Mobile Conversations

The Jessica Lal case in India- people texting messages in real time in to a TV station which displays hundreds of thousands of messages protesting against the corrupt justice system.

Ever since our experimentation with the sms blog (text to a phone number or short code via a gateway and see your text message displayed on a blog or screen) I have been fascinated by the potential of real-time texting or sending photos to public sites or billboards to document, to protest, to proclaim.

Here are a number of creative examples I have come across: CronicasMoviles in Buenos Aires - un weblog artistico y documental donde se registraban fotos tomadas con celular, con una mirada distinta the Buenos Aires. It now has more than 3,000 entries and is an interesting snapshot of culture and life in Buenos Aires.

MobileActive Erik Sundelof's Lebanon sms blog is featured on the Discovery Channel in the UK. During the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, citizens in the conflict sent text messages to the blog, with moving account and pleas for peace.

City Speak, a project by artist Jason Lewis in Toronto, is both art and potentially political expression. From the site: "Participants use their SMS- and web-enabled cellphones or wireless PDAs to send text to a common server. The text is combined with real-time data from the location and processed using the NextText text visualization software. The resulting stream of text is layered back onto the locations in the form of large-scale projections. Participants can use the display to leave commentary, tell stories, conduct conversations..."

Imagine this on a billboard in Time Square in New York - with people talking about climate change, for example. If you have other examples of political expression, conversation, or dissent via mobile in public or online place, leave a comment.

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