April 15, 2005
ART BY TELEPHONE:
FROM STATIC TO MOBILE INTERFACES
"ABSTRACT: This article investigates artworks that use telephones as interfaces. Considering telephones as telepresence technologies, it focuses on the point of transition from the fixed to the mobile telephone, exploring how artistic practices change when one component is added: mobility. In addition, location awareness capabilities transform cell phones into more than voice devices. Consequences can be perceived in artistic experiences that bring the medium into public spaces, transforming them into ludic and collective interfaces, pointing to how mobile technologies can be used in the future. From a broader perspective, this study addresses how art mediated by technology deals with the connection between physical and digital spaces.
This article investigates how the artistic approach toward telephones changes when they become mobile. The transition occurs mainly because cell phones are no longer only voice devices. Mobility and location awareness transform them into social and ludic technologies, giving them the ability to merge physical and digital spaces and for a user to find one's relative position in the globe merely with a personal handset. Examples of artworks with fixed and mobile telephones help to clarify this transition.
Reviewing artworks with telephone handsets helps us to remember how the device has previously been used as an artistic interface and to imagine new approaches when this interface becomes mobile [2]." From Art by Telephone: From Static to Mobile Interfaces by Adriana de Souza e Silva
Posted by jo at April 15, 2005 09:17 AM
