Moving On to the Mobile Phone

During my original proposal I intended to work with mobile phones, but thought that an initial exploration into communication between things using Zigbee radios would be more accessible, and informative. It was, kind of.


The second-to-most important lesson from my xbee triggered light interactions, where elWire enhanced clothing and objects would trigger and teach each other, were that learning from each other is the key to allowing the interactions to be vibrant. Otherwise they are just reactionary objects. By allowing the devices to learn and recode themselves gives the interactions more meaning, and gives them a sort of "freedom" that I consider a vital part of agency.


The most important lesson was that the structure of the network communication is the key to the whole concept. I hadn't realized before, even though I wanted to work with bluetooth and NFC (near field communication), that the rise of these network capabilities in phones is precisely the reason why they can become more vibrant (in the sense of vibrancy that I am exploring - the almost literal interpretation of interaction of vibrant objects in physical proximity). The idea that phones can talk to each other stemmed from the fact that they actually can! I know this may seem obvious, but it is something that took me a few months to realize. While working with the xBees, I was trying to fake a one-to-one network communication. The xbee radio networks require a "coordinator" radio. Any one of them can act as such, but the very fact that such a radio is required limits the network formation into a star shaped network, with the coordinator in the middle. This is not the behavior of vibrant agents that I envisioned: agents that, like people, form dynamic networks based on proximity and communication. This dynamic and flexible network formation due to proximity and communication is fundamental to my concept. When I finally realized that I was trying to fake it, I realized that I didn't need to, since phones already have one-to-one capabilities.


I also realized how exciting that is. NFC, which allows more easy pairing between phones, in addition to bluetooth, which is annoying to work with but still pretty exciting, allows phones to communicate when they are in proximity to each other, not through the traditional structure that is mediated and moderated by the phone company, employing phone towers, satellites, etc. It is specifically this development that allows phones to communicate locally, and that leads to the kind of vibrancy I want to give them. It was also a relief to accept that what I was doing was fundamentally flawed, since trying to bypass that problem was really frustrating and limiting. And it makes me so much more enthusiastic about NFC and bluetooth, and all of the wonderful things that will happen on top of these technologies.