A "humanized" mobile phone on a dérive
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.
Presentation:
Our intention with this project was to map different spots in Aarhus where a mobilephone is idling, and especially the intersections between these spots and the places where some people would like to have a ”mobilefree-zone” have been a central idea. To carry out this project we wanted to focus on the mobilephone as "humanized" because we often subconsciously give the phone this role. Through our phone we have our connection to the outside world, our calender etc. – our life and we built up a relationship to our phone as though it was a small person. That´s why we made a dérive, where the mobilephone chose the places we went.
The Process/project:
Asking the question “Where would you like mobilephone-free-zones?” we found out through surveys on campus that people especially would prefer "mobilephone-free-zones" in public transportation. Therefore our starting point for this project was a bus.
To sketch out our project we work with two different aspects of the question of “mobilephone-free-zones”:
- Wishful-thinking version (from the surveys - represented by the bus)
- “The real” reality version (places where low signal actually or almost provides mobile phone-free-zones)
The places documented in our project is based on the clashes between these two. Places that involve public transportation and low phone-signal.
The urban mobilephone-adventure step by step:
- Divided into two groups we stepped on two different buses going in different directions
- Each group caried a "humanized" mobilephone (with eyes, a little hat and placed in a sack chair) and kept on watching its signal constantly
- The moment the signal was low (2 pins) we stepped off the bus.
- At this spot we made an invisible place visible through photodocumentation of this idling spot created by the low signal.
- Then we changed direction and stepped on a new bus making the signal dictating our next idling spot several times. The timelimit was two hours.
These low signal-places represents spots where the mobilephone is idling/recreating and therefore provides a kind of privacy – a place without interruptions.
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 controls 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 mobile phones to be? Spots where both human beings and mobilephones want to have/create privacy and time for idling - some kind of idling-spots for both human beings and technology? If these "mobile phone-free-zones" existed at places they do not exist right now, would they then change our view of the city and the specific place?
Documentation of our project:
- Photos from our dérive: Derivé
- Low-signal-map: The red line is where we drove with the bus, the black cirkels are where we changed bus and therefore also the low-signal-zones
Our project in proportion to theory from the courses:
Debord & Sadler
The main inspiration for this project was Debord's ideas on the situationist practice, which he named Dérive. “A technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences. Dérives involve playful-constructive behaviour and awareness of psychogeografical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll”. (Debord p. 1)
In our project we have been led by the amount of pins on the mobile phone showing the signal in a certain area, therefore you can argue that our project is more a structure –drift than a dérive –drift. Due to the fact that our way have been defined by two factors from the outside:
- the limited terrain which the bus lead us through
- the amount of signal showing on the phone
It can be discussed whether this project is a psychogeography or something else, as in our case it was technology instead of the human ‘habitus’(psyche), that lead our drift - the 'dérive'. But as Sadler also mentions in his text "The situaitionist city" then psychogeography is an attempt to combine subjective and objective modes of study. Considering the fact that we tried to make the mobilephone humanized, you can say we involved both parameters.
Still on a contrary side you can question if this was a dérive or not. You actually might say that our project is a dérive because our main aim was to study the terrain, which according to Debord is one of the two different goals of a dérive(the other goal is to emotionally disorient oneself). We broke the normal behaviour (but again in a constructed way) and tried to draw up a new kind op map – seen from the perspective of a mobile phone.
Rowan Wilken
In our project we transformed anonymous spaces into places, according to Rowan Wilken's theory of space becoming place when practiced. Spaces became places during our drift through our experiences and actions attached to the spots dictated by the phonesignal.
Our photoserie and the map is a documentation of these places, which normally are not visible or at least defined or noticed as such, but is made so through a technology device. Insignificant spots are then being transformed into significant places with help from technology!
The “humanized” mobile phone can be seen as a caricatured and exaggerated image of the domestication of technology which Wilken also speaks of. The domesticated or "naturalised" technology is taken to an ekstreem and becomes "human". This "humanization" of the phone emphasizes how the phone is assigned a power that controls us and is given a will of its own that dictates our way though the city as if the phone was a real person.
In addition to the question of power and control Ingrid Richardson quotes Mitchell for saying that we live in a “culture of interruptions wrought by mobile telephony” (Mitchell 2003 in Ingrid Richardson p.2) where communication is available at anytime.
This constant state of availabillity brings in another cultural aspect brought in by Anne Galloway who thinks our community can be seen as a controlled society. This because we seek to embed technology into our everyday life and then focus on the actions of the technological device instead of its physical presence as a tool.
In our project we try to focus on the mobile phone as a tool and a kind of "human being" as we are looking for spots where the phone can feel comfortable and idle. Also we are making the invisible idling-spots visible as Galloway describes. A point that can be said to be our starting point for the project since privacy in our project is interpreted as a place without interruptions. These places are the spots where you most likely can’t be reaced because of the low signal. A place where both the human being and the mobile phone can be idling (and “recreating”).
