I visited BoingBoing – one of my favorite blogs – for the first time in [too long] a while, and, as usual, encountered a post of great interest and intrigue: CharmingBurka:
CharmingBurka
A project by Markus Kison.
Synopsis
The CharmingBurka sends a self-defined picture of the wearing person to every mobile phone next to it. Laws of the Koran are not broken.
Project description
The Charming Burka deals with Freud’s idea that all clothes can be positioned between appeal and shame. The Burka was chosen, because it is often perceived in the west as a symbol of repression. A digital layer was added so that women can decide for themselves where they want to position themselves virtually. The Burka sends an image, chosen by the wearer, via Bluetooth technology. Every person next to her can receive her picture via mobile phone and see the women’s self-determined identity. The virtual appeals can not be gathered by the laws of the Koran and so the CharmingBurka fulfills the desire of living a more western life, which some Muslim women have today.
Therefore the Burka is equipped with bluetooth antenna/micro-controller and uses the OBEX protocol, already working with most mobile phones.
Sponsor / technology
The prototype is realised with the bluetooth marketing solution Bluebot developed by Haase & Martin, the mobile marketing company in Dresden/Germany.
This looks like a religious[ly]-inspired variation on the theme of "seeing and being seen" exemplified by the Nokia Sensor application (among others). I don’t think any of these applications have achieved mass (or even signficant niche) market appeal, but they are provocative and inspiring, on a number of levels.
It appears, from a video on the site, that the CharmingBurka charmed the crowd at the recent Seamless 2008 fashion event in Boston, but I do wonder whether / how this innovative mechanism for bridging the gaps between people by bridging the gaps between online and offline worlds – and thereby [virtually] lifting veils – would truly be accepted in a region (or even an event) with a higher concentration of Muslims … or whether it would truly be desired by many Muslim women (living in Muslim countries). It seems to me that this kind of technology would increase the risks for such women, especially as the description of the design suggests that the user has no control over who is offered a virtual peek behind the veil.
The Bluebot site references a number of other events – including a Leipzig trade fair, a wedding fair and a Bavarian night club – in which other Bluetooth marketing systems (I see the CharmingBurka as a personal marketing system) were deployed, but the latest was in October 2006 … leading me to [also] wonder whether / when their innovative technology will cross the chasm from novelty into commercial success. I suspect the success of such systems lies along trajectories wherein the technology is solving problems that people truly experience … in ways that don’t put them at [even greater] risk.
Comments
4 responses to “CharmingBurka: Bridging Gaps and Lifting Veils via Bluetooth”
Hi Joe!
I showed that video in class and you may be interested to know that the young Muslim women students were rather offended by it. One young woman said that it wouldn’t matter if she could choose her picture because she’d already made her choice to be covered in public and she wanted that to be respected. Another said that the project was much more indicative of Western desires than Muslim ones. However, another young woman said that she liked how it was willing to explore the idea that not all Muslim (women) are the same. While she personally would never use it, she thought that the choice might make other Muslims happy. All of these young women – and many of the non-Muslim students – wanted to know why the technology wasn’t being used more critically in order to improve Muslim/non-Muslim relations. I found that last point intriguing because the designers specifically state they were trying to discourage stereotyping. In the end, I think I agree with the students who said it’s really just an ethnocentric application, where Western designers assumed that non-Westerners want to be more Western….
Anne – such a delight to read from you! And I’m somewhat chagrined to admit that your blog is another one of my favorites that I’ve not visited in far too long a while.
Thanks for sharing the reactions of the students in your class. It’s very helpful to learn about how real Muslim women perceive this innovation, and I’m not surprised that a strong ethnocentric bias may be at work – and working against a [more] useful innovation – here.
I, too, am intrigued – and inspired by – the suggestion to use [this] technology to help improve Muslim/non-Muslim relations. One of the highlights of my experience at Pop!Tech 2007 was a session devoted to improving such relations. Mustafa Ceric, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia, argued that one of the biggest problems in the Muslim world (though I would argue it is just as much a problem in the non-Muslim world) is Max Weber’s concept of charisma – “a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities”.
I mention this [again] here because CharmingBurka seems to be yet another example of mobile or ubiquitous computing technologies being used to confer special powers on certain people (something you have studied more deeply, have written about more extensively and know far more about than me) … and yet in this instance, although the designer may have been intending to empower the wearer of the technology, your students’ responses suggest that it is disempowering (at least to Muslim women) … and may – if it were ever actually utilized in its intended context – even confer more power to those in proximity to the wearer than to the wearer herself (indeed, perhaps even at her expense).
I’m also reminded of Adam Greenfield at ETech 2007, and Yvonne Rogers at UbiComp 2006, warning against the potentially disempowering implications and ramifications from ubiquitous computing technologies … but I won’t repeat all of those arguments [again] here.
Thanks once again for greatly enhancing my understanding of the sociological implications of technology!
Joe.
Jo,
As a Muslim, I felt I had to comment on this story.
The technology itself and the concept of revealing personal aspects of ourselves through mobile devices is very interesting, but approaching this by trying to ‘sanitise’ the burka and make it more palatable to western sensibilities seems sensationalist and completely unnecessary.
I found this line especially patronising and insensitive:
“The virtual appeals can not be gathered by the laws of the Koran and so the CharmingBurka fulfils the desire of living a more western life..”
It seems to assume that this technology can somehow bamboozle Muslims and those who interpret/practice islamic law.
In fact the very concept that this western institution is finding solutions to make muslims more ‘western’ without the request or involvement of Muslims themselves is arrogant and patronising.
The root of racism and discrimination is making unfounded assumptions and judgements. The fact that the countries where the burka is worn will be no more tolerant of their women folk transmitting photos of themselves to random strangers than of them removing their burka, in addition to the fact that the burka is worn by a minority of Muslim women and is as much a cultural as a religious clothing requirement reveals a basic lack of research and fact-checking from the designers.
Technology and innovation lose their purity when applied in this fashion.
Muslim and non-Muslims can start to understand each other better when we stop applying these types of labels to each other before finding out about the individual.
– K
Kareem: thanks for helping me further understand how this – and other technology innovations – can be perceived as patronizing, arrogant and insensitive by the very people they are purportedly intended to serve. Rather than empirical design, this seems more like imperial (or imperialistic) design.
I’m not sure whether technology is ever “pure”. It seems to me it always involves an interventionist dimension, which alters our abilities and/or experiences. To me, the critical question is more one of relative benefit – since nothing I know of is purely beneficial (or purely detrimental) – than one of purity.
I share your view on the importance of the individual. I find it very challenging in my own experience to avoid making assumptions and judgments about, and assigning labels to, others, especially when they appear very different from me. Since the time of Aristotle, and likely before, western culture has been obsessed with categorizing and labeling people, places and things. I don’t know about other traditions, but your observation about the importance of the individual reminds me of a quotation by Zen Master Dogen Zenji, that I first heard on David Whyte‘s six CD set, Clear Mind, Wild Heart:
That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things
is called delusion;
That the ten thousand things advance and confirm the self
is called enlightenment.