Art Project Redraws National Borders Based On Cell Phone Usage
Julian Oliver's 'Border Bumping’ explores how you can physically be in one spot while your cell phone is still in another country’s network because it hasn’t ‘bumped’ over yet.
‘Border Bumping‘ is a project by Julian Oliver commissioned by the Abandon Normal Devices Festival. It shows how technology changes the notion of national borders as sometimes you can cross into a different country while your cell phone remains in another country’s network because it hasn’t ‘bumped’ over yet.
This work of dislocative media uses data collected by “Border Bumping agents,” who run a custom-built app on their smartphone as they cross national borders. Moments of discrepancy at the edges are logged and uploaded to the central Border Bumping server. Country’s borders are then redrawn to reflect these discrepancies, on an evolving ‘tele-cartography’ map.