Rachel Baker
Rachel Baker
Prototype
Platfrom

view the online prototype here
This project uses the platform of the mobile phone within a very specific context ­ the train journey. A series of playful SMS messaging scenarios will make a relation between mobile phone and rail network as communication systems.

Focusing on privatised, proprietary networks ­ the railway and the mobile phone ­ the project will invert them into opportunities for public and group interaction. It offers moments for train culture and SMS culture to integrate, taking advantage of a journey's incidental nature (delays etc) with unknown consequences by creating a common gateway between train traveller and static web user and including them both in a narrative along a particular route. The narrative at this stage is dictated by the route from South to North and the contiguous cities and landscape.

The project will be presented as four scenarios which simulate the experience of the SMS interface on board the train: The Train Driver's Perspective; The Non-travelling Web User's Perspective; The Traveller's Perspective; The TRUST System Perspective.


Close
Click here to close this window

Biography
Biography

Between 1991 and 1996 I attended art colleges including Exeter College Of Art and Design, Newport School of Art and Design, and Goldsmiths College where I completed an MA in Design Futures, studying internet + audio communications, and interactive marketing.

Since 1997 I've worked as a web developer, artist and engineer in internet and radio, specialising in techniques used in contemporary marketing to gather and distribute data for the purposes of manipulation and propaganda.

Radio combined with Internet (Net.radio) forms a key area of activity and more recently moble phone SMS interventions. I completed a residency in 2001 with Hull Time Based Arts and Lincoln and Humberside College of Art where I collaborated with the local football fans on an SMS facility.

I have taught Internet skills at The London School of Economics and developed corporate websites for Razorfish.

I am currently working at BBC New Media as a developer on a teen website and continue to work on the analysis, design and management of Irational.org's art+information systems, and its project of social radicalism in conjunction with technological opportunity.


Downloads
Downloads

Click here to view the project proposal PDF.

Click here to view the project website.

Click here to view the project response PDF.