Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
1
D i s p e r s e d S u b j e c t s
in a mobile world
Eleanor Clarke
MA Fine Art Research Paper
Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design
Summer 2003
2
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Neil Chapman and Kate Love for their help in the early (and
later) stages of this essay; John Urry at Lancaster, for sending me his paper on travel
& talk and for being so encouraging. I must thank the people I spoke to last summer
from advertising agencies of mobile phone networks when asking for images and
videos I never finally used; my friends for putting up with (and feeding!) my mobile
phone obsession; and finally I must thank Mauricio - for the Mexican desert
experience and much more.
Elly Clarke
June 2003
3
Contents
Acknowledgements 2
Prologue
Rousseau is Wandering 5
Introduction
Locating oneself in a mobile world 8
1
Share the Moment: A walk in Frinton 16
2
Get Going Sooner: Speeding up, Losing time 17
3
Expose More: A Proposal of Marriage 24
4
Presence and Absence: To Be or Not to Be Anywhere Specific 25
5
She 29
6
On the Move: Getting Away 30
7
No Signal: A walk in the desert 33
8
Neighbours: The Broadway House Photo Project 34
Conclusion
Dispersed Subjects 38
Epilogue
Affected Writing: Tapping Keys 39
Bibliography 41
Appendix
The Broadway House Photo Project Press Release 46
4
“No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does
not at least checker his life with solitude.”
- De Quincy1
1 Quoted in STORR, Anthony, Solitude: A Return to the Self, Ballatine Books, New York, 1989, p.73
5
Prologue
Rousseau is wandering
Wandering and wondering: two words that sound nearly the same and mean
something similar. When written with an ‘a’, wandering refers to the physical
meandering of a body through space, whereas with an ‘o’, it becomes metaphysical:
an exploration of and around ideas, dreams and concepts.
I wander
Whilst wondering can take place without wandering, frequently the two go together.
Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker, for example, (first published 1782), uses
the walk to frame and provide a backdrop for thinking about things beyond anything
encountered or experienced on the actual walk. The wandering through the streets and
surrounding countryside of Paris in the 1770s is the catalyst for the wondering
Rousseau is able to do whilst, and as a result of, walking:
“Having decided to describe my habitual state of mind,” he explains at the beginning of the
Second Walk, “…I could think of no simpler or surer way of carrying out my plan than to
keep a faithful record of my solitary walks and the reveries that occupy them, when I give
free rein to my thoughts and let my ideas follow their natural course, unrestricted and
unconfined. These hours of solitude and meditation are the only ones in the day when I am
completely myself and my own master, with nothing to distract or hinder me, the only ones
when I can truly say that I am what nature meant me to be.”2
I wonder
Sitting at my computer over two hundred years later, I understand where he is coming
from. In order to work on this paper, whenever I could I brought myself back from
London to the countryside where I grew up, because I too find it easier to w_nder in
nature. I understand wandering and wondering as connected and I suffer if I am too
long away from the space and solitude I need to think clearly.
2 First paragraph of Second Walk in ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. FRANCE,Peter Penguin, London, 1979, p.35. Elsewhere Rousseau wrote “My whole life has been little else than a longreverie divided into chapters by my daily walks.” See Introduction p.12
6
7
3
3 Sony Ericsson advert, Winter, 2002: “The Sony CMD-Z7. You never knew technology could feel this way.Silky. Sexy. Sleek. With built-in antenna. E-mail. WAP. Jog-Dial for lightening speed access. All in 95g ofcurvaceous, caressable mobile phone. Just wait till you get your hands on it. You won’t be able to put it down.”
8
Introduction
Locating oneself in a mobile world
Today, in our mobile, cheap-flight, networked world, things are becoming
increasingly dispersed. Information is dispersed, capital and corporations are
dispersed, people are dispersed, communities are dispersed and even one’s sense of
self can feel dispersed at times. We are dispersed because, at least in theory, our world
is one that has few barriers.4 Aside from having the right to fly where we want when
we want at a price we can afford5and the ability to communicate with (almost) anyone
anytime (from anywhere), our world today is so networked that, as John Urry
suggests, strangers no longer exist, but are simply connections waiting to happen.6
Everything is fluid: where we go, what we think, who we know or may be able to get
to know in the future and so on. Plans too are easily changed or aborted at the last
minute, thanks to the ease of mobile person-to-person communication. But sometimes
this all makes it quite difficult to know where (or who) one is. Notions of presence
and absence are being tested today more so now than perhaps ever before as, with our
ever-increasing mobility and 24/7 media and communication, we spend more and
more time neither fully here or there, but travelling, - if not physically then mentally -
somewhere we are not. Speed too, and lack of time, are other aspects (symptoms) of
modern life that we have to live with and around, but which also subject us to the
dispersal of both our bodies and our minds, sometimes further and sooner than we
might wish.
Where are you?
This paper focuses on the impact of mobile phones and computer mediated
communication (CMC) upon our sense of self. However, whilst the impact of the
Internet upon society has been a focus of academic research (spanning many
4 “Capital is no longer manacled to machines and places, nations and jurisdictions… Companies can move inweeks. Ambitious men need no longer stand still to be fleeced or exploited by bureaucrats. Geography has becomeeconomically trivial.” GILDER, George in Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology,Simon & Schuster, New York, 1989, p.355-356; quoted in MITCHELL, William J, e-topia, MIT Press,Massachusetts, 2000, p.1095 ‘Everyone should have the right to fly as often as they like… at a fair price!’ BRANSON, Richard, Chairman ofthe Virgin Group, quoted on Virgin Express website: http://www.virginexpress.com September 20026 URRY, John, Social Networks, Travel and Talk, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, 2003
9
disciplines) since before most people had even heard of the world wide web, there is
still very little written specifically on mobile phones. When I first began looking into
the subject last summer, I could not find one book devoted to it. Today there are
conferences being organised to discuss the sociological impact of mobile
communication devices, but still, as yet, I have found nothing that specifically
investigates what has always bothered me the most about possessing (being subject
to) a mobile phone, which is the lessening of ‘self’ time, space and uninterrupted
solitude that comes with it.
My interest in mobile phones fits in with other issues that have concerned me for a
long time. Mapping, networks and the movement and interaction of people within
space are frequently the driving force behind the work I produce, which is often to do
with communities as well as communication (the two are, in any case, still very much
linked.)
I have a love/hate relationship with the networked mobility of our world. On the one
hand I find it incredibly exciting that through the Internet one is able to locate and
write to more or less anyone, pursue any interest, build a website, tap into or even
form a community: the levelling, democratic aspects of the world wide web. For a
year I worked as ‘Network Manager’ for a never finally launched pan-European
Internet community; my job was to build this community purely through emailing
friends (of friends of friends) and following them up with presentations in the cities
they were in. I was amazed at how small the world was and indeed how everyone was
ultimately connected to everyone else by just a few degrees of separation.7 On the
other hand, as much as I enjoy all the connections, communications and exchanges of
information that go on as a result of our virtual and physical mobility, they also
threaten me. They threaten my personal space, my personal time and my time for
thought and reflection. I am someone who, although very sociable and interested in
people, has always needed her space and time to think, her solitude. I grew up in the
country; I love to go for long walks on my own. I have kept a diary since I was ten. I
need to be able to wonder about the world and I worry that the world we live in
7 My job of ‘finding’ people through this process of e mail was followed up, when I had enough interested peoplein any one of our targeted cities, by booking a flight and hotel online, then going there, with a power pointpresentation pre-loaded on my computer and delivering it, face-to-faces.
10
doesn’t allow enough time or space for anyone to really w_nder very much at all. We
are running too fast, trying to get too much done, and in doing this we are forgetting
about our selves.
8
The cult of the individual
To suggest that we forget about our selves, however, could be taken as ironic in a
world that increasingly puts ‘rights’ of the individual before anything or anyone else.
