When was the last time you didn’t look at a screen for more than a day? How many pictures do you have of your last trip? Can you name a time you left your house without your phone intentionally in the past year?
My experience living in Seattle has shown me how tied to phones many people are, and I used to be not much different. A long bus ride, waiting for a meeting, walking from A to B always involved my phone, whether it be listening to music, playing a game, or just being disconnected from the world. My time in Amsterdam broke that habit. I would go days without looking at my phone, ride my bike as far as I could go until I didn’t recognize anything.
When I returned home, I felt disconnected from the people around me, not only because of their misconceptions of my time abroad, but also because I no longer carried a screen everywhere. My lack of phone at times inhibited my ability to communicate, even when the people were in the same room. While it is easy to fall back into this habit, I have been conscious of it and allowed only as much screen as is necessary for me.
To represent my experience, I’ve used photos from my time abroad mixed with photos from when I came back, and pixelated the points where I felt my technology was controlling me, rather than me controlling my technology.
Comparative History of Ideas Major, Gender Women and Sexuality Studies minor. Focusing on representation of marginalized bodies including women and people of color. Thesis is centered around the representation and treatment of women and female bodies in video games and the gaming community. Come ask me why.
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