Hemment
The way we focused on and found the idling-spots added an info to the place, and only this place. If we moved another 300 meters (of course the bus didn´t stop the moment we pressed the stop-button, so we could not make it that exact) the low-signal-zone might be gone. Therefore according to Hemment's taxonomy, this project involves geo-annotation - and under this the located media. At the time and in the way we documented the spots, we added information to the place. This information was not physically in the environment but only available to limited recipients: the ones who look at our map.
Locke & Michel de Certeau
Everyone with a mobile phone is using the mobilenet, but because the net not disappear totally while using it in Aarhus, people are not aware of the lower signal-zones. Somehow you could say, that as they are using the net they write different patterns (because they are the visualisation of the invisible net), not without being able to read it as Michel de Certeau describes, but without reading it. If they wanted to, they could read it as we did. By creating the map, we ”read” the patterns and saw where it was a bold or a blurred line – good or bad signals.
This we could have chosen to communicate to more people, so others would find out where these places were. The best thing would of course be if it was possible to find spots in Aarhus, where there isn´t signal at all and then visualise it in the real urban space and then focus on the positive facts of this, that it not necessarily is bad thing because the mobilenet disappear. Instead it could be a possibility to idle, and maybe an oppotunity not only by coincidence to use it, but also a place you should look for because it becomes a privilige. Somehow you could also talk about these zones as the mobile´s TIZ, since the mobile does not create intimate zones while beeing used. Of cource the zones are not temporary in the way Locke means, but here we mean temporary because the mobile normally is on its way without being able to decide itself where to go and therefore stays there transitory.
When Locke defines the word ”zone” he means a place which is not architecturally signified. We worked with the same kind of zones, and tried to make them visible in the same way as the example where performers held an umbrella over those persons they met who spoke in a mobile phone.
We mapped according to an infunctionality in a technological function and in line with this, others have mapped according to a funtionality (Iain Borden – about the Skateboarding maps). In Borden's sence you find the best skateboarding zones, and in our sence you get to where the ”best” mobile-free zones are (in the "real" reality version - not in the wishful thinking-version). This emphasizes the clash we are working with between these to borderlines. Borden also talks about reproducing space, using space in a new imaginary and experiencing way, like our little mobile phone, to some extend, did. Our project relates to the thinking of maps produced from the opportunities offered by the physical contours of the city. As if the city was a canvas.
What would be changed if we had to make another iteration?
When rethinking the project it could have been interesting to place it in Hemment's mapping-taxonomy and under this the open/wiki maps. You could make an editable map so that others could participate in our project via mapping low signal zones in Aarhus.
A new project could be to explore the "mobilephone-free-zones" from the wishful-thinking a bit deeper now that we have focused more on the "real" reality. I.e. it could be interesting to realize/carry out such zones for a short period and observe peoples reactions to such a new initiative. This experiment could take place at some of the other zones where people sought after more privacy: in cafées, libraries, restaurants and places where people are being slowed down because of others making a phonecall (fx. in cues) etc.
Another dimension or layer could be to do the opposite thing with these ”wishful-mobilephone-free-zones” and instead provoke peoples perception on using mobilephones in i.e. busses, by doing it overdone. Then we could have focused more on Boals idea of spect-actor and peoples way of using involvement-shields that Goffmann mentions.
Inspiring artworks:
Making our project we have been inspired by following artworks:
- ”The City System: New York” by Lee Waltons: Here are many simular methods for instance they used a honk of a horn to change or guide their direction on their walk in the same way as we used the low signal zones on our mobilephone in the bus.
- “Amsterdam Realtime” by Esther Polak, 2002: Amsterdam Realtime is a mapping of people’s daily movements in Amsterdam through the use of GPS technology. This artwork is a hybrid of visual art, documentary and narrative approach to reality like our project. We also got inspired by the mapping technique used in this artwork. We just did the opposite mapping and mapped the places where there was missing something, where Amsterdam Realtime mapped the places with most activity.
- "The Biennale-performance":This artwork is an example of a kind of invisble theater. A Woman in a puplic place picks up and throws a trashcan without a word apparently for no reason. What the spectators cant see is that a person standing nearby is given the woman instructions and controling her actions. Like this artwork we also emphasize the technology as a controlling device which dictates our actions, only in our project the phone is not only the media but also the "person" in control.
- ”Leakage 1” by Michelle Teran: A woman walking in the street wheeling a suitcase catches and displays signals from surveillance equipment making people aware when they are being watched. This way of making technology visible also a theme in our project, only we display the lack of signal/technology.