“In Western societies, at least,” writes Marc Augé, ”the individual wants to be a world
in himself; he intends to interpret the information delivered to him by himself and for
himself.”9 The signs of this are everywhere. Buy a new lipstick ‘Because I’m Worth
It.” (L’Oreal.) Have the World in the Palm of Your Hand (Orange.) Get world news
from your Internet server, tailor made to your interests so you only have to read about
the things you want. Organise your favourite websites in your browser… In fact, the
success of communication technologies depends absolutely upon flattering, serving
and facilitating the cult of the individual (which goes with our right to fly, right to
drive our cars, right to exotic holidays and so on.) Did the individual not want to do as
he pleased at the time he chooses, he would have no need for his own
computer/phone/video phone to himself and there would be no market for it. As Sale
Kirkpatrick writes, “Necessity, the genius of the Industrial Revolution, is not so much
8 “The T68 from Sony Ericsson not only lets you capture those defining moments, it also lets you share them.Snap on the CommunCam™ micro camera, take, send and receive picture with your friends using the OrangeMessaging service.” Spring 20039 AUGE, Marc, trans HOWE, John: Places and Non-Places: The Anthropology of Supermodernity, Verso, London1995, p. 37
11
the mother of invention as of demand and hence consumption: establish needs, or
merely the felt perception of needs, and you establish a market.”10
Although the web offers users the potential to explore new avenues and to expand
their mind and understandings of the world, it is perhaps due to the sheer vastness of
what we realise is out there that in practice CMC (computer mediated
communication) often results in finding more of what already interests the individual
concerned, than in discovering anything new. Is a so called ‘Internet Community’ a
community that builds feelings of togetherness whilst accepting difference, or is it in
reality simply a collection of lost (disembodied) souls seeking to (re)define
themselves through the interactions offered by the (faceless, placeless, ageless)
temporal co-presence of others? As Derek Foster writes:
“One would like to presume that… in the creation of solidarity, that we ascribe to
Gemeinschaft [“we feeling”], we are made more sensitive to the situation of the other…. On
the other hand, CMC can free individuals from the yoke of traditional restraints upon
information retrieval; individual pursuits and specific fields of interest can easily be pursued
through increasingly narrow fields of vision.”11
There is a danger that much of the discourse that takes place through CMC can turn
out to be more of a dialogue with oneself than with others. “Solipsism, or the extreme
preoccupation with and indulgence of one’s own inclinations, is potentially
engendered in the technology,” warns Foster. “…It is altogether too easy to ignore
difference and to attribute one’s image of self to the other instead of defining one’s
self in reference to the other.”12
10 SALE, Kirkpatrick, Rebels against the Future - Lessons for the Computer Age, Quartet books, London, 1996,p.3811 FOSTER, Derek, Community and Identity in the electronic village’ from PORTER, David, Ed., Internet Culture,Routledge, London & New York, 1996, pp. 23-37, p. 2612 Ibid p. 26-27
12
13
Everyone’s Invited14
Through identity-shifting interactions with the Other, therefore, the self may be
defined in opposition to that Other encountered. If Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea that being
is always ‘co-being’ is anything to go by, it would suggest that the Internet (and
mobile phones) could be a playground for self definition: “I need the Other in order to
create a sense of self. The Self therefore is nothing in itself. Self means nothing
without the alterity or outsideness that is provided by the Other: I cannot become
myself without another.” 15
But if we always depend upon the presence of others to help us define ourselves, what
happens when other people are not around? Where is the self and how can we know?
With a mobile phone always in our hands, when will we have time to find out? The
contacts on our phones become extensions of ourselves; we carry them with us
everywhere we go. If our phones are stolen, we lose everything. We are rendered
13 Junk mail folder on hotmail, 5th June 200314 Strap line for Samsung Digital15 HOLLOWAY, Julian & KNEALE, James, Mikhail Bakhtin: Dialogics of Space in CRANG, Mike & THRIFT,Nigel thinkingspace, Routledge, 2000, pp.71-88, p.73
13
mute, cut off, alone, out of the picture; afraid and seemingly unpopular without the
security of constant contact to reaffirm, re-tell and re-acknowledge our place in the
world.
16
Where were we?
Another point I should include (before I forget) is the difficulty in concentrating on
any one thing for any length of time. Just as I am getting into something, a call, a text,
someone else’s conversation, cuts in and I go with it. Online, I get taken where I
didn’t mean to go, get distracted and can’t remember where I was headed in the first
place. “To be concentrated means to live fully in the present, in the here and now, and
not to think of the next thing to be done, whilst I am doing something right now,”
wrote Erich Fromm in 1957.17 But this is becoming increasingly difficult as we
discover ourselves to be more and more frequently between topics, subjects, people
and places.
For this paper I have selected various aspects of our mobile world to write about -
from watching TV to walking in the desert; from sitting with a girl in the bathroom to
observing another sending a text from a beach hut – and between these subjective
16 Orange advertisement for mobile phone insurance17 FROMM, Erich, The Art of Loving, (first published in 1957) Thorsons, London, 1985, p.89-90
14
observations are more substantial essays to cement these weak links into something
more concrete... Get Going Sooner is an essay about the speeding up of culture whilst
To Be or Not to Be Anywhere Specific explores in more depth idea(l)s of presence and
absence. On the Move is about our attempt to escape all this connectedness from time
to time, and finally the chapter on Neighbours is about The Broadway House Photo
Project, which I organised as a way to get to know those people who live in the same
building as me and for them to get to know each other. We are too often too dispersed
in time and space to find the chance to interact with those who are, ironically, closest
to us. In this chapter I tell the story very much from my perspective, as neighbour and
project co-ordinator, with the questions and responsibility it entailed.
How are you?18
Like its topic, the format of this paper is also dispersed and I hope I do not lose the
reader with(out) it. The reader’s interpretation is always of utmost importance, but I
try not to predict it. It is, in any case, impossible. We all see with our own eyes, all
read with our own points of reference to help us along. We each write different things
in the margins. We have our own desires, our own fantasies, our own ‘hot links’
between often very dispersed subjects that would make no sense to almost anyone
else, except for those who are close to the individual concerned.19
In putting this together, I have felt restricted by the necessity of page numbers and
chapters (trying to (im)pose order on chaos) feeling that the words and pictures here
would be better off as hypertext; this paper better as a website. In that case, the user
would be actively able to seek hir own way of navigating around, through, over and
across the topics discussed, forming new bridges and methods of reading them. Now
it is too late, and in any case it is paper they hanker for. A paper, on paper, with page
numbers in case you lose your way.
18 Vodafone strap line19 In a relationship this is what we do of course: we begin to predict, appreciate and understand the links that takeplace between subjects in the person we are involved with, because of what we have come to understand of them,their past, their histories, their passions…
15
But this is just the introduction, and I must get on,20 and although I do not mention it
again, I believe in the importance of art as a space and time to think, as well as in its
potential to create and encourage new relationships between people and the spaces in
which they interact.
20 “Introductions are always awkward. The formalities of naming and making known are subjected to doubt, to aquiet crisis of identification.” McGEOWN, Martin & LEWANDOWSKA, Marysia. Medium Setting in TheMissing Text, Chance Books, London, 1991 p.12.
16
1
Share the Moment: A Walk in Frinton
A month or so ago I went for a walk with Mildred, my mother’s nine year-old Labrador, and
my lovely friend Charlotte. In a beach hut that we managed to break into, to shelter from the
wind, she sent a carefully worded text message to her ex lover.
I took a mini DV camera on that walk. It was a beautiful bright day, but there were very few
people around. I was feeling rather lacking in words, but hungry for the colours, the sharpness
of the light and the long bleak concrete sea walls.
When I got home I was able to watch those views again (out of the cold), and even to
photograph them differently. It was good to have a second chance.
It is a strange world we live in. Permanently connected to all those we know; family, friends,
colleagues and even enemies - just in case they decide to ring one day, at least we know not to
answer.
