In 2002, pioneering locative media art project AmsterdamREALTIME playfully showcased how GPS technology would revolutionise human orientation and spatial memory, years before the smartphone era.

In the two decades since, AmsterdamREALTIME has grounded artist Esther Polak’s work on mobility and landscape, and has been a beacon for many artists and art historians fascinated by the experience of space. Now, this Flash-based animation requires restoration. During Transformation Digital Art 2025, Polak, alongside creative coder Bente van Bourgondiën, who designed and programmed the interactive animation of the original data, will discuss the challenges and relevance of preserving this artwork, in the two decades since it was created.

Locative Media Art in the 2000s

In the early 2000s, before smartphones and Google Maps, Amsterdam residents relied on their own mental maps to navigate the city. Location-based services could be accessed with dedicated GPS devices, which had only recently become precise enough for mapping and were not commonly used. At the time, media art was at the forefront of exploring both the creative possibilities and critical implications of these locative technologies, long before their widespread commercial adoption.

The locative media art projects that emerged during this era often sought to challenge conventional notions of mapping, memory, and movement, using GPS and mobile networks to visualise personal and collective experiences of space. These works questioned how technology mediates our relationship with place, foreshadowing today's hyper-connected world, where location tracking is an everyday reality.

AmsterdamREALTIME: A Pioneering Project

Born from a deeply personal fascination with orientation and movement, Polak – who describes herself as someone with a poor sense of direction – found inspiration in navigation tools. Her introduction to GPS technology came during a sailing trip, where she saw how the device could trace movement, revealing an entirely new way of visualising space and human activity.

This revelation led her to wonder: could the same principle be applied to the city? Could the collective movements of Amsterdam’s residents generate a map based purely on lived experience? When the Amsterdam City Archive announced its upcoming exhibition Maps of Amsterdam 1866-2000, she saw the perfect opportunity to explore these questions. She approached the archive with her idea and, recognising the project’s ambition, enlisted the expertise of the Waag Society (now Waag Futurelab) and artist Jeroen Kee to bring it to life. 

Translating this speculative idea into reality posed significant challenges. GPS technology was still relatively new, and it was uncertain whether the system would be precise enough to capture meaningful urban movement. 

The team also had to consider how to present AmsterdamREALTIME in a way that audiences could engage with meaningfully. With the help of Kee and Waag, Polak developed an installation that visualised the movements of 60 participants in Amsterdam using GPS tracking, creating a dynamic, real-time map of the city based on their trajectories. 

The Challenge of Bringing AmsterdamREALTIME to the Present

The original iteration of AmsterdamREALTIME was a participatory project – a kind of performance in which the city itself became the stage. However, ensuring that such an ephemeral work remains salient presents unique challenges – not just because of its technological dependencies, but because it was inherently a live, participatory experience. What remains of it is a visualisation, the look and feel of how movement created an image of the city. 

This visualisation was later adapted into an interactive Flash animation, allowing audiences to engage with the data in a new way. However, with the obsolescence of Flash, this version is now inaccessible. Creative coder Bente van Bourgondiën, who originally developed the digital visualisation, is now leading the restoration effort. The goal is not just to update the technology but to ensure that the experience remains meaningful for today’s audience.

The landscape of digital mapping has changed dramatically since 2002. The ability to track and visualise one's own movement, once groundbreaking, has now become an everyday convenience. People now track their running routes, follow each other’s locations, and give trackers to their children or pets.

Today, GPS tracking is embedded in daily life, used for safety, social connectivity, and even self-quantification. At the time, participants viewed their movement data as something deeply personal; one even remarked that he would save his printout to show his future grandchildren. Yet, more than two decades later, Polak wonders: Did they keep it? Did they frame it? Or was it just something that ended up in the recycling bin with the old newspapers?

Reactivating AmsterdamREALTIME for a New Audience

How can AmsterdamREALTIME be made tangible for a contemporary audience? Polak and her collaborators at LI-MA are exploring ways to bridge this gap. One approach is revisiting the work with its original participants, asking them to reflect on their experiences then and now. Another is contextualising it within contemporary artistic and technological conversations, drawing connections to today’s data-driven world.

Polak intends to develop an exhibition proposal together with Sanneke Huisman where the restored web-based iteration of the AmsterdamREALTIME Project will be presented alongside relevant artworks.

Through this process, AmsterdamREALTIME can be reactivated. The project remains as much about the present as the past, continuing to ask fundamental questions about how we move through, perceive, and define the spaces we inhabit.

LI-MA’s Role

LI-MA plays a crucial role in this reactivation project, not only by supporting the technical preservation but also by helping to ask the right questions about what it means to preserve this digital artwork. Beyond simply making the work accessible again, the process itself needs to be well-documented—both in terms of how the restoration is carried out and why certain choices are made.

Working alongside van Bourgondiën, LI-MA provides valuable feedback on what aspects of the restoration process should be recorded, ensuring that future restorations can build upon this work. By offering guidance on technical details, conceptual considerations, and preservation strategies, LI-MA helps shape a framework that will support the long-term sustainability of the artwork.

Additionally, as an established institution with a dedicated digital storage infrastructure, LI-MA can securely archive this documentation, making it far more reliable than personal or independent storage solutions. This ensures that AmsterdamREALTIME, along with its restoration history, remains accessible and adaptable for future audiences and researchers.

Esther Polak and Bente van Bourgondiën will discuss these insights and more during a session at Transformation Digital Art 2025. Join us on 20 March, at LI-MA. 

Header image: AmsterdamREALTIME. Credit: Waag/Esther Polak