We, screen lovers
COLUMNE Is the iPhone an extension of our body? Ellen Girod*, researcher at HWZ, on the phenomenon of screen infatuation. British street artist Banksy's latest work, "Mobile Lovers," shows a pair of lovers holding smartphones.The latest Banksy appeared last week in the English city of Bristol. He shows two lovers, tightly entwined in the [...]
The latest work "Mobile Lovers" by British street artist Banksy shows a pair of lovers holding smartphones.The latest Banksy appeared last week in the English city of Bristol. It shows two lovers, tightly embraced in the darkness, their faces illuminated only by the screens of their smartphones staring at them. "Mobile Lovers" the anonymous artist called his work. I wonder what Banksy wants to tell us? Does he want to hold up a mirror or our smartphone screen in front of our faces? Does he want to say that Google should finally move forward with Glass, because then some things would be easier? Does he want to encourage us to look ourselves in the eye more? Or is he trying to show us that we're not as connected as we should be thanks to the new technologies that connect us? You know that moment at lunch when the first person pulls out their smartphone and a few seconds later everyone follows suit, and suddenly it's quiet at the table because everyone is looking at their devices? Or when commuters bump into you at the train station, all their attention focused on the screens of their smartphones? Why are we like this? Is it because real life out there is just too boring? Is it because we are addicted to information and news? Is it because we are constantly looking for the new dopamine kick from social networks? Is it because digitization is overwhelming us and we want to recognize ourselves in our devices? Marshall McLuhan, Canadian literary scholar and the most influential media theorist of all time, describes in his essay "In love with his apparatuses" how man expands various parts of his body through new apparatuses "in a kind of self-amputation". In the process, he falls into a state of anesthesia and falls in love with his apparatuses. Applied to the iPhone, this means that we amputate ourselves by extending our ego into the digital world. And in the process, we fall in love with our devices with the carefully edited selfies on them. The iPhone as an extension of my body? While I am fortunately not like every 10th American who looks at his smartphone during sex and also not like the protagonist of the eerie short film "Valibationwhose nails are slowly coming loose because a smartphone is growing out of his hand. But sometimes I too am in love with my screen. Last week, for example. My husband and I were sitting outside in a café, a balmy evening, the light was just right and I snapped a photo with my iPhone. A few hours later on the sofa I started editing his portrait. His picture was really successful for me, I could hardly take my eyes off it, could hardly decide for one of the many VSCO4 filter decide. Then I looked over at my husband, sitting next to me on the sofa, deeply absorbed in the laptop. It's strange, I thought, instead of looking at my husband and caressing his face, I'd rather wipe across the small touchscreen of my iPhone. Then I asked myself, what if Banksy saw us now?