17
2
Speeding up, Losing time
Although a much discussed subject, the issue of speed is not unique to our age. Man
has always desired it - partly for the thrill, but chiefly to further his power over his
environment. “Speeding up is what we do, explains Dean Kuipers. “It is human
nature. We are tool users. We will always hunt for a way to do things faster, more
efficiently, with less effort and less error.”21 The faster we can get there, the greater
our influence can be over distance. (The Romans didn’t go to the trouble of building
their straight roads for nothing.22)
As a result, our whole history has been punctuated by moments of ‘speed up’ – each
time affecting at once the subjective size of the world (our sense of scale) and the
power of the individual within it, as well as our concept and experience of time itself.
The minute hand was introduced in the Industrial Revolution to control people’s
activities during the day more precisely; Greenwich Meantime came as a result of
trains that demanded the whole country run to exactly the same clock, and today two
attempts have been made to ‘invent’ Internet time, supposedly to help us function
more easily in our global market. “Internet Time is absolute time for everybody. Now
is now and the same time for all people and places. Later is the same subsequent
period for everyone. The numbers are the same for all.”23
Acceleration is bound up not only with the physical movement of people and goods,
however, but also crucially with the dissemination of information, which means the
role of the written word cannot be overlooked. After the invention of paper, which
made written messages easily portable for the first time, came the printing press that
enabled ideas to circulate far further and in far greater saturation than would have
been possible by the spoken word or individual messages. Similarly today the Internet
21 KUIPERS, Dean & AITKEN, Doug, I am a bullet: scenes from an accelerating culture, p.1122 McLUHAN, Marshall, Understanding Media: the extensions of man, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1975, p.9023 Nicholas Negroponte. Internet Time was based on the decimal system with a day divided into 1000 beats withBiel Mean Time (BMT) based in Biel, Switzerland, as the universal reference it. In 2002 the British Governmentalso proposed launching Greenwich Electronic Time (GeT) as an alternative to Greenwich Mean Time. From LEE,Heejin & WHITLEY, Edgar A, Time and Information Technology: Temporal Impacts on Individuals,
Organizations and Society in The Information Society Journal 18(4) p.237
18
takes information into more corners of the world than would be possible on paper and,
when built in to handheld communication devices, yet further still.
Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication
The written word is communication that is asynchronous, meaning that senders and
receivers of information need not be either physically or temporally co-present for the
message to get across, and usually aren’t.24 The invention of the telegraph in 1794,
however, which meant that for the first time messages could outpace the messenger,
(thus marking the separation of ‘transportation’ and ‘communication’25) was the first
step towards the future of distanced and yet synchronous communication that became
reality in 1876 with the invention of the telephone. This, and other inventions that
took place within just a few decades - of the camera, phonograph, radio,
cinematograph, (as well as of the car and aeroplane) - had a profound effect on both
the practice of communication and the notion of proximity.26
Get Going Sooner27
Today, acceleration is an accepted and predictable part of both our present and our
future, and the changes in scale that take place as a result so commonplace they hardly
need explaining.28 Speed is a part not only of our world but also of our selves. “To
possess speed is to be modern,” write Millar and Schwartz; “to control speed rather
than be controlled by it is perhaps the most important form of contemporary power
[there is]… We have absorbed speed into our own sense of identity… We appreciate
the quick answer, the snap judgement, rather than careful consideration or quiet
deliberation. Decisiveness is a strength, contemplation a weakness.”29
24 MITCHELL, William J, e-topia, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 2000, p.13125 CAREY, James, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, Unwin Hymen, 1988, p.213, quotedin STRETTON, Jon, Cyberspace and the Globalisation of Culture in Internet Culture26 MCQUIRE, Scott, Pure Speed – From Transport to Teleport, in MILLAR, Jeremy & SCHWARTZ, Michael,Speed – Visions of an Accelerated Age, pp.26-33, p.2827 Nokia 9210 pamphlet. Winter 2002.28 “We are in an era characterized by changes in scale - of course in the context of space travel but also on earth,rapid means of transport have brought any capital within a few hours’ travel of any other. And in the privacy ofour homes… images of all sorts, relayed by satellites and caught by the aerials that bristle on the roofs of ourremotest hamlets, can give us an instant, sometimes simultaneous vision of an event taking place on the other sideof the planet.” AUGÉ, Marc, trans HOWE, John: Places and Non-Places: The Anthropology of Supermodernity,Verso, London 1995, p.3129 Quoted in MILLAR, Jeremy & SCHWARTZ Introduction – Speed is a Vehicle, in Speed – Visions of anAccelerated Age, pp.16-21, p.17
19
And as I ate my breakfast this morning, reminders of this were all around me. The
orange juice carton promises how drinking a glass a day will help me cope with
(control?) ‘today’s fast pace of life.’ I open last Saturday’s paper supplement and an
advert for an Olympus digital camera (in a weather proof body) encourages me to
‘Capture Every Moment. Life is precious. Don’t miss a second of it,’ and for Canon
cameras: ‘Shorten the distance between imagination and image.’
We love speed and we hate it. On the one hand we feel ill, stressed and overdone by
all the rushing we get caught up in and have to squeeze in a session or two of yoga
every week (remembering to drink our orange juice), but on the other we can’t wait
for anything. Five minutes late and a text message will be sent, one way or the other.
Get your digital camera now. There is no time to waste.
Part of the reason we can’t waste time, however, is because most people spend most
of their time at work. With just two days off in a ‘nine to five’ five-day a week job,
there are few minutes in the day left for anything else at all, let to waste. Saturday is
for nursing a hangover, Sunday is for doing a wash. Then it’s back to work again.
With work taking up most of our waking hours and media increasingly invading the
rest (mobile phones and internet also bringing work home, thus breaking down the
traditional boundaries between home and work, time off and time on) time and space
to w_nder (‘to waste’) is running out.
30
30 Olympus Advert, Summer 2003
20
31
31 ‘The Siemens S45 is equipped with GPRS for fast data transfer. Connected to your laptop it acceleratesdownloading of superfluous e-mails and nonsense websites. Your productivity will triple. You’ll get three times asmuch nothing done in the same time.” 2002-2003
21
In a book project entitled Work & Beauty by Octavio Comeron, I.T. worker, Chris
Abraham, confirms this: “WORK in our modern world, is largely the means by which
we acquire the means to live. There are exceptions, like working for charity, or
working for the fun of it. However, these are rare departures from the larger collection
of work that gets done to pay bills, take care of families and pay for drinks when not
at work: Salud!”32
The Devil Makes Work for Idle Thumbs33
But this is good for the State, because no one has time to question it. The less time we
have to think, the less trouble we are likely to cause by demanding change. The
protestant work ethic prevails with the idea that any ‘time off’ must be earned and
when it is and we have it, we deserve to spend it well (‘as we please’), by doing fun
things or shopping for things we desire, or by going away altogether in an attempt to
escape, at least temporarily. In this context, simply sitting and thinking about nothing
in particular would be seen as a waste of a rare and valuable resource. “A man sitting
quiet and contemplating with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself
and his oneness with the world is considered to be “passive” because he’s not “doing”
anything,” writes Fromm.34 “Even the most superfluous and senseless activity
undertaken in people’s free time is integrated in society…”(adds Theodore Adorno.)
“Free time… does not merely stand in opposition to labour. In a system where full
employment itself has become the ideal, free time is nothing more than a shadowy
continuation of labour.”35
Artist Ella Gibbs recently addressed this issue of what we do with our ‘spare’ time at
the Chisenhale Gallery in East London. For two months, with help from the ‘Spare
Time team,’ Gibbs transformed the gallery space into a ‘Spare Time Job Centre.’
