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BANG: Mobile Ubiquity
2013 Digital Landscape
Vietnam


South Korea is one of the most technologically connected countries in the world. Representative Korean corporations such as Samsung and LG have led a conscious charge - in what is termed the Korean Wave (hallyu) - to promote Korea socially, economically and culturally through digital products and digital media in the global marketplace. Korean branded electronic devices, Korean music (k-pop) and dramas are proliferating throughout China, Southeast Asia and to some extent, the United States and Europe.



With these achievements and through its comprehensive high-speed internet penetration, ubiquitous mobile phone use and prevalence of urban screens, the bang (Korean room) has been a useful spatial receptor for the digitalization of urban Korea in cities such as Seoul. This paper will focus on how mobile technology (mobility) is reshaping the Korean bang in a techno-social manner: techno in that it claims the mobility of technology (screens) will be an agent of change for the bang and social, in that it suggests mobility will change the way individuals interact with each other and within the bang environment. Furthermore, the paper will suggest that the screens (similar to Venturi and Scott Brown’s Las Vegas, signs) - of the former notion of the bang - are stationary. Though having said so, they are not static; in fact, these screens can project images of entertainment, advertisement, work and so on, changing with the programs of the bang. But as the ubiquity of mobility and individualization of the screen gets more pervasive, the premise of the all-inclusive singular program of the bang is brought into question. The collective narrative and experience within a single space (the bang) is now broken because of the individual mobile screens provide individual experiences to each user. While the previous understanding of the bang is flexibility and adaptable (to a multiplicity of use) it still permits a collective experience and focuses all the user within its spatial confides to a singular event. Mobility and the screen allows the individual users to experience the bang on their own terms. Space and experience will be no longer be compartmentalized from the rest of the urban events as fragmented isolations. Instead the mobile – as network overlays - allows users to reach out of the confounds of the bang and experience other events while still participating in their immediate surroundings. Techno-social space in this way is modular and oscillating. Therefore the bang’s definition will not only be temporal in space but also in time as the perception, pace and intake of experience and content will differ for each user. While the previous bang is pervasive, mobility and the individual uses of the screen will make the mobile bang ubiquitous.



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