What3words e locative media: una possibile traccia artistica

The what3words commercial geocoding system, founded in 2013, allows to locate geographical positions through the algorithmic assignation of a combination of three words, a textual tag that replaces the uncomfortably numerical lat-long coordinates. Each position has a resolution of 3x3 meters, and this means that every movement in space results in a new word sequence. With the possibility of a literary approach in the background, which pairs the what3words app with experimental poetry, I will draw a connection with Locative media art, specifically in its “annotative” form, which gives priority to the digital enrichment of physical spaces. In this context, the immediacy of human language earns a position of absolute importance: moving between the opposing poles of criticism of an artistic system that makes use of government technologies, and the possibilities of intervention in everyday life, Locative art seems to have traced the path for several commercial operations since the early 2000s. The what3words service represents an extreme example of the circulation of human language in the neogeographical space of digital cartography. All of this will be reconstructed taking into consideration fundamental artworks, inscribing them in the outcome of commercial geotagging applications and linking with some categories of twentieth century critical thinking: activism, graffiti, or concepts evoked by the International Situationist, such as dérive and détournement, which still today seem to represent actualized aspects of public art.