nigeria Posted on

Out in the bush

We’ve met some Fulani herdsmen out in the bush in the village of Shonong, district of Bachit, Plateau State. Ab has been there for a couple of days now and has managed to get aquainted with quite a few people already. They are kind of wary towards strangers. The first family we dropped into were shy and distant, since the head of the family was out since dawn (with his cattle?). Quite an awkward situation arose when one of the younger men yelled to the more curious younger boys and women to get away from us. The second group we […] Read More

nigeria Posted on

Cartographic section of the Ministry of Lands Survey

Dini and Jaap, the incredibly hospitable Dutch couple in Jos where we are staying, gave us one of their many golden tips that the Ministry of Lands Survey & Town Planning sells beautiful old maps. We arrived by okado just a little before 16:00, when everyone was just leaving the premises after a hard days work.. Luckily we talked 2 men into at least showing us some of the maps. The state these maps are kept in is just ridiculous: dust, half-eaten by 137 generations of rodents, yellowish from moist, rolled up and thrown under a table, etc. Tomorrow we […] Read More

mobile phone, nigeria Posted on

Mobile phone shops are everywhere

Anywhere you go, people have started their own enterprise by putting down a parasol and a table. When you want to make a phone call but don’t have a phone or are out of credit, you can make one here for 20-25 naira. These guys told me anyone can now start a small business here selling phone calls and cards. Another great example of increasing value by number: the more there are available, the more it becomes a truly useful service that fills up a need. The whole question of personal possession is perhaps less relevant when you can always […] Read More

mobile phone, nigeria Posted on

Advertisement for mobile phone operators 02

Somwhere in Kaduna. The “Xtra Connect” offer by South-African corporation MTN means calling cheaper to family or friends (“Call 3 family & friends @ 25k/sec”). Keeping contact with family that lives far away seems a very important use of the mobile phone here. People I have talked to named this as one of the main benefits of the “handset”. They also mentioned as a negative side postponing face to face contact by keeping in touch via the phone

announcements, nigeria Posted on

The eagle has landed

we have arrived in abuja safely. Picked up from the airport by driver and an armed man… That moist smoky air and thick sound of crickets… Absurd style of driving: drive right side, pass right side. Cook pierre at daniels (esther’s cousin in abuja) place is from benin. Weird that one of the first conversations here in anglophone nigeria is in french…. tomorrow we go to kaduna to meet some film people from the “new age film company”. See if they are interested in collaborating.

announcements, nigeria Posted on

Going to Nigeria

Tomorrow me and Esther Polak are going to Nigeria on the NomadicMILK fieldtrip. Packing my bags now… I will try to post some new stuff here once in a while when we are able to get online. Apparently our telcom operator in Nigeria MTN has gprs access too, so I’ll check that out as soon as I am there. However, as you can see here, there are still some white areas in Nigeria…(and that’s only the GSM network).

Identity, mobile phone, play Posted on

15 pixels of fame…

Anybody can upload a short mobile phone clip to the website 15×15.org which is then displayed on the homepage for 15 seconds as one of 15 clips being shown simultaneously. Interestingly, most people seem to film themselves and then put it online… Affirmation of the mobile phone as a tool for reflexive creation and expression of personal identity? BTW: I am being eating by a purple Tyrannosaurus Rex… (Thanks Tim for reminding me!)

Identity, mobile phone, play, technology Posted on

Interesting interview with Nick Wright from Mobile Youth Trends

Xen Mendelsohn from Xellular Identity has a very interesting interview with Nick Wright from Mobile Youth Trends. Nick is co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report. Some of the good stuff: – Young people don’t use their mobile phones ‘just for fun’ but also for serious matters: to say something about themselves and their relationships with other young people (self-expression). – Branded goods play an important role in this self-expression. – Texting is “a reaffirmation and a reminder that “I’m with you??.” – Many young people feel depressed after a whole day without SMS. Some young people even go to rehab […] Read More

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“Give yourself away…”

Hey, there are people inspired by me :). Check out Darryl Cressman’s article about mobile gifting.  Darryl is from the School of Communication, at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He visited us with Norm Friesen a couple of weeks ago in Rotterdam. I see my preliminary article is spreading it’s way onto the Internet (a huge link dump here about mobile phone & art). About time for me to finish the paper…

mobile phone, technology Posted on

Mobile phone comes in handy for Indian fishermen

According to Washington Post, Indian Fishermen make intensive use of the mobile phone to find the best place to sell their fish. While still at sea, they make several calls to buyers in different ports to inquire which one offers the best price. It is also used to alert friendly boats to huge schools of fish. I have heard of similar stories about Senegalese fishermen using GPS to inform each other of coordinates of good fishing grounds. Of course, this may be occurring in Nigeria too, with Fulani herdsmen… Just like the idea was in the case of farmers, the […] Read More

mobile phone, nigeria, technology Posted on

Biological fuel for mobile phone antennas in Africa

Blog has been silent for a while, which in my case is an indication of doing lots of things at the moment..:). This post on textually.org I found interesting, since media artist Esther Polak and I will be going to Africa (Nigeria) in a couple of weeks for the art/science project NomadicMILK. It’s a project about mobility patterns amongst nomadic Fulani herdsmen and WAMCO truck drivers. We will be traveling with cultural anthropologist Ab Drent, who has done a 10-month research amongst the Fulani in northern Cameroon in 2000/2001. We will try to visualize to uses of space by both […] Read More