pocket angel or demon
[TI-19] examining our devices as subjects & objects rather than foils
I open my Screen Time settings to check how many times I've picked up my phone the past few days: 62, 103, 77. I wonder what the record is. I wonder how high you could get if you tried for a full day to break it.
My daily average is 4 hours, higher than it's been the past. I suppose all my recent practice creating social content1 is taking its toll: it entails both lots of time filming and also lots of time consuming to understand the different storytelling mechanisms people use. It's hard to do so without getting sucked in. Minutes turn into hours and, for some, whole spans of lives are lost to endless scrolling.
A Pew survey in 2011 asked people for one word they would use to describe their smartphones (at that point around 42% of people who owned a cellphone owned a smartphone). As of 2024, Pew has recorded over 90% of people owning a smartphone. While they haven't repeated the question of asking for a single word to describe their phones, we don't need a survey to see that our distaste for our phones as a society is reaching a fever pitch.
States all across the U.S. are implementing Phone-Free policies, screen-time and focus aids that block access to apps are wildly popular on app stores, and viral content (how ironic) about ditching phones and acquiring "dumb" phones are trending2. Many smart people are making alternative devices that package all the useful capabilities of a smartphone into a less distracting and less extractive package. What would the word cloud say now if we asked people?
I'm not surprised how opinion has shifted on our phones. I feel the same exhausting tension even seeing my phone out of the corner of my eye as I write this essay on my computer. I am on my phone too much. I scroll more than feels good. My attention span has definitely suffered.
Our phones: these supercomputers in our pockets, these demons on our shoulders, these portals to entire worlds sitting in our palms. Their rise to ubiquity has confused more than a few people and our existing definitions of technology. Are they computers? Are apps the Internet? Where do we end and the phone begin?
But it's not all bad. Otherwise, we wouldn't keep coming back. I find incredible things on the Internet, through my phone, every day. I am filled with wonder, inspiration, joy, curiosity, and laughter trawling through the various corners of the web. I am filled with these feelings, mostly, by other people sharing pieces of themselves on the internet, finding a way to express themselves in this cyborg language that fills the negative space around our physical lives.
If we live as beings of matter, perhaps our digital lives live as dark matter. People say that the digital doesn't feel tangible, but the digital has embedded itself in most parts of my life—blogs I've read have shaped my way of living, digital avatars I met have become some of my closest friends, and inspirational work I came across formed the seed of what has become my lifelong creative practice.
What about the phone, the object, itself—what about the chunk of metal and glass you carry with you every day?
As a physical subject, the phone takes on a new light. I turn the screen off and examine the round curves and precise studded holes that mark the speakers. I press its tactile buttons, test the varying pressure thresholds, and listen to the distinctive clicks. I tap the screen to wake it up and pay attention to the nature of its light. I consider which parts of the iconography and text might constitute its face and which its body. I consider what name it might want me to call it by. I listen for its breath and heartbeat. Would it feel nice to buzz with a new notification? Does it feel powerful to shine its flashlight? Will it understand fear when the battery drops dangerously low? What kind of drug does getting charged most closely resemble?
These phones are some of our most intimate companions—we have touched them more than most of our loved ones and lovers, likely combined. They have seen us at our lowest and our highest. They capture our meaningful moments and help us reach those who can comfort us when we feel the most alone. They are always there for us when we need to celebrate our latest wins or when we need to numb ourselves to the world through the flood of content.
My resentment of what I do on it and what it makes me feel like seems silly under this frame. Like a longtime friend, sometimes we have difficult fights, but in the end, we're there for each other.
everyday is my latest work that emerged from the height of these tensions. It's a participatory work that lives on your phone and composes scores of gestures, representing people all over the world dancing with their phones to hourly prompts.
I wanted to make something that could play with this strange state of affairs. something that captures a brief flashing moment in time, that might be obsolete at some point soon in the future, as our devices constantly change (and the mobile device APIs that web browsers expose). I learned about so many obscure sources of information you could access from a phone, and how few consensus there was across different phones and browsers on which ones were allowable.
Some devices allow you to get a person's heartbeat (using the fingerprint sensor). Others grant permission for system-level information like your battery levels. A few actively discourage any information access outside of native applications. In the end, the kinds of things we can do with our mobile companions is still dictated entirely by the priorities of a few companies.
I had a lot of fun considering what strange rituals we could conduct with our devices—both using the phone for its physical body rather than what it represents and as the constant companion in our lives. For example, at noon, it asks you to "Catch a ray of sunlight with your phone," and later at 6pm, it asks you to "Treat your device as your dance partner." Phone as mirror, as dance partner, each hour invites you to reimagine these everyday companions as sources of play, exploration, and reflection.
In the end, I wanted each action to be an invitation to connect with someone else, to turn these devices that so often isolate us from the world and each other, into conversation starters—both with the people in the physical spaces around us, watching us do absurd dances to our phones, and those around the world, connected to us in a brief moment of strange dance and movement.
If our phones can be demons, they can be angels, too. Or jesters, magicians, personal trainers. They have just as much agency to reinvent themselves, if we allow them to. Who do you want your phone to be? And who do you want to be when you're with it?
Updates
DEMO 2025 I'll be sharing new work for the conclusion of my time in NEW INC at DEMO 2025. Come see my talk on June 4th or the show June 4-22nd if you're in NYC :)
Asian Art Museum I'm boothing (for the first time) for the Asian Art Museum's Spring Fair May 2-4 from 10AM to 5:30PM. Come say hi! I'm excited to see Yuan Goang-Ming's new work in the museum too
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I've been on a journey to make 30 videos talking to the camera about random things. follow along on TikTok
Following the land grab of all the different naming variations of "dumb phone" is a fun game. The Boring Phone (launched by Heineken of all people), The Light Phone, and even The Barbie Phone. What's next? What would your dumb phone collab be called?
defo got a bunch of tension w my phone sometimes, i recently moved to a 2-room apartment and have embargoed it from my bedroom for the time being...
BUT at the same time, i've had this phone (galaxy s7, for context) for 8 years now, and have changed its battery twice diy-style, definitely more intimate relationship with it-as-object than most others do. if it-as-object could talk then it would probably drop hella lore, it's been to most* of my within-europe trips for catching music events. looks worn physically but still functional, and has only one barely noticeable crack. i also have a very fun little collage stacked into its transparent case.
the occasional person might go like pls replace ur phone the os isnt even actively supported anymore whatever blabla, but really i guess i continue to use it cos of it-as-object... committed to squeezing a decade out of it at Least.
*in summer 2023 i got a newer refurbished phone as spare cos i wanted something newer - that one's been my main one for the uk trips since because of the dual sim. cos of it being refurb i do wonder about the lore of this phone-as-object too...