Where are you now?
Assignment wording:
For the assignment we are to develop a project for a place influenced by spots. The project should aim to heighten a feeling of privacy based on the idea of idling.
Project:
This project is about making a photodocumentation of an urban adventure of the ”humanized” mobilephone. A mobilephone is a private thing we always carry around with us and almost cannot live without. Sometimes it even seems so important to us, that we treat this object as if it was alive or as if it was an indispensable part of our body. Here in the project we want to "change" the roles - what would happen if the mobilephone really had a life on it´s own? And in line with this - on which spot would it prefer to be idling, and where would we as human beeings want these recreational spots to be that we would name "mobile free zones"? How focus on invisible zones so they become visible? From the humanized mobilephone´s point of view we will make a dérive and map the urban adventure of the phone so that we plot in the places which could be "mobile free zones"
The Process:
We will use surveys to find out where people would prefer "mobilephone free zones". And these places will set the scenario for our photodocumentation of the phone´s recreation.
Three different optics/point of views will occur in our projekt :
1. A spectator´s view on a mobilphone.
2. The humanized mobilephone´s view on the surroundings.
3. Mapping – a combination of both 1. and 2. and a perspective from above.
Theme/theory (contemporary considerations)
- Domestication of technology. (Tame/cultivate/integrate technology)
- Wilken: Documenting places. A zone is not always a clear defined area, but will be with our definition of a mobilefree zone. In our project we will be working with three different kind of spots; a spot for the mobile, a spot for us (taking the photos), and a spot for the spectators watching the photos.
- Dong Hoo Lee: A cameraphone can be seen as an interface which creates the subject. But in another way the subject is also creating the interface of the cameraphone.
- Debord: Dérive-theory
- Galloway: How to make the invisible visible.
- Hemment's taxonomy: Ambulant (will be developed further)
- Lefebvre: The production of space. 3 types of conception of space. Spatial practices (physical space), Spaces of representation (experienced space, memory or mental space) & Representational space (abstract space)
- Sadler: situationist city
- de Certeau: Walking in the city
The concept in short:
Through the "humanized" mobile phone we want to create a critical reflection upon our use of mobile phones in general.
Is our human personality i.e. being conveyed to the mobile phone in such a way that the mobile phone both control and disturbs us (refering to Mitchell's idea of our "Culture of Interruptions"), or is the mobile phone a part of our personality?
Are there places where we do not want mobilephones to be? Spots where both human beings and mobilephones want to have privacy and time for idling - some kind of recharging-spots for both human beings and technology? If these "mobile free zones" existed at places they do not exist right now, would they then change our view of the city and the specific place?
