Telephony project - a quick write-up
Okay - so our task was to intervene in a media ecology using the basic functions of the telephone. This time I was in a group with Anita, Em, Manali, Stephen and Chen. After some discussion, we decided that we’d intervene in the media ecology of a bus, and do this by changing the function of mobile phones from devices to communicate with people far away to devices to communicate with people in your immediate surroundings. Buses are a space in which people don’t often communicate with each other, so we’d set ourselves quite a challenge.
Of course, mobiles are often used in this way - the choice of model and ringtone can be used to “make a statement”, we can play with them to signal that we are preoccupied, etc etc. But how we tried to work in this instance was to introduce a code by which people could send signals using the functions on their phones. The following flyer was mocked up:
Five codes by which people could send messages
This was to be put on the back of seats where people would see it (but hopefully the bus driver wouldn’t.)
We split into two smaller groups, and had two attempts. The first was on a Thursday afternoon, around school time, the second on a Saturday afternoon on a bus into the city. We documented through video, audio and good old fashioned observation. Both experiments had similar results - no real response. Some attention was paid to the flyers, but we’ve no evidence that anyone actually used the codes. Nonetheless we had a go at visualising the two experiments in slightly different ways - you can download them here.
Overall, I think we failed to affect the media ecology of the bus in any meaningful way. However, we did learn a few things:
- Documentation needs to be thought through very carefully. The environment of the bus was as such that it was impossible to get a clear view of what was happening with any subtlety. On the double-decker particularly, recording from the back mean you could only see the backs of seats in the main, and recording from the front would be unachievable without looking very suspect. One camera was definitely not enough to do anything substantial. Also we should have familiarised ourselves with each others ringtones, so we could distinguish our signals from those of other people.
- In terms of creating a code for communication, it’s not really viable to just sit down and invent one for people. If we were to do this more thoroughly, it would be necessary to engage people and ask them what they would like to be able to say - if anything.
- Small groups didn’t work for conducting this experiment - four or more is essential for this kind of activity.
There’s a lot more that could be said, but I’m going to leave it there for the moment.