Complete Work: Performance

a real conversation compiled entirely of text messages.

Complete Work: Essay

When I first began looking into a theme for this class, I thought I would use my work to express my anger and disappointment with the way that I feel the cell phone interferes with our lives. As my projects progressed, however, it wasn’t enough to simply criticize society. Most people, myself included, are connected to each other via cell phone, whether they want to be or not. It became evident that simply criticizing the world was not an effective approach and did not really provoke thought. By turning to explore our world and the way that cell phones affect our lives, I was able to bring our current experiences with interaction into the forefront for consideration. I no longer want to criticize society for being a part of this form of interaction but allow us to examine it and how we have come to interact and what this interaction does for our real relationships, thoughts and lives. There is no right or wrong way to live, but it is important to consider the ways in which we do live. Whether or not you like to be connected to the world through technologies such as the cell phone, it will inevitably affect your life in some way.

Throughout all of my pieces, there is some aspect of reality. I do not create fantastic images of a distant idea. Cell phones are present in our daily lives now. I have documented real people around me and their cell phones, I documented a scripted dialogue but of an entirely plausible relationship depicting the struggles a father and son might experience together, and I concluded by documenting real text messages and exploring the relationship they form. In this way, my reliance on reality and real relationships can be related to the e-flux article by Dieter Roelstraete, “What is Not Contemporary Art?: The View from Jena”. This article looks at how we can classify what is art and what is not. Roelstraete is of the opinion that everything in our lives can and should be interpreted as art. He points out that we struggle with defining what is and is not art but that we should not limit it to any one idea but that it is made up of all perceptions of art and more, it is any aspect of our life, as long as we consider it to be art. If we think about what we are seeing and consider it and the message it may be giving, then it can be considered art. In this same way, my work uses life as art, simply depicting what is already present in the world so that we all might reflect upon our lives critically.

There is no denying that cell phones, technology, and simply just the passing of time, all affect our lives. What we must consider is how they affect our lives, to what extent we are willing to let them affect our lives and if we choose to make our own statement about these things. In the same way that any experience in daily life is art, what we choose to do with our lives becomes our own art, our own statement, this is what I think is most important. We must consider all that we do and its consequences for us and everyone else. In exploring how cell phones are present in our lives, it might not change anything, but it might at least lead us to live consciously and consider what effect our own choices have upon others and ourselves.

Re-do: Performance

For this performance, I took texts from my phone and turned them into a (albeit dysfunctional) real-time conversation between two people.

Re-do: Video

same video, minus text.

Re-do: Digital Photography

the fifth limb.

after observing several people, in a relatively short period of time, it occurred to me that most people have cell phones attached to them in some way, almost constantly. People not only affect the relationships they have with others by constantly monitoring their cell phones, they also develop a relationship with the device itself.

this girl was having a conversation with several friends, but didn't stop texting the entire time.

these two girls chatted when the one on the left first arrived, but then texted silently from that point on.

texting and studying?

I'm not even sure that this guy was using his phone at all, he just held it continuously.

this girl was also having a conversation with a neighbour, and didn't even use her cell phone while talking, but seemed to feel the need to hold on to it the whole time, anyway.

Performance

For this performance, I took the same idea as the video project, and recreated a relatively well-known scene from a movie. This time, I picked 10 Things I Hate About You. Although this movie may not be as well known as Star Wars, it is actually a film modernization/adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, which is at least a commonly known title. Unfortunately, using photos and a voice over does not convey the same sort of energy that the real performance did and also shortened the time of the performance. Anyway.. here it is.

Video Project

For my video, I wanted to reproduce a well-known dialogue that relates an important message (that you would expect to be spoken in person) and adapted it as a cell phone conversation. I did this so that I could show that our modern society has an obsession and a need to be connected with each other and have instant modes of communication. In my opinion, our reliance on technologies like cell phones is creating an antisocial society. Face to face conversations and confrontations can now be avoided by simply calling someone on a cell phone instead and having the security of being able to cut the conversation short at any time, move to any location and talk without having a specific time or place to meet. In my opinion, this is creating a downward spiral for society.