New Uses for Old Phones: Upcycling the Rotary Dial Phone in the Age of the Smartphone

摘要

Inspired, during a three month stay in India in the summer of 2012, by the ubiquity of the mobile phone in that country and its long and complex life span in contrast to the increasingly short life span of the mobile phone in the west, my research addresses questions of obsolescence, mobility, communications networks and innovation.udInitially grounded in the real-world conditions of rapid mobile phone obsolescence, my research subsequently adopted critical design and performance methods and culminated in two projects, stereoPHONEic and textDIAL that demonstrate ways to repurpose so-called obsolete rotary dial telephone hardware, combining it with other available technologies, and even human beings at times, to recreate smartphone functionality. Together with a literature review (addressing the mobile phone in India, ubiquitous computing, persistence versus obsolescence and actor-network-theory) and a survey of relevant art, design and performance work, this thesis describes the process and outcomes of my research.