A Mutual Friend appears to be the latest extension of the work by members of Blast Theory, who had previously produced the location-based/mixed-reality I Like Frank in Adelaide and Uncle Roy All Around You — using location-aware mobile phones, and desktop Internet participation to support smartmob games and public performances:

(Via Networked Performance)

A Mutual Friend attempts to explore how your mobile phone can act as a platform for cultural experiences; as a medium for reflecting on the human condition and as a means for making creative interventions in daily life.

The project sets out to propose and develop a mobile phone application which engages with the developing patterns of social behaviour in relation to mobile phones.

Increased mobility has brought about an increasingly disjointed relationship to physical and social space. The transit from home to driveway > car > side street > bypass > industrial estate to workplace and back can be sparsely populated. Public spaces are more likely to be areas of transit, weariness and solitude than of easy sociability, participation, frankness and debate.

The mobile phone has had an ambiguous role in these spaces, at once, providing a means to feel safe and talk to friends, while disrupting your attachment to those around you.

These are the spaces which A Mutual Friend aims to work in.