Media content is managed and organized externally of the device on a standard desktop, laptop, server, or cloud computing system.
As the location-aware device enters the selected area, centralized services trigger the assigned media, designed to be of optimal relevance to the user and their surroundings.
"[1] Location based media allows for the enhancement of any given environment offering explanation, analysis and detailed commentary on what the user is looking at through a combination of video, audio, images and text.
The location-aware device can deliver interpretation of cities, parklands, heritage sites, sporting events or any other environment where location based media is required.
The media offers a depth to the environment beyond that which is immediately apparent, allowing revelations about background, history and current topical feeds.
Another important new technology that links digital data to a specific place is radio-frequency identification (RFID), a successor to barcodes like Semacode.
"[1] Locative media can propel such conversations in its function as a "poetic form of data visualization," as its output often traces how people move in, and by proxy, make sense of, urban environments.
[1] Given the dynamism and hybridity of cities and the networks which comprise them, locative media extends the internet landscape to physical environments where people forge social relations and actions which can be "mobile, plural, differentiated, adventurous, innovative, but also estranged, alienated, impersonalized.
Design scholars Anne Galloway and Matthew Ward state that "various online lists of pervasive computing and locative media projects draw out the breadth of current classification schema: everything from mobile games, place-based storytelling, spatial annotation and networked performances to device-specific applications.
Notable locative media projects include Bio Mapping by Christian Nold in 2004,[9] locative art projects such as the SpacePlace ZKM/ZKMax bluecasting and participatory urban media access in Munich in 2005[10] and Britglyph by Alfie Dennen in 2009,[11] and location-based games such as AR Quake by the Wearable Computer Lab at the University of South Australia[12] and Can You See Me Now?
[15] The Transborder Immigrant Tool by the Electronic Disturbance Theater is a locative media project aimed at providing life saving directions to water for people trying to cross the US / Mexico border.
Inspired by the hit film franchise, the game offered a unique setting where the player’s home town, office or neighborhood became the front lines of a supernatural conflict.