Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896
July 16, 2025
July 16, 2025 | Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896

The art of the cell phone: a vast new medium

By Whitney Shaffer | March 2, 2007

In the Contemporary Museum, located just a block from the Walters, there is a curious and intriguing exhibition entitled Cell Phone: Art and the Mobile Phone, in which artists of various backgrounds use the cell phone as a way of expressing artistic ideas.

What was immediately striking after a cursory tour around the room was that there was really only one project (Connect to Art) that used the cell phone as an artistic medium. The rest tried to turn the cell phone into a viable medium. The first piece, a sculpture entitled Videos Lustre 027-2007 by Beatrice Valentine Amrhein tied cell phones with their chargers into a media tree. Each cell phone displayed a short video of an isolated body part, which when taken in as a whole gave a fluid translation of the body.

The shape and form of the cell phones became a defining part of the work that helped to synthesize the fragmented videos into a coherent piece, with the whole becoming a sort of technological collage.

Perhaps the most visitor-friendly installation, located right off the main gallery, is an interactive light show called Cell Phone Disco by artist collective Informationlab. In a darkened gallery hangs a series of clear plastic panels that hold evenly spaced LED lights. Each LED is hooked up to a sensor that picks up wireless signals, which then activates the LEDs and makes them blink. While a few lights engage because of ambient signals, one can increase the volume of sparkling light by participating in the cell phone tour (the only way to get extra information on the exhibition. No wall texts here). The board lights up in the area where you stand and follows you as you walk through the installation and listen to the blurb about the artwork.

A suggestion: after the brief monologue is finished, classical music plays until you punch in the next number on the tour. Put your cell on speakerphone and move your arm (or your whole body) and move around to the music. It transforms the experience of the work from a visualization of space to an interactive physical connection of multiple senses. Plus, it's a lot of fun.

In the main gallery, there was a projection on a screen that invited me to text my fear to a local cell phone number. Initially, I engaged in the process of sending the text automatically but in the middle of typing my fear (Alzheimer's, by the way), I suddenly became aware of the prospect of someone receiving my text message. It was a strangely 21st century feeling, one of instant, yet anonymous emotional connection. Theoretically, someone would eventually have to process this text, and therefore inadvertently learn about me. This thought gave me pause for about a minute, and then I hit "Send."

After a moment, my text was fed into a program that changed the projection to show my text and display a person who "shares" my fear. What a comfort! I'm not alone! The girl on the wall looked my age! But then I realized I was being played. Could this girl possibly have a fear like mine? Could the artists have actually interviewed a large sample of people and cataloged fear upon fear?

Of course not. The girl was a picture from a series, disconnected from the substance of my text. She was merely programmed to pop up from time to time when a text was sent in (My suspicions were confirmed later when the fear was "Lena" with an image of two workers on the screen. How many teamsters could possibly be afraid of "Lena"?) This realization of randomness took away the short-lived connection between me and the girl in the photograph and replaced it with an even more acute sense of isolation.

As if to add insult to injury, my fear was exposed on a bare wall in letters about the size of my thumb. And now everyone could see it, contemplate it, and judge it on its merits (relative wackiness, weirdness, etc.) until a new text was sent in. And when exactly would that happen? In a few minutes, hours, days? Isn't my fear supposed to be intensely personal and private? Now, it's painfully public. Granted, only I knew that the word "Alzheimer's" was describing my personal anxiety on that wall, but there was a nervousness of judgment that wouldn't leave me.

An interesting anecdote: neither the docent nor I could figure out the artist and title of the work; it seemed to be missing. That made the work much more anonymous and symptomatically more creepy.

Was that a happy experience? No, not at all, but who should demand that of art all the time? For me though, there was no question in my mind if this was truly art. Despite being interactive (which may be counterintuitive for some when approaching art) and the reliance on an unorthodox media (not even considering its utilitarian nature), it managed to transcend my general misgivings of contemporary art. I was challenged to think about my casual relationships with strangers, and the leaps of faith I sometimes take in establishing connections with those people. I even questioned myself, which is the ultimate goal of purposeful art, to make one self-aware.


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