Visitors were given ‘Spare Time Job Application Forms’ to fill in that encouraged
them to think about the concept of ‘Spare Time’ in the context of their own personal
experiences and uses of it. Of course The Spare Time Job Centre, it was explained
32 Chris Abraham, I.T. worker, in Work & Beauty by Octavio Comeron, msdn publications, 200033 Virgin Mobile advert for 3p text messages, Summer 200334 FROMM, Erich, The Art of Loving, Harper Collins, London, 1995, p.1735 ADORNO, Theodore W The Culture Industry, Routledge, London, 1991, p.167-168
22
“values things that happen, are created or discovered during Spare Time. The project
offers Spare Time for anyone to reflect, refresh and re-evaluate.”36
How do you spend yours?
36 Spare Time Job Centre Spare Time Application Form
23
24
3
Expose More37: A Proposal of Marriage
One Sunday morning I turn on the telly. A blond woman, in fashionable clothes, storms into
an office with a camera crew. Looking straight at me with wide eyes she lets me know that
they are looking for a Spurs fan who is 5’8’’ with red hair.
Inside the open plan office, they find the one they are after. Flustered and confused, our red
headed fan gets up from her chair and manages a hello. They are from a programme called
‘TV Mail’ she is told - has she heard of them? - and their job is to deliver messages to people.
Presenter lady asks: ‘do you know who might have sent you a message?’ Spurs replies,
sceptical, embarrassed, ‘I have no idea.’
At this point she is told to turn around, look directly into the camera and read a message that
comes up on the screen before her. Sitting in our sofas across the country, we see red head
Spurs lady reading her own message face on (as if to me):
Dear Keilly… I am sending you this note… to say thank you for making my dreams
come true… You are everything I ever wanted… You make me so happy… Keilly…
Will you marry me?
Having finished reading, Keilly exclaims ‘Oh my God!’ and tears well up in her eyes and blond
presenter says ‘were you expecting that?’ and Keilly says: ‘No. It’s a surprise,’ and the presenter
asks: ‘and will you? and Keilly replies ‘Yes! Of course.’
At which point presenter gives Keilly a hug and an air kiss and everyone in the open plan office
is on their feet, clapping and smiling, and bottles of champagne are being opened.
‘And where did you meet? the presenter enquires. ‘On the Internet’, comes the reply. Keilly’s
newly labelled fiancé is nowhere to be seen, but we are told that when they met for the first
time,
it was love at first sight (/site).
37 Siemens strap line for Siemens S55, Spring 2003
25
4
Presence and Absence: To Be or Not to Be Anywhere Specific?
“I think where I am not, and I am where I think I am not.”
- Lacan38
The more mobile we become, the more idea(l)s of human presence and absence need
re-vising. This is a job partly for society, which, over the past 200 years has had
increasingly to come to terms with the fact that ‘away’ no longer has to mean
‘absent,’ nor that ‘here’ necessarily means ‘present.’39 With mobile phones this was
perhaps the greatest impact we felt: I meet my friend for a drink, she texts her
girlfriend. I read (some of) the ones she gets back.
These re-evaluations of understandings of presence and absence are also to do with
the fact that we have so many different ways of presenting oneself. Before any
interaction of any kind, the method for it must be chosen. Today, one can present
one’s ideas (oneself) locally or remotely, synchronously or asynchronously, each one
differing from the other in terms of time, money and resources, as well as in intensity
and effect. Local synchronous interaction, which is face-to-face contact, is the most
direct and therefore the most valuable (but can be the most expensive in time and
money), whilst remote asynchronous communication (such as emails) is usually the
least.40 Therefore the choice as to which method to use comes down not only to
physical or technological constraints, but is also determined by the context and
hierarchy of the person or people one is wishing to commun(icat)e with. William
Mitchell writes:
“Face-to-face provides the most intense, high-quality, potentially enjoyable interaction. It is
not constrained by storage capacity, telecommunication bandwidth, or interface limitation.
38 LACAN, quoted in lecture given by Jean Fisher at the Royal College on 11 June, 200239 “To be close to someone socially does not necessarily require physical proximity and, in a world ofdisembedded mechanisms and distanciated relations… the immediate copresence of subjects is no longerconsidered to be the necessary basis of community relations. On this view, the boundaries – social as well asphysical – which once marked the limits of local relations are now more akin to thresholds across whichcommunication and other forms of distanciated interaction may take place.” ALLEN, John, On Georg Simmel:
Proximity, Distance and Movement in CRANG, Mike & THRIFT, Nigel thinkingspace, Routledge, 2000, pp.54-70, p.5840 (Although of course mobile phone communication is not cheap..)
26
But it is… by far the most expensive option… Most importantly, it consumes your attention;
you only have a limited amount of time available in your day for meeting with people, and it
demands some of this. So it makes sense in contexts where the importance of the interaction
justifies the high cost.”41
I find this quite chilling. First because of the unquestioned ‘fact’ of the scarcity and
expense of time; second is the implication that because of this, only ‘important’
people will deserve and achieve regular co-presence with others (eating corporate
lunch after corporate lunch), whilst the ‘unimportant’ ones will remain faceless
behind computer screens and telephones, because they are not worth the expense
incurred in arranging face to face meetings with them. (Perhaps this is not so far off
from what we have already…)
However, despite this, I feel that our culture is still not yet resolved on the question of
whether, really, one should be or not be anywhere specific. One only needs to watch
the adverts on TV to see how on the one hand our mobile phone ensures we are never
alone with our ever-present, self-styled network of friends, family and colleagues
forever with us in the palm of our hand no matter where in the world we are (or where
they are) but that on the other, if we do not make that crucial meeting in that specific
meeting room with those specific people face-to-face, we will miss the deal we were
after, because at the end of the day nothing can get through better than a handshake.42
As James Corner reminds us, “air travel and other modes of rapid transportation have
become so accessible that localities can be more closely connected to sites thousands
of miles away than to their immediate surroundings. Today, structures of community
life are shifting from spatial stability towards shifting, temporal coordination.”43 But
is this enough to sustain lasting relationships?
41 MITCHELL, William J, e-topia, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 2000, p.13742 Thinking here of the Orange advertising slogan ‘I am never alone: I have the world in the palm of my hand’, andof the British Airways TV advertisement aired Summer 2002, showing a business man sending an impressivedocument to a client but not attending the meeting, and another who arrived at the meeting empty handed, but wonthe deal anyhow, because he was there.43 CORNER, James, The Agency of Mapping in COSGROVE, Denis, Ed., Mappings, Reaktion Books, London,1999, pp.213-252, p.226
27
In a paper written this year entitled ‘Social Networks, Travel and Talk’, Sociologist
John Urry argues that it is not, but that in order to keep any relationship going (or
even to launch it into anything significant in the first place) it is crucial that people
experience regular moments of physical co-presence with one another. After giving
figures that confirm the simultaneous increase both in the use of digital
communication media and the number (and distance) of people travelling every year,
he argues how our ever-widening, ever-growing networks provoke rather than reduce
our need to travel.44 The reason, he explains, is our need to experience ‘meetingness,’
which, through the qualities of face-to-face interaction, transforms ‘weak ties’ (of
which, because of our communication technologies, we have an ever-increasing
number) into stronger ones that will last and upgrade the relationship from
acquaintance into something more trusting and more profound. “Central to networks
are the forms and character of ‘meetingness’ and hence of travel in order both to
‘establish’ and to ‘cement’ at least temporarily those weak ties.”45 It is not possible, he
argues, to cement (or maintain) relationships without being “at least intermittently but
regularly” co-present with people. This is true within families, relationships and for
successful business dealings.
