Panel Statement
The in­tro­duc­tion of phys­i­cal lo­ca­tion as a cri­te­rion for de­ter­min­ing ac­cess to dig­i­tal con­tent, in loca­tive media ex­pe­ri­ences, has re­sulted in a strong cor­re­la­tion be­tween the phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment and dig­i­tal in­for­ma­tion. The en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­pe­ri­ence is aug­mented by mul­ti­ple lay­ers of in­for­ma­tion mapped onto the phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, thus af­ford­ing hy­brid me­di­ated spa­tial ex­pe­ri­ences, con­sist­ing of both phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal en­vi­ron­men­tal el­e­ments, which func­tion as the con­text for new kinds of col­lab­o­ra­tive ac­tiv­i­ties and so­cial in­ter­ac­tion. This pre­sen­ta­tion will focus on the con­cept of hy­brid space and more specif­i­cally on the spa­tial ex­pe­ri­ence af­forded to users of loca­tive media. Firstly, hy­brid spa­tial ex­pe­ri­ences will be in­ves­ti­gated from the per­spec­tives of new media and com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­ries. Sec­ondly, a se­ries of dif­fer­ent con­cep­tions re­gard­ing the hy­brid na­ture of such spa­tial ex­pe­ri­ences will be dis­cussed, in an at­tempt to iden­tify com­mon ground or cer­tain dif­fer­ences be­tween them. Fi­nally, for the pur­pose of dis­cussing the issue of hy­brid space, the pre­sen­ta­tion will refer to re­sults of a re­search study, em­ploy­ing a multi-user loca­tive media sys­tem, which fo­cused on the user’s spa­tial ex­pe­ri­ence and at­tempted to in­ves­ti­gate its na­ture and char­ac­ter­is­tics by using quan­ti­ta­tive as well as qual­i­ta­tive meth­ods.