Semester assignment in Mobile Interface Culture - Mark Astrup
Assignment wording
The project is to be carried out within a place referring to a concept of beginnings. The project is to question privacy in means of playing around with mobile interfaces.
Final Concept
This project will take its place in the urban environment. A simple tent is constructed from simple objects such as a chair with a stick bound to it, and a black linnen hung over the sticks to create this tent. This is to create a private space in the urban space, for the project to be carried out in.
In the tent, a mobile phone will be placed on the chair. Above the chair is a note for the person who enters the tent to read. The note will say; "Help find the owner of this mobile phone from its looks and sounds!." Apart from the note, there will be a notebook, where the person can write consumptions about the owner of the mobile phone, based on the experiences with the mobile phone.
The mobile phone will not contain any contacts, therefore no names or numbers. The mobile does have a personal background image, and it will be possible to play back the persons ringtone for calls as well as texts. Otherwise, the mobile phone should provide assumptions about its owner from its physical design.
The form of the project has been chosen to try to create a closed bubble that a person with a mobile phone and headphones is normally offered by the media, also described in Caroline Bassets How many Movements?. When you enter the project, sitting on the chair (taking the mobile phones place) you should get a feeling of being invited into the persons database of interactions with cultural objects catagorized as semiotic codes for the contester of the project to decode - again based on the theory of both basset, but also Malcom Barnards Fashion as communication.
Theory
Barnard, M. (2002). Fashion as communication (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN: 0-415-26018-3. pp. 27-33 + 72-101.
Bassett, C. (2003). How many Movements? In M. Bull & L. Back (Eds.), The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. ISBN: 1859736181. pp. 343-355 http://www.skor.nl/article-2861-en.html
Lee, D. -H. (2005). Woman's Creation og Camera Phone Culture. Fibreculture Journal (6). ISSN: 1449-1443. http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue6
The last project
I've been granted a later deadline for this project, than the rest of you guys. I haven't been able to commit enough time to be in any group during the project-period, and therefore I will carry out this project on my own. The project will be finished April 15th.
Feedback from Lone and Johanne
Not a bad project at all. We like the idea of both investigating the implicit image-ness of the mobile phone and the act of crossing privacy or maybe even intimacy boundaries by making people 'spy' on another person's mobile phone inside an enclosed space. We mostly have questions regarding your own role in the carrying out of the project: Will the mobile phone be left on its own or will you be standing by the 'tent' in order to make people go in and have a guess? In other words: how secret is the reason for your investigation going to be to other people - what will people meet in the urban space? Also, why is the tent going to be simple (made by a chair, a stick and a piece of linnen)? We're not asking because we disagree, we're asking because it's important that you know the answer to these questions.
Answer to feedback
Thanks for your kind words. I think I have to be around somewhere, perhaps on a bench on something, so that I can keep an eye on the people than has gone Roskilde Festival, and are trying to tourch my project or something like that, but in an ideal situation, the project should be left at its own, to make peoples consumptions as unaffected and objective to the mobile interface as possible. It is the mobile phone in it self that has come to express a social understanding of the urban environment through cultural definitions it has been given - therefore it has grown up to tell its own story on its own hand.
The idea about the linnen hung over the stick, is that there will not be very much space in there. In order to have privacy (for the linnen to cover), you have to sit down on the chair inside the tent, and therefore have to remove the mobile phone from its position on the chair. The person who enters the project will take the mobile interface's place, and start interpret its communicative code, instead of the mobile interface taking a place in the persons communicative code. The space will design this re-thinking of roles between the mobile interface and its creator.
The project carried out
I started the project with a little presentation of the mobile interface itself. The mobile interface is a brand new Sony Ericsson mobile phone, with pop-phenomenon Britney Spears as ringtone, and a background image of the popular danish "bling-bling group" Nick og Jay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5aTe6WqQNk (can't get to embed the video for some reason, but here's a oldfashion link!)
The project took place at Kloster torv in the center of Aarhus. Inside there the mobile phone was placed on the chair, and pieces of paper clips together was hanging from a stick tied to the chair. On the front of this bundle of paper it said: "Help find the owner of this mobile phone from its looks and sounds!" On the next piece of paper it said "Which type of caracter do you think own this mobile, based on the mobiles looks and ringtones?" with space for people to write beneath the text.
People weren't eager to enter the project, most just passed by with an expression on their faces which expressed wonderind, about this object in the city. Actually, only two people entered the project. Mads and Christina. Both threw the linnen over the stick, instead of using it to cloack themselves from the city. Here is what Mads wrote:
"I think the owner of this phone goes to a lot of discoes, and uses a lot of make-up. The phone indicates this because it is the latest model and the ringtone is the latest top-chart hit, and this is typical for pop-people. I think the person is a girl. Mads."
Christina wrote this:
"I think it could be almost anybody. The phone is very common, and the ringtone is a popular one. It would suggest that could be a girl because I can't imagine any boys will have a picture of Nick and Jay on their phone. Christina"
After these had entered the project, and group of young bullies came and tried to trash the project, so I decided to close it down.
Conclusions
This project could have been documented better, if a camera had been placed inside the project, but this proved to be impossible during the circumstances for the project. It is how ever clear that the mobile interfaces have a cultural and social aesthetics bound to them, through which we can relate and describe people we have never talked to. This also proves Barnards point in Fashion as communication, where these aesthetic relations allows us to communicate with each other. This project reflects over this theory, taking it's semiotic question of designs to communicate, to a new level. The project describe certain choice of music and images placed on the mobile phone categorized as recognizable semiotic element, that can be used to place a person culturally and socially. This is supported by Bassets theory of the mobile phone as a database that contains a persons personality, through the persons interaction with the urban way of living (downloading music, images and so fourth).
The project didn't quiet work in its form, because the people didn't enter under the black linnen. My conclusion to this, is that people might feel the opposite of privacy when entering the project, because the action isn't "hidden" from the urban surroundings, as music in your headphones - according to Jean Paul Thibauds The sonic composition of the city. Jean Paul Thibaud also suggests in this text that people might divert from their rute, to find a place free from other people, if they wish to express the music they hear physically. This is not an option with this project, therefor has this project been carried out in a park for instance, people might have entered and explored the project more. It is not culturally accepted to sit under a black linnen on a busy square in the city.