And certainly speaking on the phone is not the same as seeing someone (or even as
hearing them in the next room) and emailing is still not the same as writing (or
receiving) a letter. Presence (or even trace of presence, as in the letter for example) is
something we value extremely highly and, as we work increasingly with contacts who
are not co-present but dispersed over distance, the necessity of making specific
meeting time to spend with people becomes even greater. We need co-presence for
the eye contact, intimacy, trust, our ability to read emotions and to detect insincerities,
as well as for the possibility of our having “rich, multi-layered and dense
conversations” that are made up “not only of words, but indexical expressions, facial
gestures, body language, status, voice intonation, pregnant silences, past histories,
44 Some of the figures cited by Urry (sources are footnoted in his text): One car for every 8.6 people with a triplingof car travel predicted between 1990 and 2050; 4 million air passengers each day and 300,000 passengers in flightabove the USA at any one time; in Britain, people are travelling five times further per year than in the 1950’s andthis is expected to double again by 2025; each year half a million new hotel rooms are completed. (p.3) As forcommunication, by 2005 1 billion internet users are predicted; worldwide there are now more mobile phones thanlandline phones; there are 1 billion TV sets worldwide. (p.4)45 URRY, John, Social Networks, Travel and Talk,, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, 2003, p.6
28
anticipated conversations and actions, turn-taking practices and so on.”46 Such ‘thick’
co-presence, as Urry calls it, is not possible to achieve through remote
communication. If in doubt, the saying goes, call a meeting.47
And yet despite all this, phone companies will continue to insist that temporal
presence can be a substitute for co-presence. This is of course how they make their
money. And part of me does wonder. Human beings are adaptable, and I wonder
whether it wouldn’t be that extra-ordinary for us to learn how to detect those things
we observe when co-present with people, such as body language, eye contact and to
read someone’s gestures through technology rather than having to really meet up in
person. Video phones will be commonplace within a few years if not months (the
advertising for them is currently everywhere) and considering the assault on the
environment caused by so much travelling, (the building of airports and roads as well
as the carbon dioxide emissions of which transport accounts for one third48) I feel that
such zipping around the world just will not be able to go on, for the very fact that if it
does we won’t have much of a world left to live in, let alone to explore. As much as I
would always rather see someone in the flesh than through a screen, I think the
environment will have to at some point come first. Either we will have to get to know
people who live physically (co-presently) in our neighbourhoods and re-establish
links with people who are nearby, or learn, once and for all, how to communicate over
the technologies we have in the palms of our hands.
Cheap flights cost the earth…
46 Ibid, p.1047 A less intense version of co-presence, but just as important, is the task of simply ‘showing one’s face’somewhere, which, as Urry points out, is often a crucial part of becoming known as part of a specific group orcommunity. (“A person is a personality”, Herbert Read once stated, “because he belongs to a community.”HERBERT READ, George, The Emergent Self, in FARGANS, James, Ed., Readings in Social Theory, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1993; quoted in FOSTER, Derek, Community & Identity in the Electronic Village, in InternetCulture, Routledge, London & New York, 1996; pp.23-27, p.25)48 URRY, John, Social Networks, Travel and Talk,, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, 2003, p.3
29
5
She
She sighs she moves she smiles she looks
At me. Her skin her hands her eyes
Are beautiful. I watch her: fascinated.
She talks she sings she scrubs her skin with salt in the bath
She calls to me: ”come in here and talk to me!”
So I do.
I sit in the bathroom with her and watch her: transfixed.
She gets out she gets dressed she kisses me goodbye
And she leaves
For her boyfriend’s place.
I sit, I think, I am enclosed by the flat
The smell of the bath is still in the air
Her presence hangs behind her as mine
Follows her down the corridor…
I sigh I move I smile to myself
I sing I dance
Quiet
And alone.
I sigh I move I dance
My heart beats -
Heavily.
30
6
On the Move: Getting Away
“Every voyage is the unfolding of a poetic. The departure, the cross-over, the fall, the
wandering, the discovery, the return, the transformation. If travelling perpetuates a
discontinuous state of being, it also satisfies, despite the existential difficulties it often entails,
one’s insatiable need for detours and displacements in postmodern culture.”
Trinh T. Minh-Ha49
As much as cheap flights cost the earth, it seems we feel we have to be able to get
away fairly frequently in order to stay sane. Not all the flying that is going on in the
world is about running after our emails or cementing weak ties; much is to do with an
attempt to escape them. Holiday time is seen as a space, an interval, a break from the
hecticness of everyday life. “ By imagining the vacation as a space in the structuring
of time, work is counterbalanced by the promise of temporal alterity, and with the
accompanying promise of revitalization.”50 Going away somewhere other than home
is also heralded in some way as ‘authentic’ in a world that is, by this same idea,
perceived increasingly as inauthentic.51
49 MINH-HA, Trinh T. Other than myself/my other self in ROBERTSON, George; MASH, Melinda; TICKNER,Lisa; BIRD, Jon; CURTIS, Barry; PUTNAM, Tim, Eds., Travellers’ Tales – Narratives of Home andDisplacement, Routledge, London & New York, 1994 pp 9-26; p.1850 CURTIS, Barry & PAJACZKOWSKA, Claire, ‘Getting there’: travel, time and narrative in ROBERTSON,George; MASH, Melinda; TICKNER, Lisa; BIRD, John; CURTIS, Barry; PUTNAM, Tim Eds. Travellers’ tales –Narratives of Home and Displacement., Routledge, London & New York, 1994, p.20051 See FROW, John, Tourism & the Semiotics of Nostalgia, in Time & Commodity Culture, Claredon Press,Oxford, pp.74-101
31
It is perhaps an irony of modern day life also that the travel time and space afforded
by a journey is one of the rare situations when we really are able to gather ourselves
back together. Although our bodies are moving (or rather, being moved), our minds
are free to wander. I personally love the space of a travel-journey. The time and the
space between point A (behind, before, then) and point B (in front, ahead, future) and
the fact that in between there’s me: travelling body (usually seated, motionless) and a
w_ndering mind. On planes in particular, I am often able to make some really good
decisions about things. It is a cocoon space. A de-placed space. A limited space and
limited time, but a time that is felt, endured, used and use-able for thinking. A
modern-day space for Rousseau-style Reveries.
Part of the reason we have such space on planes is because, as yet, we have to switch
our phones off. We are, for once, out of touch.
On all other modes of transport, however, mobile phones encroach on this self-time
and space. A journey becomes an opportunity to catch up on some phoning. And as I
get the bus these days I notice an increasing number of adverts that reference
websites. Though this is not new in itself, what is is the fact that these adverts I am
talking about are more or less incomprehensible without checking out the site for
further explanation… Of course at the moment they must have relatively few people
remembering the web address and making a special effort to look it up once they get
to a computer, but such tactics pre-empt the time when we all have internet savvy
phones, so that a bus journey for the advertising gurus is not longer a dead space, but
one that is live, interactive and productive. As passengers passing by, we will simply
react to things we see around us. Corporations have already got all the space they can;
now they are going for our time, though the communication devices we have chosen
to own. They are controlling us from the inside. As Armand Mattelart writes, it is for
a reason: “The macro applications of communication networks have been, are and
will remain the object of contradictory claims: they lie at the heart of confrontations
for global control.”52
52 MATTELART, Armand, Mapping Modernity: Utopia and Communications Networks in COSGROVE, Denis,Ed., Mappings, Reaktion Books, London, 1999, pp.169-192, p.169
32
53
54
The idea of a walk right now is quite romantic.
53 “Future man and woman have tied the knot. Such a shame Granny couldn’t make it. But hey, why not tell herthe good news? It’s easy, just speak to her on your Xelibri Personal Communication Device! Xelibri PCD’sremove time and distance problems. In seconds you can be talking freely and without any inhibition to almost anymember of your family. Spend the rest of your life with Xelibri.” Summer 2003.54 Xelibri.com: “Discover all exciting details of the spring/summer collection of Xelibri and find out how fashionaccessory phones will change your life!”
33
7
No Signal: A Walk in the Desert
Walking in the desert there is no way anyone will hear us scream.
We set off early, with no food.
We are on a quest for something we have never seen.
With no knowledge of the terrain we are walking in, we plan to be out for seven hours.
After six we are still wandering (wondering)
We return to the village where we started, which is one hour from where we began.
It was the village that sold no water.
A woman starts talking to us.
And a boy who is learning English. He is twelve.
The woman has three young children and a sweet smile.
