Artist Miranda July Releases Bizarre Messaging App
Filmmaker and artist Miranda July released her own messaging app on Thursday.
It’s called Somebody, and July released it at the Venice Film Festival with a short film branded by the fashion line Miu Miu.
Somebody is available for free for in the iTunes Store (sorry, Android users).
Here’s how it works: You
use the to send a message to a friend, but you also need to include
actions and directions for delivering the message, because it won’t be
delivered electronically to your friend. Instead, the message gets
picked up by a user nearby your intended recipient.
You can choose the delivery
person based on their photos and the rating they have from other people
who have previously elected to use that person as a courier.
The delivery person and
your friend are given one another’s picture and GPS-based location so
they can meet up. This delivery person, who’s likely a total stranger,
will deliver your message verbally. You’ll get notified when your
message is delivered. The messaging service only works if your friend is
available.
If it’s not a good time to
receive a message from a total stranger — or if there’s nobody available
to deliver your message — your message will be “floated.” People who
wish to act as messengers can browse the “floated” messages and deliver
one.
It’s part social experiment, part messaging app, and part performance art.
“I see this as far-reaching public art project, inciting performance and conversation about the value of inefficiency and risk,” July said in a press release.
Somebody
Some of the messages you can opt to send to friends on Somebody.
Some of the messages you can opt to send to friends on Somebody.
It’s no surprise that the
official Somebody “hotspots” are all art-based; after all, Somebody is a
self-described “public art project.”
The Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, The New Museum, and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts are all
among the designated hotspots, where museum attendees will be invited to
use the app during their visit.
July is best-known for her writing and directing, most famously in her 2005 movie “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” as well as her performance art.
For July’s 2013 performance art piece We Think Alone, July asked Kirsten
Dunst, Lena Dunham, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and other friends to share
private email correspondence. Subscribers received weekly email
newsletters from July with the celebrities’ topical, private emails.
July’s explanation for Somebody is what makes it different from other quirky messaging apps.
“The
most high-tech part of the app is not in the phone, it’s in the users
who dare to deliver a message to stranger,” according to Somebody’s
press release. “Half-app / half-human, Somebody twists our love of
avatars and outsourcing — every relationship becomes a three-way. The
antithesis of the utilitarian efficiency that tech promises, here,
finally, is an app that makes us nervous, giddy, and alert to the people
around us.”
Somebody likely won’t dethrone messaging apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp, but it’s nevertheless an interesting experiment in human interaction.
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