Walk 3: Social Territory

 

         Walk 3: Mapping Social Territory         

This is a digital design I made to show how the cultural marks of technology affect the space around me and my place within it. Through mapping, I realize how connected I am to the world, yet now so utterly disconnected from the world around me. I used college students as my demographic and how technology is a cultural mark on our home space social scene.

My friend group, twenty-one year old college students, is part of my demographic. I spent an afternoon with them mapping how our social scene is engaged through technology and dependence on invisible signals. Within each space, we were connected to so much information through our cell phones, but at the same time, not connected to each other, despite our close physical proximity.  

As we moved through the day, I realized that the worse the coverage was, the more connected we were as a group. 

The scale that our social scene is affected by the cultural marks of technology in the spaces around us, especially home, is seen by mapping the way our lives are driven by its use.  As Nina Katchadourian stated, "The ubiquity of the map as a means of locating one's place in relationship to the rest of the world" directly connects to mapping this social territory.

I understood though that it is all ultimately dependent and determined by connection: cell towers and coverage in the immediate environment. What is a cell phone without a signal? How frustrated and impatient my friends became when they had weak or nonexistent service. 

Cultural marks of this can be see everywhere from "Wifi Here" signs to Mobile service billboards, but it is not about the physical phone. It is about the possibility of everything that can be  generated from that small physical device.... through the connection from the phone in our space, to the signal from the tower, to the satellites in space, and back. 

The way we live and move within our personal and public spaces has forever changed.  

My phone is with me when I wake up. It goes with me into the bathroom to text friends, the shower for music, the kitchen for recipes, back to bed to watch a movie, to the living room to call or email friends,   to my desk to check my calendar and homework, to my easel to provide inspiration, to my car to show me the route, to my boat to check depth and weather...... whether I am alone or with my friends, it is the same. It has become an integral part of each of us in the functioning of our daily lives.

HOME

MOBILE PHONES MAPPING PEOPLE 

WHERE WE GO OUR PHONES GO: MAPPING CONNECTION

WE ARE DEPENDENT: MAPPING SIGNALS

INVISIBLE SIGNALS: Home Space to Outer Space

(I did not design the following map, but thought it would be interesting to show total signal coverage and coverage per provider.)