Imag(in)ing the Everyday: Using camera phones to access everyday meanings of archaeological monuments

Museums see mobile media, such as PDAs or mobile phones, usually, as means for providing location-based and context-aware information for cultural tourism. In this respect, mobile media become the portable receivers and disseminators of museum knowledge, available to users who wish to enhance their outdoor cultural experiences. This paper moves beyond this approach. It looks at mobile media, in particular mobile phones, as an opportunity for museums to access everyday life and the knowledge produced in it. In the case of archaeological monuments located in cities, the knowledge of the everyday is associated to the meanings that the monuments acquire by ?standing on the way? of people?s everyday lives. As parts of people?s daily scenery, archaeological monuments are ?exposed? to constant and ephemeral appropriations that reveal the way monuments are perceived and used in everyday life. In this context, mobile phones may provide a means to access and reveal those everyday meanings that usually go unnoticed. Additionally, the paper presents results from relevant empirical research. In summer 2004, ten students in Thessaloniki, Greece, were invited to use their own camera phones to capture and communicate through MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) the way they perceive and use three archaeological monuments of the city. The same group of people, also, participated in follow-up focus groups. The analysis of the collected material suggests that although the camera phones allowed users to capture and communicate daily ?images? of the monuments, the limitations in the text and the quality of the images of MMS messages triggered an ?imagination? of the everyday among the rest of the participants, i.e. further or alternative interpretations of monuments to the ones intended by the senders.