The project is directed at countries that surround South Africa, including Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Namibia, where, due to technical restraints, they have to be inventive and use a variety of practicable communication sources: GSM films, fax, teletext… and for instance the more modern skype. Nevertheless they use them in a different way from us because they have to be used more creatively than in our country. Their usage has to be adjusted to make them viable and they also have to conform with cultural traditions… In this sense the mobile network in these countries has a “headstart” compared to the “modern world”… Even though we have exchanged the pigeon post for an internet service running at 60 mb per second…
Our aim with this project is to get people to connect up with one another independently, without the automatic assumption that modern communication methods will always be present, and without the daily convenience and ease with which we use the mobile phone, e-mail etc. In Africa the mobile phone is the device for trying out your ingenuity. Whereas we, with the complex contents of our heads, barely have the space left to think creatively. Despite the multiple forms of information exchange at our disposal there is no guarantee that they will generate socially communicative behavior.
We want to see how a connection with one another can be accomplished by means of these varying media. To see if it is possible to share our daily experiences with people in parts of Africa where the communication possibilities are limited.
Is it possible, using this method, to send a story round to the participants and allows them to add something to narration (story telling through different “modern” media)
Ultimately the collection of impressions and reactions (mobile phones, films, faxs, e-mails, the spoken word of a “runner” etc. can be shot on video to represent eight days from the participants’ lives.
