In my previous column “Sound Seeing” (September/October), I wrote about the rewards of listening to city sounds, and how they can present a new perspective in seeing. I included a portion of a cell phone monologue that I had overheard, and, at the end of my column, I wrote, “Does this mean that I will now consider inane cell phone conversations as creative fodder? I doubt it.”

Wrong! In fact, since writing that column, I have been copying down snippets of the cell phone calls that I overhear on buses, in train stations, in grocery stores. The more I listen, the more I hear how similar the conversations are—not only to each other, but also to my own. Whether they are inane, trivial or heavy, these archetypal exchanges are creative fodder. When I really listen, they contribute to my perceptions about contemporary life, and the words inevitably find their way into my expressive work.

This should not have surprised me. For the past three years, the subject of my artwork and much of my writing (often in these columns) has been about the way we share public urban spaces. The visual art that I created during that time culmi­nated in a series titled Public Privacy: Wendy Richmond’s Surreptitious Cellphone. It’s made up of silent cell phone video grids of city life—people riding escalators, watching a parade, window-shopping—the steady and mundane urban choreography that we perform together.

I had no interest in capturing a dramatic or embarrassing moment; quite the opposite. During the course of shooting over 1,600 videos, the ones I wanted to work with were the “episodes” where nothing happened, but were full of the normal gestures that happen every day: holding a coffee cup while maneuvering through a crowd or rummaging through a purse on the subway. (To see the videos and related article, google Wendy Richmond New York Times). The cell phone conversations I overhear are the aural equivalent: recounting yesterday’s errands, planning where to meet, choosing tonight’s dinner.

During a recent television interview on NY1, the host, Sam Roberts, asked me, “Is New York City different from other places?” I responded that for me, a major difference is its extreme density and the intense, unconscious aptitude of its inhabitants that enables us to share our public space. We are able to be close and simultaneously maintain our distance—a sort of privacy in public. After the interview, I thought further: How are we able to handle this density, especially when the space we share is not only physical, but aural as well?

This prompted me to revisit a column I wrote in December 2006 titled “The Internal Retreat from Shared Public Space” in which I described how city dwellers simultaneously occupy and retreat from public space. We create private bubbles—using personal technology like iPods, cell phones and laptops—to serve as a buffer zone. “On a cell phone call, we retreat from the current environment by removing ourselves from those within physical proximity and joining others elsewhere. We ‘travel’ to a shared mental space.”

But now, as I listen to these cell phone monologues (and reflect on my own), I realize that there is an inherent contradiction: The more we retreat, the more we reveal. By losing ourselves within our private, self-made spaces, we are simultaneously exposing more to the people around us. As we increase our use of personal technologies and all their features, we retreat further, and our bubbles become more robust. And therein lies the irony. The stronger the bubble, the more oblivious we are, and therefore, the more we reveal.

On a bus ride in the city the other day, I, along with the rest of the riders, heard a woman speaking loudly into her cell phone. “Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. It’s like last time. He’ll be fine.” Then she made a few more calls, essentially repeating the same thing. “Lisa called me all in panic. I told her not to worry. He’s not, like, doubled over or anything.” During these conversations, this woman was deeply ensconced in her privacy bubble, and yet an entire busload of people was in on her news.

In Jane Jacobs’s 1961 classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she wrote: “Privacy is precious in cities. It is indispensable. Perhaps it is precious and indispen­sable every­where, but most places you cannot get it. In small settle­ments everyone knows your affairs. In the city, everyone does not—only those you choose to tell will know much about you.”

A lot has changed since Jacobs wrote these words. Have we abdicated our privacy by creating our ever-more robust personal bubbles? Are we no longer choosing what to tell, and to whom we will tell it? CA

© 2008 W. Richmond