Loca is a hybrid art/research project on grassroots, pervasive surveillance which aims to equip people to deal with the ambiguity of locative media environments. It combines art installation, pervasive design, software engineering, activism, hardware hacking, SMS poetry, sticker art and ambient performance.

Loca exposes the disconnect between people and the trails of digital identities they leave behind and enables people to explore pervasive surveillance environments in a performative way. A person walking through the city center hears a beep on their phone and glances at the screen. Instead of an SMS alert, they see a message reading: "We are currently experiencing difficulties monitoring your position: please wave your network device in the air." Loca engages people by responding to urban semantics, the social meanings of particular places: "You walked past a flower shop and spent 30 minutes in the park, are you in love?"

For participants, the experience of Loca is intangible, it is to do with what is not seen. Stickers are provided to make visible the traces of digital identities. The Loca stickers enable people to record the presence of a uniquely named device, and so become a small piece of surveillance code, introducing an element of participatory, urban play.

Supported by the British Council, Arts Council England, Helsinki University, Salford University, AHRC