She likes earrings but her husband left her to go to the other side.
She shrugs her shoulders and looks at us.
We are sitting in the shade on the red dirt under a tree.
She stands. The boy too, astride a bike that is too big for him.
The father of the boy will take us to the desert in his truck if we want.
We think, although tired, hot and hungry, ‘As we’re here…’
A red truck appears and two men are in it.
M asks ‘why is the other man coming?’ and he is told ‘he has to collect his cows’
They take us back out to the desert.
We have eaten a small packet of seeds.
When we get out M asks the other man ‘where are your cows?’
The other man says ‘cows?’
We are in the middle of nowhere. We get out of the car.
We are led 200 metres away from the van.
The village is a small speck on the horizon.
The sun beats down.
The air vibrates with the sound of crickets.
34
8
Neighbours: The Broadway House Photo Project
“I cannot see everything from this position.”55
It is always a challenge to imagine what the world looks like from other people’s
perspectives, as it can also be to get to know one’s neighbours. Living in a building
such as Broadway House, you meet the other people who live there only when they
(and you) are on their way in or out. The chances of this happening often, unless you
share exactly the same timetable, are rather slim. At the opening of the Broadway
House Photo Project, people who had lived in the building for over twenty, or even
thirty years, met (in many cases saw) their neighbours for the first time. They also
took some extremely good photos. For facts of the show, refer to the material in the
appendix of this paper. What follows here is an account of the project’s progress from
my perspective. 56
Travelling at home
Despite being (at) home, The Broadway House Photo Project was a journey, during
which time I gathered knowledge and built familiarity with my environment and the
people within it, from flat numbers (writing the first letter), to staircases and front
doors (delivering it) to names, handwriting and phone numbers (getting the first
responses) to voices (phoning up to arrange delivery of the camera), to faces and
sometimes a view into their hall (when I delivered it), to the titles participants gave
their pictures and finally to the photographs when they eventually came back from the
printers. The final stage was the private view, which provided the setting for all
participants to finally meet one another.
As with travelling, there were many things I learned along the way during the six
months between initial letter and final exhibition that I never anticipated. No one
warned me how many decisions I would be faced with at every step along the way, or
56 HOLLOWAY, Julian & KNEALE, James, Mikhail Bakhtin: Dialogics of Space in CRANG, Mike & THRIFT,Nigel thinkingspace, Routledge, 2000, pp.71-88, p.74-7556 See press release in appendix for further information on this project
35
how difficult each would be to make. Questions that should have been simple - of
display, of what to do with the prints when the show was over or of selling the
photographs, for example, became, in this context, huge mind-cracking exercises that
forced me to consider many other wider reaching issues and ethics, including those of
privacy, trust, control and the idea of art as a social tool. (Why didn’t you just
organise a game of bingo? my external examiner asked me.) I also never truly
anticipated the weight or burden of the responsibility of working with people in this
way, particularly as the people, although strangers at the outset, were my neighbours -
they live where I do; they will still live there when the project is over.
I was also unprepared for the extent of my emotional involvement with the project.
When things were going well, I was incredibly excited. I loved the excuse of getting
to know my neighbours and as I ran up the stairs of a different staircase from my own
with the camera ready to be delivered and the participant waiting in their flat for me, I
felt a rush. I felt I had a real sense of purpose: that what I was doing was fun, but also
serious. What kind of photos would be produced? What new relationships could be
sparked off as a result of my gathering and subsequently displaying them in the
gallery as I planned? I enjoyed talking to my neighbours, explaining why I was doing
what I was doing and seeing their views change, as happened a few times, from
interested but slightly sceptical to enthusiastic. At these moments I felt fully confident
that what I was doing was somehow ‘good’, as well as interesting, and loved the idea
that the images that would be generated as a result of this project would not have been
seen otherwise. I enjoyed the thrill of trusting a complete stranger with my project,
and of being trusted (believed in) myself.
However, maybe because of the extent of the excitement, anticipation and hope I had
at the outset, if the camera stayed longer than three or four days with a participant, I
would begin to panic, thinking it had gone missing forever. I was on the permanent
brink of mourning the film and the photographs that I might never see again.
For the first five participants all went according to plan. The camera reappeared after
a few days each time, with new title entries written in the tables and three frames
taken. But at 8.45 one morning before she had to go to work, I dropped the pack off
36
with Sharon at number 7, who, after three days did a disappearing trick. I waited one,
two and eventually three weeks, feeling the most incredible and yet I knew foolish but
ever mounting anguish at the repetitive non-appearance of the brown jiffy bag in my
letterbox. I phoned, I went round, but there was only the answer phone storing up my
messages (“don’t worry if it’s gone missing, I know how things are, just please let me
know. I hope you’re ok”) and only a closed door, which, by the third silent,
unanswered visit, seemed almost to mock me as I stood outside the metal security
gate in the concrete hallway, a smile at the ready, hoping, wondering, wishing and yet
understanding nothing of what was going on.57
And for two weeks, every time I heard the lift land on my floor, or the phone ring, or
whenever some pizza company dropped off yet another leaflet, I jumped, thinking
‘yes! at last! it has come back!’ and when each time it hadn’t, I felt once again bereft,
depressed, sad, foolish.
And I realized that actually, I knew nothing. I knew nothing about the politics or
social history of the block, who knew who, who might have fallen out with whom,
when or why. I discovered myself to be naïve, (not for the first time) and suddenly
seriously questioned the ethics of what I was doing. I was an outsider, a newcomer
who had been at number 18 just two years, whilst many of the participants had been
there five times that if not ten, or more. (Norman upstairs moved in when the block
was brand new. “Like a palace it was,” he recalled. He was four at the time. He is now
in his fifties, still (t)here.)
Eventually, although I admitted defeat with the missing camera, I decided its loss was
not going to deter me from continuing with the project and that this experience was all
part of the process I was going through. I bought another camera, put another pack
together, had a cup of tea with Joy at number 35, and, with a sense of determination,
started the whole thing again.
57 Of such a closed door G Simmel observes: “Precisely because it can be opened, its closure provides the feelingof a stronger isolation against everything outside this space than the mere unstructured wall. The latter is mute, butthe door speaks.” SIMMEL, G, Bridge and Door, Theory, Culture and Society, 11 (1), pp. 5-10; quoted inMETCALFE, Andrew, and FERGUSON, Lucinda, Half-Opened Being in MAY, Jon and THRIFT, Nigel,timespace: geographies of temporality, Routledge, London 20011, p. 240
37
After four people had retaken, or taken for the first time, their pictures, I got a phone
call. “I’ve been in Florida!” explained Sharon. “I am so sorry! I completely forgot to
tell you I was going away! When I got back all my messages on my answer phone
were from you!”
In the end all was well and in fact Sharon’s photographs turned out to be some of the
most interesting.
38
Conclusion
Dispersed Subjects
Although we are dispersed, we should w_nder more. The great thing about w_ndering
is that unlike ‘journeys’ or ‘investigations’ that demand an outcome in the form of
identifiable results (final destinations and conclusions) w_nderings do not. They have
no end in site/sight. Rather, like poetry, w_nderings are journeys in and of
themselves. It is what one encounters along the way and how that matters, rather than
where one ends up. They are pensive rather than productive.
A journey however, despite the presence of a destination, provides a valuable
opportunity to catch up with oneself, a set amount of time to think. On a journey, one
can w_nder well; it is one of the rare spaces we have left. “For me, being in motion…
provides a sense of stability – having left but not yet being there.”58
Our culture is fast. We know that. A text message, ground breaking at one point, is
later easily erased; emails, digital photos and films too. Marc Augé is dramatic about
it: “History is on our heels, following us like our shadows, like death.”59 But to me it
just means we have to remember to savour the present (presence) when we can.
Tonight Charlotte came round. She is no longer in touch with her ex-lover. After the
text message in Frinton, it was four days before she had any response. Her entire
relationship (other than when they met up) was conducted over text message – for
various reasons.
