Recombine.net
This lab examined the relationship between people and mobile phones, which is a subset of the relationship between people and technology.
Why mobile phones?
The fact that mobile phones have made a lightning fast leap from being a luxury to a necessity makes them a phenomenon worth investigating. From the start the I was intrigued by the social implications this technology has. Being implicitly linked with information and the act of communicating, the most obvious changes this technology brings about are in relation to our social lives- how we make friends, how we ask someone out, even basic questions of how much proximity means security for us, be it in a new town, or in a relationship.
While the mobile phone allows us to effectively express ourselves it also provides us the opportunity to turn into a multi headed hydra! For instance, one can be anywhere-anytime, so much that it isn’t all that hard to misinform the person on the other end of the conversation about your whereabouts. While in contrary, most often parents in India gift their kids a mobile phone in order to keep a tab on them!
Knowing that it was easy to entrap ourselves in a vicious cycle of opinionated beliefs regarding the good and bad effects of mobile technology we found it rather challenging and exciting to find a balance between the different ways of looking at the related phenomena. Keeping in tradition with the multi headed hydra the lab probed various paths and points of views!
I designed a short interactive experience keeping in mind that the outcomes of the lab would resolve into a public exhibition. The piece was titled "My Volume" and it commented on peculiar phenomenon wherein ring tones are considered stature statements which sadly translates to- the louder your ring tone the more attention you are likely to get in a public place. Though turning up the volume may not necessarily mean receiving the right signals from others and usually is cause for irritation and the chaos that ensues that act.
Version of the My Volume
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