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:
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. 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 relation to this - on which spots 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/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”:
1) Wishful-thinking version
2) “The real” reality version
The places documented in our project is based on the clashes between these two. Places that involve public transportation and low phone-signal.
1) Divided into two groups we stepped on two different buses going in different directions
2) Each group caried a “humanized” mobilephone (with eyes, a little hat and placed in a sack chair) and kept on watching its signal constantly
3) In the second the signal was low (2 pins) we stepped off the bus.
4) At this spot we made an invisible place visible through photodocumentation of this idling spot
5) Then we changed direction and stepped on a new bus making the signal dictating our next idling spot several times.
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 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?
The main inspiration for this project was Debords 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 psykogeografical 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 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:
1) the limited terrain which the bus lead us through
2) the amount of signal showing on the phone
In our case technology instead of the human ‘habitus’ lead the drift and therefore it can be discussed whether this project is a psykogeography or something else.
On a contrary side you might say that 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) this is a Dérive. 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.
In our project we transformed anonymous spaces into places, according to Rowan Wilkens 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, 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 speaks of. This shows how the phone is assigned a power and will that controls us as human beings. 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 also brings in a cultural aspect brought in by Anne Galloway since 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 short we are making the invisible idling-spots visible as Galloway also describes.
This 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”).
Making our project we have been inspired by following artworks:
“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.
(skraldespandspige)
Like the woman from the artwork presented on the Biennale we also emphasize the technology as a controlling device which dictates our actions.
Michelle Teran , ”Leakage 1”
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.
