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CONCEPT

"How do new modes of communication alter our behavior?"

Intimate Architectures is a series of works that attempt to address this question by exploring intimacy and the physical and informational structures that support or house it.

Our premise is that the advent of mobile technologies and other new forms of communication brings intimate relationships into social spaces where they are witnessed openly by onlookers and passers-by.

CONNECTING: INTIMATE ARCHITECTURES is third in this series of site-specific, media-based works that includes, TABLE TALK, which occurred in a restaurant, and, ROAMING, which happened on a bicycle in the street.

CONNECTING takes place on 1 April 2005 in the café and wireless network at De Balie Centre for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam, in homes in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and on this website. Taking to heart the 9-hour time difference that separates Los Angeles and Amsterdam, the event begins at 15:00 (3 pm) in Amsterdam and ends at 15:00 (3 pm) in Los Angeles. Our aim is to demonstrate intimate communication across distances, and to question the revised geographies produced by "instant" communication.

The installation uses instant messaging, video conferencing, and mobile phones connecting Marianne, Jeff, and Jonathan, from their apartments in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, with Joseph, Katherine, and Aneta, in De Balie's Café. By projecting our personal desktops on the windows and monitors in the Café, and streaming them here online, we are inviting you to experience our "real time" communication with us as it unfolds in "real" time.