«pronto?»
And suddenly it was there: We are talking about the telephone, the medium,which allows in an uncanny way, for a certain moment, a tele-presence in techno-social space. Unforehearable his „hysterical bawl“ (Flusser) institutes a strict relational space between two places, where the voice and ear of talking partners are disconnected from the visual for a while. This acousmatique deprivation and disconnection of voice and image in the ambivalent moment of connecting and disconnecting fascinates the everyday-user, artists as well as, scientists.
«where are you?»
With the recent digital mobilization of this once static ritual, the cultural, social and economic conditions of this medium has changed in a striking way. Placeless and autonomous, the „cellphone man“ is bound up in a universal and constantly changing data network which consists of virtual (consumption)- worlds of text message, e-mail/chat, ringtones, logos, news, and more and more the mobile web. Because of the steady transformation of this network, his user identity must adapt to these constantly changing organisations and navigation strategies. Under these current and complex conditions of daily life, the telephone is reimagined with modified concepts of presence and absence, closeness and distance, connection and disruption and asks for new forms of artistic handlings. Against this actual developements the scientific discourse around (mobil)-telephony gains new explosiveness.
