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“Moving Diary with 10 Yen” [2019]

OKA Tomomi, WATANABE Junji

“Moving Diary with 10 Yen”

Outline

More than a century has passed since the first telephone service was made available in Japan in 1890. Today we can talk to people on the phone wherever and whenever we want, and imagine them standing right in front of us without even thinking about where they really are. The distance between conversation partners has been erased also with public telephones ever since they were first installed, however they do come with the special condition of available time for the amount of money inserted, ranging from 8 to 77.5 seconds per 10 yen depending on the distance and the time of day. In other words, public phones offer a service that reminds users of the distance between them, translated into the number of seconds they are given. Attempting to reintroduce the “physical aspects of a phone conversation,” this work allows visitors to use a public phone for as long as they can talk for 10 yen only, and thereby makes them aware of their distance and the time of day. While the increasingly non-physical modes of life are certainly convenient and effective, this work offers a refreshing experience of physical obstacles, and the joyful amazement of overcoming them to connect to someone far away.


Production: OKA Tomomi / WATANABE Junji (NTT Communication Science Laboratories, NTT Service Evolution Laboratories)
Equipment Support: NTT East Chiba Division
Production cooperation: FUKUDA Yoshimi (NTT Network Service Systems Laboratories)

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