I had a party in my flat in Broadway House on Saturday; a celebration for handing in
my paper. Three of my neighbours came along, and danced all night.
58 RENDELL, Jane Travelling the Distance/Encountering the Other in BLAMEY, David, Ed, Here, There,Elsewhere: Dialogues on Location and Mobility, Open Editions, London 2002, p. 4659 AUGE, Marc, trans HOWE, John: Places and Non-Places: The Anthropology of Supermodernity, Verso,London 1995, p.26-27
39
Epilogue
Affected Writing: Tapping Keys
“I write with a pen, but if this gets as far as the final version, it will be transposed via a
computer (digital) to typed letters on a page, which will look far more official, and at the very
least be very legible compared to my scrawl here (there.)”60
For me, writing is very much a part of who I am and who I have become. I write
because I have to. It is a need I have had since I could hold a pen. I write whenever I
can. And if I can’t, for any reason “- too many drunken nights in a row, or too many nights
when my partner stays round, denying me of my writing head-space and solitude (and time) –
it builds up inside me. Inside my gut and my heart – like a slow constriction of all of me.
When I finally do find the chance to write, it bursts out. I enter a kind of trance, as my pen
flies across the paper. I know not what I am writing as I write. To know, I have to read it
when the frenzy has passed. I mark my last full stop, take a deep breath in and out and then,
only then, do I finally see the page and the lines my pen has drawn upon them. As I leaf
through the pages to the beginning of my day’s entry, I read certain words and remember
what I have just written, or rather, I see what my thoughts were that had been awaiting release
through writing.’61
And yet writing this has been so much more difficult. Words haven’t come so easy,
and often I have wondered whether I wouldn’t in fact have been better off trying to
write these pages by hand…62
60 Me, elsewhere, outside the text: Writing to Myself: me, her & I, 19th January 2003. p.161 Ibid62 During my research, I came upon a passage by Steven Johnson who describes the change that came about in hisown writing as a result of exchanging pen and paper for a word processor: “For me, the most intriguing side effectof the word processor lies in the changed relationship between a sentence in its conceptual form and its physicaltranslation onto the page or the screen. In the years when I still wrote using pen and paper or a typewriter, I almostinvariably worked out each sentence in my head before I began transcribing it onto the page. … All this changedafter [I was] lured… into writing directly at the computer. I began with my familiar start-and-stop routine, dutifullythinking up the sentence before typing it out, but it soon became clear that the word processor eliminated thepenalty that revisions normally exacted. If the phrasing wasn’t quite right, you could rearrange words with a fewquick mouse gestures, and the magical “delete” key was always a split second away. After a few months I noticeda qualitative shift in the way I worked with sentences: the thinking and the typing processes began to overlap. Aphrase would come into my head – a sentence fragment, an opening clause, a parenthetical remark – and before Ihad time to mull it over, the words would be up on the screen… The fundamental units of my writing had mutatedunder the spell of the word processor: I had begun by working with complete blocks of complete sentences, but bythe end I was thinking in smaller blocks, in units of discreet phrases. This, of course, had an enormous effect onthe types of sentences I ended up writing.” JOHNSON, Steven, Interface Culture: How New TechnologyTransforms the Way we Create and Communicate, Basic Books, San Francisco, 1997, p.143-144
40
At the end of the day, we can express ourselves only through the means available to
us.63 Trouble with your angles? I’ll call my plumber. On the cup? Where are you
going? Going good. See you there.64
“I will sleep after all this. I have so much more to write. Always I have more. But
with the amount I write there will no room for anyone else to get a word in edgeways.
Unless I suppress, cut, edit.
Which is of course what one does do, with official academic essays.”65
63 As Derek Foster put it, “identity is dependent upon the means by which we communicate it.” FOSTER, Derek,Community and Identity in the electronic village’ from PORTER, David, Ed., Internet Culture, Routledge, London& New York, 1996, pp. 23-37, p. 34, and Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message, because it is themedium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.” McLUHAN, Marshall,Understanding the Media, Routledge, London/New York, 1964, p.1164 Predictive text message wrong words: angles = boiler; cup = bus; good = home. We adapt to understand whatwas meant though our own understandings of the technology through which the message is sent.65 me, elsewhere, outside the text: Writing to Myself: me, her & I p.3
41
Bibliography
Books
• ADORNO, Theodore W, The Culture Industry, Routledge, London, 1991
• AUGE, Marc, trans HOWE, John: Places and Non-Places: The Anthropology
of Supermodernity, Verso, London 1995
• BLAMEY, David, Ed, Here, There, Elsewhere: Dialogues on Location and
Mobility, Open Editions, London, 2000
• COMERON, Octavio, Work & Beauty, msdn publications, 2000
• COSGROVE, Denis, Ed., Mappings, Reaktion Books, London, 1999
• CRANG, Mike & THRIFT, Nigel, thinkingspace, Routledge, London & New
York, 2000
• De BOTTON, Alain, The Art of Travel, Hamish Hamilton, London, 2002
• DERRIDA, Jacques, The Gift of Death, Trans David WILLS, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995
• FROMM, Erich, The Art of Loving, (first published in 1957) Thorsons,
London, 1985
• FROW, John, Time & Commodity Culture, Claredon Press, Oxford, 1997
• GATES, Bill, The Road Ahead, Penguin, London, 1996
• GRIFFITHS, Jay, Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, Flamingo, London 1999
• HOWSE, Derek, Greenwich Time and the Longitude, Philip Wilson Press,
London, 1997
• JOHNSON, Steven, Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the
Way we Create and Communicate, Basic Books, San Francisco, 1997
• KUIPERS, Dean & AITKEN, Doug, I am a bullet: scenes from an
accelerating culture, Crown Publishers, New York, 2000
• LAING, R.D, Self & Others, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1982
• McLUHAN, Marshall, Understanding Media: the extensions of man,
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1975
• METZGER, Gustav, Damaged nature, auto-destructive art, Coracle @
workfortheeyetodo, London, 1996
• MAY, Jon, & THRIFT, Nigel timespace: geographies of temporality,
Routledge, London & New York, 2001
42
• MILLAR, Jeremy & SCHWARTZ, Michael, Speed – Visions of an
Accelerated Age, London Photographer’s Gallery and the Trustees of the
Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1998
• MITCHELL, William J, e-topia, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 2000
• PLANT, Sadie, Zeros + Ones, Fourth Estate, London, 1998
• PORTER, David, Ed., Internet Culture, Routledge, London & New York,
1996
• ROBERTSON, George; MASH, Melinda; TICKNER, Lisa; BIRD, Jon;
CURTIS, Barry; PUTNAM, Tim, Eds., Travellers’ Tales – Narratives of
Home and Displacement, Routledge, London & New York, 1994
• ROBERTSON, George; MASH, Melinda; TICKNER, Lisa; BIRD, Jon;
CURTIS, Barry; PUTNAM, Tim, Eds., FutureNatural: nature/science/culture,
Routledge, London & New York, 1996
• STORR, Anthony, Solitude: A Return to the Self, Ballatine Books, New York,
1989
• ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. Peter
FRANCE, Penguin, London, 1979
• SALE, Kirkpatrick, Rebels against the Future – Lessons for the Computer
Age, Quartet books, London, 1996
• TUAN, Yi-Fu, Space and Place: the perspective of experience, University of
Minnestota Press, Minneapolis & London, 2001
