Ubiquity:

Aesthetic disruptions: Mobile audio-visual experiences from urban peripheries of Rio de Janeiro
Liliane Leroux, State University of Rio de Janeiro
Anne Clinio, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

This article focuses on the contemporary dissemination of audio-visual mobile technologies in Brazil, which interweave aesthetics, politics and culture. Signs of the phenomenon come from the do-it-yourself practices adopted in the daily lives of individuals and groups previously excluded from a broad access to cultural consumption and production. This new scenario happens as a result of the increasing embedding of mobile technologies in daily routines, and of the emergence of a networked culture that eradicates people’s dichotomous positions, such as transmitter/receptor, or active/passive. Based on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, we investigate a movement where cultural placements are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. Our aim is to reflect on two issues: first, how audio-visual creation, through the propagation of mobile devices, becomes tactile material for anyone in urban slums and peripheral areas of Brazil; and second, the process of (self) creation that takes place through the engagement of these communities in film production. We depart from the assumption that there is an equality postulated by art as the equal ability of anyone to experience any kind of life by exceeding the limits of what is expected of body, perception and affection.

The pathos of the city: Wearable mobile technologies in public health
Tiago Franklin Rodrigues Lucena, Brasilia University
Suélia Rodrigues Fleury Rosa, Brasilia University
Cristiano Jacques Miosso Rodrigues Mendes, Brasilia University
Diana Maria Gallicchio Domingues, Brasilia University

The article describes the process of creation of a sensorized insole built with biomaterials (latex from Havea brasilienses) as a mobile wearable device. The insole will acquire physiological data (galvanic skin response, foot pressure, temperature) combined with locative tools (GPS) to create a kind of ‘emotional living map’ of the city. The system is enactive: Varela et al. define the concept, as the situation when ‘organism and environment enfold into each other and unfold from one another in the fundamental circularity that is life itself’. The biomaterial and pressure sensors used can predict some of the areas most affected and contribute to healing. An artistic background is also presented to show how artists using different technologies created the debate about art versus urban space versus body. Locative media art practices also contribute to the exploration of the dynamic processes used to create different maps. The project is a result of transdisciplinary research between arts and technoscience, and involves the collaboration between artists and biomedical engineers and other scientists from the Art and TechnoScience Laboratory and the Engineering and Innovation Laboratory (both at Gama College of the University of Brasilia) in collaboration with MediaLab – MIT-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Camera Culture Group).

Globalization, culture, class and mobile phone usage
Lynne Ciochetto, Massey University
This article is intended to address a deficit in current information about new technology user patterns in the ‘developing world’. Western media primarily focuses on high-income western industrialized societies and ignores most other counties. Reporting on the Third World, especially Africa, is preoccupied with disasters, famines and conflict (disaster porn). General information and good news stories about the Third World are seen as of ‘low interest’ to western audiences. Research into patterns of media use in the field of cultural studies also tends to be preoccupied with developed countries, and recently there has been particular focus on the iPhone. This article explores the diversity in the international profile of mobile phone users across cultures and classes using seven case studies: Kenya, India, Brazil, China, Russia, New Zealand and the United States. This study is intended to demonstrate – through a review of literature and information from international databases – how user patterns vary widely cross-culturally, even in developed countries. The explanation for these variations is traced back to economics, cultural values and the wider socio-political context. Patterns in mobile phone use are closely related to social class and incomes, which in turn reflect the way people work and use their leisure time.

Building egalitarian communities of communication through mobile ad hoc networks
Wenceslao García Puchades, Polytechnic University of Valencia
This article intends to highlight the concept of egalitarian communities of communication through the latest developments of mobile technology and peer-to-peer (P2P) communication networks. With the help of the French author Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophical theory on the ‘inoperative community’, we will try to show how a community of communication among equals depends on its members’ anonymity, its infinite openness and its ubiquity. Taking these features as a starting point we will analyse how we can consider the so-called mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) as a real and paradigmatic model of ‘inoperative community’. The aim of this article is to explore the infrastructure underlying these networks as a model of a community of communication among equals, since it enables the anonymity, openness and ubiquity of its members.