FLASHMOBBING

“(FLASH mawb) n. A large group of people who gather in a usually predetermined location, perform some brief action, and then quickly disperse.”

Supermarket Mob

- FlashMobs are organised through loosely affiliated, non-hierarchical networks of people using modern communication technologies, such as mobile phones, the Web and email. They are orchestrated to bring as many bodies as possible together at a pre-arranged time and place to enact a publicly disruptive and spectacular act of ludicrousness

- FlashMobbing could be defined as a great incentive to let off some pressure and steam from our mostly mundane adult lives. We are governed by so many rules in our social and working circles. It attempts to reverse the weakening of spontaneity, and refuse the fall into regular and patterned behaviour.

- FlashMobbers as Cyborgs: the way that they internalise technology, mentally map space based on online geographies, and form networks through text messages, emails, discussion lists and websites would suggest that they are inextricably implicated in modern technologies, and technologies in them. (McLuhanesque?)

- They are cyborgs in the way that their organisation and meetings are not bounded by physical or electronic frontiers – their meetings cross real and virtual space.

- In the way that it injects mechanic strangeness into the everyday, flashmobbing not only draws on a rich tradition of surrealist absurdity, but also taps into the way that the digital has made the external world “hum with the unreal, the strange and the fantastic.”

Other manifestations of network culture:
Spencer Tunick:
The FlashMob and art/photography


FlashMobs and media
The FlashMobs used in advertising