Project: Further Research

As the deadline for the project is slowly approaching and I'm starting to think about what to mention in my critical introduction, I thought it might be useful to do some further academic research, just to back up the research and the work I've done so far by some more theory to get even deeper into the topic and it's background.

Firs of all, a got a recommendation to look at Kenneth J. Gergen's work on 'Absent Presence'.

And as you may already be able to tell by this name, Gergen's theory offers a deaper understanding of the main topic that I've been touching upon in my photographic essay.

The author argues that 'One is physically present, but is absorbed by a technologically mediated world of elsewhere.' I think the term 'absorbed' here is particularly interesting when thinking about Geiger's project SUR-FAKE, where the photographer really tries to show how people's faces slowly get absorbed and sucked up by their mobile phones.

Furthermore, what was particularly interesting for my project research, was the fact that Gergen also talks about the relationships people have to each other and that maintaining these relationships requires a face-to-face communication, which always depends on language.

He then goes on to explain how at the beginning of its existence, the cell phone served as a simple extension of such face-to-face communication.

However, what I found most interesting and most relevant about Gergen's text was definitely the conclusion he draws at the end, saying that with the development of mobile technologies and cell phones that have all kinds of integrated tools and even internet access, absent presence will be intensified. Considering that Gergen published this text in 2002, it is funny to look at how drastically and quickly technology has actually evolved in the past years and how what Gergen foresaw 14 years ago has become reality and as maybe even become worse than he'd expected it.

The text, although it might be a bit outdated in some of its thoughts, regarding the fact that it focuses only on the earliest stages of the mobile phone, has never the less been really interesting, not only in developing my thoughts and thinking about the term 'absent presence' in relation to my project, but also in opening my eyes to the drastic development of the cell phone use in the past years.

The second piece of research that I'm going to share here, has by far been the most enlightening for me during this research process, and although I've already briefly mentioned the author in a previous post I want to bring it up again and analyse it in more detail in relation to my project.

It is a video featuring Sherry Turkle, a professor of social studies of science and technology, talking about the way in which technology is shaping our relationships to each other, and most importantly to ourselves.

Turkle argues that mobile technologies are so psychologically powerful, they change who we are, not only what we do .

They create trouble in how we relate to each other and how we relate to ourselves, and our capacity to self reflection .

It is a phenomenon of ''being alone together', people want to be together, but also alone, they want to customize there lives.

They don't want to talk to each other face-to-face anymore, because having a conversation takes place in real time and you can't control what you're going to say and what impression you're going to make

What we love about technologies is that they let us present the self as we want to be .

Turkle further argues that 'human relationships are rich, messy, demanding and we clean them up with technology', we try to facilitate our lives by giving up an essential part of our lives and replacing it by a cell phone.

The thing is, that by constantly surrounding ourselves with people who hang on their phones, we experience the feeling that no one is listening  and thus we use social networks to compensate this feeling, because they function as 'automatic listeners'.

'We expect more from technology and less from each other', because technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable and they will give up the illusion of companionship and the feeling of being connected.

Nevertheless, the must powerful argument of Turkle's speech, for me, was definitely when she talked about the fact that technologies make us unable to have the least sense of self-reflection, because we can't be alone with ourselves anymore, 'being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved'.

'If we don't have connection, we don't feel like ourselves' .

I feel like especially these quotes and this last bit about how modern technologies shape our relationships to ourselves has been really important to me, because part of my pictures show people alone in different situations but always on their phones, and what I wanted to show with these images is exactly what Turkle explains in her speech, the inability of being alone with ourselves and reflecting on our life, no matter in what situation we are, whether it is at home on the toilet, in the garden doing some work or just in the shop trying to distract ourselves from everyday life, WE CAN¨T BE ALONE!

Reading :

Kenneth J. Gergen - Cell Phone Technology and the Challenge of Absent Presence

Sherry Turkle - Speech on Connected, but alone?  

 ->https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together#t-1019004