Screen in Public

For this week’s post, I was required to observe the people in a public area to see their reactions towards a public screen. I went to Setia City Mall and stop by at the Speedy shop for about 10 minutes to see how people reacted.

I came into the mall around 8pm, it was a Monday night. I went by to the speedy shop and World War Z was showing. I stopped in front of the shop and started my observation. A father and son were standing about 2 meters away from me. They were both concentrating on the screen and were well drown into it. Few minutes later, a man came with up to the screen with few of his children and started watching it as well. He was waiting for his wife who was seen walking into a store next door. There were passersby who looked at our way, wondering what was going on but it did not stop them to watch.

From my observation, it can be seen how people are easily engrossed into the movie even when they are in a public space. Not only are they unaware of how they are causing blockage in the walkway, they completely separate themselves from the world. It can be said this is how a public space is turned into a private space in this. People are now easily attached to the public screen as long as they are able to catch their interest. Also, it is becoming a social norm as people who are waiting for someone or who just have time on their hands would just stand and create a world of their own.

I do believe that such form of advertising would be able to attract people as not only is it visually clear for the public, but also is able to expose to a wider public. Although it works well to promote to the public, but it is slowly changing how people view the public screen.

Public and Private Space

People today are too engage with techs and gadgets even when they are busy. Walking down the street checking on twitter updates, texting while waiting in line to buy some coffee or even sending pictures of some dresses to friends for opinion. Thing we do today are displaying a view on how overly dependent we are to technology. It is so consuming that at times, it is hard to differentiate whether what we are doing is consider private or not. Will we be able to accept things when privacy, once known to us as our personal space slowly vanishes into thin air?

Firstly, let’s distinguish what are a public space and a private space. Public space is a form of space where people’s views and opinions are express and shared with each other (Dekker 2008). As said, it allows people to gather and share thoughts about everything in public such as trains or a restaurant. Whereas a private space is regarded as a surrounding where people are allowed to disengage themselves from the world and their behaviors and actions are to themselves. (Dekker 2008). These places could be an individual’s own home or car.

It has become a common activity for society today to be physically attach themselves to their phones or any other technology that leads them to the media spaces such as social networks, emails and many more even when there is company surrounding them. Has it come to a point where people are so attached to it that physical interactions with humans are slowly dying out? Do we really need to further expose our own life on social sites or even dispose of real life communication and substitute it with dull words and emoticons? And most importantly, is what we consider as private really is confidential among ourselves and people we know?

Perhaps a new era is evolving and social interaction on its last legs. My thoughts are that even when we put in our earphones, log into Facebook and disconnect ourselves from strangers around us, the privacy we thought we have, has become public with the single access to the social networking site.

Below is an article that further explains how public space is becoming private space and vice versa.

References:

Dekker, A (2008) PPS: PublicPrivateSpace Where the public space turns into private space and the private space opens up to the public, International Symposium on Electronic Art, vol. 14, p. 140-141.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QmRUfBD7iJsJ:www.isea-webarchive.org/mmbase/attachments/114574/Where_the_public_space_turns_into_private_space_and_the_private_space_opens_up_to_the_public.pdf+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

Nathan A. Turnbull. 2013. It is easy being green. [ONLINE] Available at:http://nath1993.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/public-vs-private-space-wheres-the-line-bcm240/. [Accessed 25 August 13].