Somebody

At bus stations, in hotel lobbies, even at film festivals – everywhere we go, people have their noses buried in their phones. Everyone seems so busy the whole time communicating through e-mail, text or WhatsApp that the world around them might as well not exist. The phone acts as a cocoon and social media promote asocial behavior. Somebody aims to change this. Somebody is a messaging service that injects a dose of human contact into telecommunications technology. It is in fact a “2.0 version” of the message in a bottle. As with most good concepts, the idea behind Somebody is a simple one. You draw up a message and add an instruction to it: for example, the message has to be whispered or given with a kiss. Then you toss your message into the digital ocean in the hope that someone with Somebody is near the addressee. If so, this person can deliver the message, and maybe a nice conversation will ensue. If there’s no one close to the recipient, the message will continue to bob on the digital waves. Somebody works best in places where there are a lot of users of the free app. The film festival in Venice was such a “hot spot,” as is the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. IDFA could become another.

This competition project was part of the DocLab Expo: Immersive Reality presented by IDFA and De Brakke Grond.