Personal research project, 2nd year, 2005
The goal of this project was to look at mobile technologies, in particular at mobile phones, in order to assess their potential for creative exploitation. Nowadays almost every phone on sale comes with buit-in image capturing and processing capabilities. Additionally, the implementation of the Java Virtual Machine and the introduction of J2ME, a branch of the Java programming language, made it possible to access the computational power of these devices. This combination proposes mobile phones which transform the experience of moving through public environments and public spaces through advanced use of various media:
Examples of live video composition:
stairs.mov train.mov crash.mov
With a service in mind, such virtual objects could be sent to the user’s mobile phone, providing an alibi or excuse for delicate situations: A crowd of demonstrators blocking the road is inserted into the the real camera image.
Micro-installation
For the interim show, instead of presenting these very rough experiments, I wanted to confront the audience with some kind of narrative. So I used the mobile phone as a physical object which communicates a story using sounds and images. But it was also an exercise in technically implementing multimedia content on the mobile phone.
The micro-installation represents a moment frozen in time. It is exactly this particular fraction of a second when the phone hits the wall and bursts into its constituting parts. Thrown by a fictitious character named Scott who has just been dumped by his girlfriend, the phone recounts bits of memories Scott has recorded during the relationship, a phenomenon usually occurring during a near-death experience. On a further stage it could become a gallery of the past relationships: for each girlfriend a smashed mobile phone.
