A Community of Strangers? Mobile Media, Art, Tactility and Urban Encounters with the Other

Abstract This article is concerned with detailing key instances where mobile media (especially mobile gaming and mobile media art) have been used to make connections with relative and complete strangers. The article is divided into three parts. The first examines two key examples of past experimental design that explicitly explored questions of mobility and difference. The second section details more contemporary experimental engagements with mobile technologies that seek to perform urban encounters with ‘the Other’. The third and final part of the article reads both sets of experimental work through the lens of (poststructuralist) philosophical engagements with the concepts of community and difference.

[1]  Patricia G. Lange.  :The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication , 2007 .

[2]  Drew Hemment,et al.  Locative Arts , 2006, Leonardo.

[3]  János Krisóf Nyíri,et al.  Mobile democracy : essays on society, self and politics , 2003 .

[4]  T. Cresswell.  Towards a Politics of Mobility , 2010 .

[5]  E. Goffman.  Behavior in public places : notes on the social organization of gatherings , 1964 .

[6]  Alice Crawford,et al.  Taking Social Software to the Streets: Mobile Cocooning and the (An-)Erotic City , 2008 .

[7]  A. Lingis.  The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common , 1994 .

[8]  H. Gerth,et al.  The Sociology of Georg Simmel. , 1950 .

[9]  Robert D. Putnam,et al.  Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community , 2000, CSCW '00.

[10]  Dick Hebdige.  Redeeming witness: In the tracks of the homeless vehicle project , 1993 .

[11]  Stuart J. Barnes,et al.  Under the skin: short-range embedded wireless technology , 2002, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[12]  Technics, Time and Stiegler's ‘Orthographic Moment’ , 2007 .

[13]  Giorgio Agamben,et al.  Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy , 1999 .

[14]  Stanley Mathews.  The Fun Palace as Virtual Architecture , 2006 .

[15]  J. Urry,et al.  The New Mobilities Paradigm , 2006 .

[16]  M. Arnold,et al.  On the phenomenology of technology: the "Janus-faces" of mobile phones , 2003, Inf. Organ..

[17]  Duncan Rowland,et al.  Uncle Roy All Around You: Implicating the City in a Location-Based Performance , 2004 .

[18]  Anthony Townsend.  Locative-Media Artists in the Contested-Aware City , 2006, Leonardo.

[19]  Peter Connor,et al.  The Inoperative Community , 1990 .

[20]  Michele A. Willson.  Technically Together: Rethinking Community within Techno-Society , 2005 .

[21]  David Morley,et al.  What’s ‘home’ Got to do with it? , 2003 .

[22]  J. Katz,et al.  Mobile Games and Entertainment , 2008 .

[23]  J. Zach Schiller.  Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban Experience , 2009 .

[24]  Andrew Murphie,et al.  Culture and Technology , 2003, Macmillan Education UK.

[25]  W. Whyte.  City: Rediscovering the Center , 1988 .

[26]  Jacques Derrida,et al.  On Touching-Jean-luc Nancy , 2005 .

[27]  S. Milgram,et al.  The Individual In A Social World: Essays and Experiments , 1992 .

[28]  Ole B. Jensen.  ‘Facework’, Flow and the City: Simmel, Goffman, and Mobility in the Contemporary City , 2006 .

[29]  Laura U. Marks.  Touch: Sensuous Theory And Multisensory Media , 2002 .

[30]  Krzysztof Wodiczko,et al.  Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, Interviews , 1999 .

[31]  Rich Ling,et al.  The social juxtaposition of mobile telephone conversations and public spaces 1 By , 2002 .

[32]  Michael Hardt,et al.  The Coming Community , 1993 .

[33]  Mimi Sheller,et al.  Mobile Publics: Beyond the Network Perspective , 2004 .

[34]  Jérôme Hansen,et al.  Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban Experience , 2008 .

[35]  J. Urry,et al.  Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings , 2006 .

[36]  Mimi Sheller,et al.  Introduction: Mobile Cities, Urban Mobilities , 2006 .

[37]  Joel Waldfogel,et al.  Introduction , 2010, Inf. Econ. Policy.

[38]  Karen Wright,et al.  Book Review: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Robert D. Putnam. Simon and Shuster, New York, 2000 , 2001 .

[39]  Eric Paulos,et al.  The familiar stranger: anxiety, comfort, and play in public places , 2004, CHI.

[40]  Heidi Rae Cooley.  It’s all about the Fit: The Hand, the Mobile Screenic Device and Tactile Vision , 2004 .

[41]  H. Horst,et al.  The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication , 2006 .

[42]  N. Eagle.  Can serendipity be planned , 2004 .

[43]  R. Bos.  Giorgio Agamben and the Community without Identity , 2005 .

[44]  V. Rich.  Personal communication , 1989, Nature.

[45]  Judith A. Nicholson.  Flash! Mobs in the Age of Mobile Connectivity , 2005 .

[46]  J. Urry,et al.  Mobile Technologies of the City , 2006 .