The Cell Atlantic CellBooth

The Cell Atlantic CellBooth, by Jenny L Chowdhury (one of the authors of Mobile Assassins), allows the chatty ones to carry a phone booth with them and set it up when they need to converse in private.

The deliberate nature of setting up this portable phone booth and standing in place while one talks enforces the idea that the call is important -not something to do while picking up the kids, working out, or driving.

The booth is made from merchant bags from China to denote its nomadic quality. Straps make the booth easy to carry on one's back and there's also a small pocket to store your cell phone when you're not using it.

Just like Nick Rodrigues' Portable Cellular Phone Booth, the wearable/portable phone booth is also a piece of performance art that calls the attention of New Yorkers to the changes in human behavior due to the ubiquitous use of cellphones. The project prompts people to take stock in how cell phone technology has altered the ways in which we communicate with each other and the environment surrounding us.

Artists seem to be eager to bring back into the streets the once ubiquitous phone booths: phone boots for regrets; Art calling digital art stories; the payphone project an old issue of Ericsson's ON mag lists a series of ideas that would bring back the booth into fashion: "Super Silent Booth", updatable tourist information points, confessional booths for the repentants or automatic teller machines (p.7). Restaurant owners and libraries are welcoming the booth as well.