augmented by blurred distinctions between the online and offline, physical and virtual presence reconciled by mobile media gaming technologies.
Shoot me if you can is one such mobile game that deploys the ocular-centric capabilities of mobile media together with the physical experience of movement in urban spaces, wherein metaphorically, photos are the bullets of the mobile camera that shoots. Players are virtually connected together and to the system, through the mobile phone, with their body present in physical space. Shoot me if you can is a photographic experience as one is free to shoot and capture images of strangers/opponents; a comment on the prominence of the digital image in our everyday lives; a statement on the image-based big-brother surveillance effect on our culture. “Shoot me if you can also reveals Korean youngsters’ paranoiac desire to photograph and the violence of surveillance camera in city life… attempts to interpret urban data through a public performance” (http://leoalmanac.org/gallery/locative/shoot/index.htm).
Bibliography
Blast Theory. Available at: http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/
Hjorth, L., 2011. Mobile@game cultures: The place of urban mobile gaming [pdf] Available at: <http://con.sagepub.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/content/17/4/357.full.pdf+html> [Accessed 16 April 2016].
Shoot me if you can [online] Available at: <http://www.shootmeifyoucan.net> [Accessed 17 April 2016].
Shoot me if you can: Leonardo Electronic Almanac [online] Available at: <http://leoalmanac.org/gallery/locative/shoot/index.htm> [Accessed 17 April 2016].