Excerpt from final essay:

My project’s aim is to deliver the message of absent presence to university students, making them aware of the way they are using technology and reminding them of the richness that face-to-face interaction with people and/or social surroundings can offer. The challenge was to speak to 30 students on campus for 2-5 minutes (minimum) about the concept of absent presence, its relation to modern day technological devices, and guide them to the conclusion of keeping face time on their agendas. With nifty technological gadgets at our fingertips, we are constantly divorcing ourselves from our immediate social surroundings, often times without realization. My goal is to provoke people to think about what are not seeing, hearing and saying in their absent presence.

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Senior Project Proposal

Final Project Description

The goal of my project is to present the concept of Absent Presence in real time/space within campus grounds where I participants can engage in their immediate surroundings and actively experience and understand this concept. Absent Presence in short refers to the concept of being physically present, but mentally preoccupied with regards to use of technological devices.

Because the project has a strong emphasis on social interaction, it is essential that the project needs to encourage people to directly connect and participate with the social experiment. I plan to accomplish this by firstly creating a print design on a t-shirt that can draw the attention to my “Absent Presence: Making Face Time” project. Next, I will assemble a crew to assist me in carrying out this project. The challenge for the participants would be to place their mobile device in a box or turn off their device and engage in a conversation myself for a whole 2 minutes. As a student on this campus, I realize that relying on students to voluntarily participate in a social experiment such as this is fairly difficult. Therefore, as an incentive for the students there will be small prizes involved. In addition to the T-shirt print designs, I will document the process of my project through photographs, and post them on a blog dedicated to tracking my progress.

Through the interwoven courses of my double major in New Media and City Studies, I feel that the project perfectly embraces both of these disciplines involving the social aspect of city studies as well as the socio-technological influences of new media. This project is important to me because I feel that my generation is losing touch with that unique real time-space relationship. We are frequently bombarded with the new gadgets and fast paced media that we are taking simpler things for granted. That is, developing a physical or tangible relationship with physical space or people around us. The impression I want to make on the participants who engage in my project is to make them think about the way they are using technology, and the impact it has on their lives.

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Video & Photographic Documentary

In Response to ‘Environmentally Social’

As a response to Derek’s post below, I too felt like it was a good heart-to-heart discussion about both issues of being environmentally aware of the issues going on and also how technology ties into this. I really enjoyed this because I felt I was able gain more knowledge from speaking to these students and bouncing ideas and conversation points off each other. I also think that a possible reason for their solid standpoint on face-to-face relationships may be because they are environmental studies students who are committed to and well aware of their surroundings and its relationship to them. It was a shame that we were not able to capture their footage of this conversation, since they were not comfortable around the camera. Regardless, this run-in was truly a memorable one.

On the contrary, an experience that was a bit of a hassle to deal with was when we tackled the entrance area where SCSU election candidates were trying to rake up some voters, even though on that Friday March 25th, Voting Day, candidates were not allowed to campaign. One of the candidates mistook my crew as one of the candidates campaigning on their turf. Sad to say, that one candidate was trying to distract us (and the videographer) from our project by making a racket. So, the part of the interview that we were able to get on video was very short and the noise level was impossible to control. This was a very unfortunate encounter, but we made the best of it with Derek’s photography and some video footage.

- Charlotte

Environmentally Social

Throughout the process of the project, it was interesting to hear the responses that were coming from the interviewees. Some literally experienced a sense of self realization and their dependence on technology while some were keen on having as much face time as possible. During the first session, we came across a few students who were apart of the environmental club who were building the Toronto city scape out of Tim Horton’s cups, promoting the use of coffee mugs. From speaking with them, it was interesting to see that they were very clear on reducing the use of technology to communicate. They themselves were very aware of how recent technological gadgets seem to run our lives, and completely emphasized their belief in maintaining face-to-face relationships. I really enjoyed the conversation because we were able to socialize as a group of students on both issues of being environmentally and technologically aware.

- Derek

Bitten by the Twitterbug

I thought this video was hilarious and pretty appropriate for this blog; a new addiction that interlinks cell phones, iPhones, BlackBerries, even WordPress!

This video is a curiously accurate depiction of the recent phenomenon with twitter, a new social networking tool that targets “young, hip, tech-savvy twenty-somethings”. But now everyone seems to be on this thing (even David Miller!), and once your on, you’re hooked.

Enjoy!

- Charlotte

Time to Make Face Time

Hi there!

