Chapter 2: PhoneFreeze
10 Insights from the Super Connected Tour: Rebalancing Digital & Analogue Life. Tool Two in the 'Super Connected Toolkit': PhoneFreeze
Playfully addressing our dependency on tech screens, audiences at Super Connected shows are invited to take part in the optional ‘PhoneFreeze’ ritual by placing their phones into a neoprene pouch which is then locked with a simple cable tie, to experience the freedom (or discomfort) of being completely free from the digital tug of constant connectivity. The audience remain in possession of their own phones (in the pouches) for the entire event. Screenless Socials are powered by PhoneFreeze.
The Screenless Socials were really a surprise for me and Kate because we knew it wouldn’t work if everyone had their phones out and powered on.
When we were writing the theatrical format for the shows, we had a dream - that everyone who was present would speak and listen to each other and make eye contact with each other, and never feel tempted to reach for their phone.
We pictured a room full of people without phones.
The temptation was to make it a compulsory ‘phone-free’ event and include that on the ticketing pages on the theatre websites. But that seemed too totalitarian - which is how big tech companies sell us phones in the first place. They make it compulsory to have a phone all the time. It’s totalitarian to make us all have phones. So we couldn’t use an aggressive approach like them to achieve the opposite. I was already designing the logo for ‘PhoneFreeze’, but I was at a loss as to how to make this dream come true.
So I had a bath. Kate carried on working and ended up writing an introduction to the show. A way to make putting our phones away more like a game we play together. She threw everything she’s learnt as an artist and theatre maker into it.
When I got out of the bath, she presented it to me and recited what she’d written (as if I was the audience). Suddenly I could see the dream was going to become manifest.
When I wrote Super Connected, it was a violent reaction to the world that couldn’t escape phones. But Kate has more faith in people. She’s McCartney to my Lennon. Anger is a creative tool for me. It’s what got Save Soho started, as well as my work with Amnesty on What Love Would Want. There’s an alchemical process to making art from anger. Especially with lyric writing. But you have to have joy and optimism. They are heavyweight tools too, and Kate is a creative champion with them.
What we ended up doing was ‘playing’. Playing with societal norms to see what happens when we turn them upside down for a few hours. It was exciting.
I didn’t feel like Citizen Smith shrieking at Silicon Valley anymore. I still knew something had gone wrong in society. But I didn’t have the answer. So I threw myself into not having the answer with total commitment. I became the Anti-Google.
When we started the tour, most people at the shows had already put their phones in pouches before Kate even gave her introduction. But those who hadn’t, did so by the end of her introduction. Everyone realised that we were playing. And we didn’t know why. If we knew why we were doing it, we probably wouldn’t have been doing it at all.
We were all under the spell of mystery. What happens to life without our phones?
The dream became a reality, and everyone played along. The game was on.
About 70 % of audiences thanked us for asking them to put their phones away. We realised that our attachment to our phones and the information they bring into our lives is something most of us would actually like to be able to limit. I actually have one of those pouches at home which I use to put my work phone in at night and during certain times of the day when I needed to focus on work, without distraction.Â
Over the years I have made many experiments to better understand my relationship with my iPhone. I am halfway through another experiment at the moment which I’ve written about in Chapter 9. I cannot overstate enough just how helpful it is to hide a smartphone in a pouch. Especially if you are with someone else. It lets them know they matter to you. When we put our phone away, the one we’re with feels valuable.
The holy altar of tech is laden with many idols. But they’re just as silly as this iHead.
The remarkable thing for me about PhoneFreeze was rediscovering the importance of not taking serious stuff…too seriously.
To play with our imagination and picture the world we live in differently.
With no reverence, and the fool’s spirit of adventure.
I think everyone at our shows (including us) found it very funny that the evolution of technology brought us the mighty smartphone, so we could lock them in pouches with a plastic cable tie. Which Kate and our Pouch Attendants personally cut open with scissors for each member of the audience at the end of every show on the tour.
Musician and Filmmaker Tim Arnold has researched screen addiction and social media’s effects on mental health since 2017, culminating in the critically acclaimed album, film and theatre show, Super Connected - Nihal Arthanayake, BBC 5 LIVE
Listen to the album here and be among the first to see the film by signing up here.