ABSTRACT
This chapter provides critical media and mobile theory on connection, connectivity and mobile communications, as it addresses mobile performance and networked interaction. It examines issues of connection from the point of view of intimacy, telepathy and the networked dimension of mobile interaction, in terms of the medium, and the issues and constraints experienced for mobile media performance. Mobile manufacturers and service providers create network security systems, firewalls and one-to-one-only Bluetooth connectivity on mobile devices. William Mitchell equates the vascular system of the human body with the larger social/political body of twenty-first-century connectivity. In essence this equates to the emotional, affective, consciousness-based connectivity of people, animals and the planet. Big corporations have access to connectivity through business negotiations and contracts, but independent artists and coders require other means and ingenuity to circumvent or negotiate access. Artistic explorations can lead one to stumble into and uncover a quagmire of contradictions about networked connectivity.