Wow, Friday was quite an interesting day seeing as it was the first day of my social intervention! My crew and I were quite nervous. We met at around 2pm at school, unfortunately we forgot to take into consideration that most people will be gone by then. However,we realized that it wasn’t so bad since this probably means the people still hanging around school were more or less living on campus or weren’t as busy as during the week. We started off in the Bladen wing computer labs, Myself, Jessica, Derek (photographer) went around and found some familiar classmates. We decided to warm up with our conversations with them since it would be less intimidating. Here’s a picture of Jessica and I conquering a Bladen Wing computer lab:

Our goal today was reaching at least 10 people. Of course, we weren’t so sure people would oblige to engaging in a conversation with us, but wow was I wrong! we doubled our goal and actually got 20 people to participate. Unfortunately some participants either did not want their picture taken, or voice recorded, but we still had a thorough conversation with them and was quite enjoyable. Normally, I enjoy one-on-one conversations, but I realized that many of the people I approached were also joined by other friends who were near by just to check out what the fuss was about. Friday’s experience in my perspective was a liberating experience and instilled more confidence in my project and reaching my goal of 30 students on campus (10 students per group member). Here are some more pictures from the day:

I realized that actually having what seems like a “mystery bag” to some of the people seemed reluctant to engage in the conversation or preoccupied their mind because of the confusion and initial shock of leaving their cell phone or other device with a stranger. After several attempts at this, I realized it was more productive and an easier tranisition for the student (from shock to conversation) to simply ask some questions that lead them in a direction towards thinking critically about their use of cell phones and iPods.

Questions to think about:

1) What is your main source of communication with friends/family? (i.e. Phone, Internet, Texting, MSN)

2) Do you own a cell phone, portable music player, or other technological gadgets? How often do you use them? (i.e. PSP, Blackberry, iPhone, iPod)

3) Do you feel that reliance on these devices reduces the time spent on developing relationships?

4) Have you ever forgotten your cell phone at home? How do you feel without it?

5) When and why do you most tend to rely on these devices?

- Charlotte

“iPoditude & Crackberries”

Hello!

Today I found a great place that prints t-shirts for a more reasonable price and had a couple more t-shirts printed (as deliverables and for my group member Derek); both with the back printed as well. During the work-in-progress presentation, one of my fellow students mentioned that I should incorporate cellphone into the t-shirt design as well. So, I’ve taken her suggestion into consideration and created another similar design, however, featuring the ever popular BlackBerry phone. Known for being “texter’s paradise”.

Now I am also able to print the front and back for a more reasonable price. Here are the more recently printed T-shirts that includes the text label, “New Media Making Face Time”. I’ve also printed larger poster sized prints of the t-shirt design as a hard copy, and a stack of postcards with the blog URL to hand out to participants as opposed to a URL on a slip of paper.

On Wednesday morning, my crew and I will be continuing with another session of social intervention. Hopefully, we will be able to reach our ultimate goal of 30 people. Wish us luck!

- Charlotte

[Jessica's] New Experience – Part 2

Hi everyone,

This is my first post on about my experience on the absent presence project.  When first approached to help for this project, I didn’t quite understand the concept of absent presence.  And it was only after speaking with Charlotte about some examples that I began to understand. The point at which I realized and connected with this concept was when the crew and myself started talking to people around the University of Toronto Scarborough campus, I really reflected on this idea of being physically present but mentally preoccupied.  I realized that I remain in this state of mind for many hours in a typical day.  A lot of the time I am communicating with my friends through the cell phone or through the internet.  I have realized I have created a great dependence on these forms of communication.  When asking people how they feel when they do not have their cell phones with them, I felt a real connection with their responses.  I realized that the responses to this question is in unison: people feel lost and they have the feeling that they’re missing something important, like a wallet. It was very intriguing to actually be able to tackle this issue face on. When talking to students it seems like people don’t realize exactly how much they rely on these devices. Surprisingly, me as well.

- Jessica

Money, Money, Money, Money…..Money!

Good Afternoon,

I’ve just picked up some of my T-shirts today from Print 3. The only problem with printing these t-shirts was the cost. It ended up to be more expensive than anticipated. Nonetheless, they turned out pretty great, and I’m really proud of them! I’ve only printed 2 t-shirts so far for me and Jessica. I still have yet to print but will be worn by Derek. Which is fine for the time being since he will be taking the photos for tomorrow’s intervention session! Hopefully, I will be able to find a cheaper place to print the t-shirts. In the meantime, Jessica and I will have to wear the t-shirts without the text label originally designed for the back.

- Charlotte