• VIRILIO, Paul, Speed and Politics: an essay on dromology, trans Mark
Polizzotti, Semiotext(e), New York, 1986
• WILLATS, Stephen, Intervention and Audience, Coracle, London, 1986
Essays
• ALLEN, John, On Georg Simmel: Proximity, Distance and Movement in
CRANG, Mike & THRIFT, Nigel thinkingspace, Routledge, 2000, pp.54-70
• CORNER, James, The Agency of Mapping in COSGROVE, Denis, Ed.,
Mappings, Reaktion Books, London, 1999, pp.213-252
• CURTIS, Barry & PAJACZKOWSKA, Claire, ‘Getting there’: travel, time and
narrative in George ROBERTSON, Melinda MASH, Lisa TICKNER, John
43
BIRD, Barry CURTIS, Tim PUTNAM (Eds.) Travellers’ Tales – Narratives of
Home and Displacement. Routledge, London & New York, 1994
• FOSTER, Derek, Community and Identity in the electronic village’ from David
PORTER, Ed., Internet Culture, Routledge, London & New York, 1996, pp.23-37
• FROW, John, Tourism & the Semiotics of Nostalgia, in Time & Commodity
Culture, Claredon Press, Oxford, pp.74-101
• HOLLOWAY, Julian & KNEALE, James, Mikhail Bakhtin: Dialogics of Space in
Mike CRANG & Nigel THRIFT, thinkingspace, Routledge, 2000, pp.71-88,
• KOPOMAA, Timo, Speaking Mobile: The City in Your Pocket, 6.9.2000, found
at http://www.hut.fi/Yksikot/YTK/julkaisu/mobile.html
• LEE, Heejin & WHITLEY, Edgar A, Time and Information Technology:
Temporal Impacts on Individuals, Organizations and Society in The Information
Society Journal 18(4)
• McGEOWN, Martin & LEWANDOWSKA, Marysia, Medium Setting in The
Missing Text, Chance Books, London, 1991, pp.9-25
• McQUIRE, Scott, Pure Speed – From Transport to Teleport, in Jeremy MILLAR
& Michael SCHWARTZ, Speed – Visions of an Accelerated Age, London
Photographer’s Gallery & Trustees of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1998 pp.26-33
• MATTELART, Armand, Mapping Modernity: Utopia and Communications
Networks in Denis COSGROVE Ed., Mappings, Reaktion Books, London, 1999,
pp.169-192
• METCALFE, Andrew, and FERGUSON, Lucinda, Half-Opened Being in Jon
MAY & Nigel THRIFT, timespace: geographies of temporality, Routledge,
London & New York, 2001, pp.240-261
• MINH-HA, Trinh T. Other than myself/my other self in ROBERTSON, George;
MASH, Melinda; TICKNER, Lisa; BIRD, Jon; CURTIS, Barry; PUTNAM, Tim,
Eds., Travellers’ Tales – Narratives of Home and Displacement, Routledge,
London & New York, 1994 pp9-26
• RENDELL, Jane Travelling the Distance/Encountering the Other in BLAMEY,
David, Ed, Here, There, Elsewhere: Dialogues on Location and Mobility, Open
Editions, London 2002
• WEILENMANN, A, & LASSON, C, Local Use and Sharing of Mobile Phones, in
B. Brown, N. Green & R. Harper, (Eds), Wireless World: Social and International
44
Aspects of the Mobile Age, Godalming and Hiedleburg: Springer Verlag, pp.99-
115
• WELLMAN, Barry, Physical Place and CyberPlace: The Rise of Personal
Networking, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada;
found online at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/wellman 08.02
• URRY, John, Social Networks, Travel and Talk, Department of Sociology,
Lancaster University, 2003, sent to me by email, April 2003.
Corporate and Sales Literature
• From Orange, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile, Carphone Warehouse,
Phones 4U, Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, Sony…
Newspaper Articles
• CARTER, Meg Billboards in your pocket Guardian, 18.06.01
• COLLINS, Joanna Flights of Fancy Guardian, 14.08.02
• GARNER, Richard Teenagers, beware – if u txt yr xms, u fail, Independent,
17.08.02
• NORRIS, Ashley Picture it with Orange Guardian, 15.08.02
• O’CONNER, Joanne, Hi, I’m on the plane! Observer, Escape Section, 23.02.03
• WRAY, Richard Mobile chiefs get the message Guardian 14.05.02
All in How the mobile phone changed the world: a G2 special, on 11.11.02, pp.1-18:
• BARTON, Laura, But what are we saying
• BECKETT, Andy Remember These?
• CARTNER-MORLEY, Jess, I’m not sure it’s my colour
• FLEMING, Amy, How my mobile saved my life
• KEEGAN, Victor I have seen the future – and it’s tiny
• MEEK, James, ‘Hi, I’m in G2’
• POOLE, Steve Big Talk,
• SHEPARD, Jack Caught on Phone
• SUTHERLAND, John Cn u txt?
45
Websites
• Alternative Mobility Futures Conference, being organised by Dr Mimi Sheller
and Prof John Urry, Sociology Dept, Lancaster University: online info at
http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/altfutconfcall.htm. Accessed 03.03
• World Telecommunication Development Report 2002 ‘Reinventing Telecoms’
& Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2002 ‘Effective Regulation’ at
http://www.itu.int/newsarchiive/wtdc2002/html. Accessed 08.02
Cheap flight websites for histories and general info
• Easyjet: http://www.easyjet.com
• Ryanair: http://www.ryanair.com
• Virgin Express: http://www.virginexpress.com
Mobile phone company websites:
• Orange: http://www.orange.co.uk
• Virgin Mobile: http://www.virgin-mobile.co.uk
• Nokia: http://www.nokia.com
• Siemens mobile: http://www.my-siemens.com
• Vodafone: http://www.vodafone.com
Artists
• CALLE, Sophie (journeys)
• CURTIS, Layla (maps)
• DEBORD, Guy (mapping)
• GIBBS, Ella (time)
• HUEBLER, Douglas (photographing the everyday)
• FAIRHURST, Angus (networks)
• TILLMANS, Wolfgang (juxtapositions, anti-hierarchy)
• WENTWORTH, Richard (something out of nothing)
• WILLATS, Stephen (communities, audience)
• And more…
46
Broadway House Photo ProjectCurated by Elly Clarke
Gallery Seven Seven, Broadway Market, London E8March 6th-16th 2003
Private view: Wednesday 5th March, 6.30 – 8.30pm
Online at http://www.openDemocracy.net from 6th March
Have you ever wondered what the world looks like from your neighbour’s
perspective? Well now is your chance to see. The Broadway House Photo
Project, on show at Gallery Seven Seven from 6th–16th March, is the end result
of a six-month process involving residents from the Broadway House Estate in
Hackney who agreed to take pictures from and inside their flats.
Everyone living in Broadway House looks out at the same views but experiences
them from different angles, depending on the location of their flat within the block.
This may be seen as a metaphor for how we all see the world - through different eyes
and from different perspectives. Every eye (I) is different.
In wider terms, the Broadway House Photo Project is about urban communities
and the experience of living in a block of flats. Although most of the participants
have lived in Broadway House for several years, many do not yet know each
other. Only at the private view on 5th March will everyone finally get the
chance to meet - and see their photos for the first time.
When the exhibition closes, all photographs will go to the flats and to the people
from where they came. However, if any visitor to the exhibition wishes to buy any
images, limited edition prints will be made to order, with all profits going
to the Broadway House Tenants & Residents Association. In this way, art
may be transformed into council block repairs.
Each participant took three pictures: one looking out of the kitchen window, another
looking the opposite way towards the communal garden, and a third of whatever they
liked inside their flat. All used the same two disposable cameras, which were
circulated around Broadway House, along with a table in which participants wrote
their names and gave titles to their photos.
This project would not have been made possible were it not for the support and co-
operation of the Broadway House Tenants & Residents Association and a grant
from the Hackney Community Empowerment Fund.
Elly Clarke lives in Broadway House.
How to get there:
Seven Seven is at 75-77 Broadway Market and can be reached by bus 236 to Broadway Market, buses
106, 253, 26, 48, D6, 55 to Mare Street, BR to London Fields or Cambridge Heath, or on foot: 10
minutes from Hackney Central BR or from Bethnal Green tube. The gallery is open 12-6pm
Wednesday-Sunday or by appointment. Gallery website: http://www.sevenseven.org.uk
