Talking on the phone is no longer a private exchange. What if you could carry a phone booth with you and set it up when you needed to converse in private?

Out of the many gadgets and devices that have been featured on these pages over the years, the last one you’d think someone would make improvements upon would be the personal cellphone booth invented last year by Nick Rodrigues, which seems to perform its intended duty almost perfectly. Well NYU student Jenny Chowdhury, the same person who brought that team-building Mobile Assassins game, decided to take the mobile phone booth to the next level by making it both lighter and more private. Instead of the folding plastic and metal design built by Rodrigues, Chowdhury decided to use Chinese merchant bags to stitch together her cleverly-named, full-length “cell atlantic” phonebooth, as a symbol of the structure’s nomadic nature. Chowdhury hopes that people seeing or using the booth will take a moment to consider the impact of cellphones on our daily lives, while forcing them to stand still and concentrate on a call instead of engaging in the usual multitasking.

Itself said by Jenny on her website, As I grappled with these issues of privacy, personal space and nostalgia for a “simpler time”, the idea for portable phone booth was born. The portable phone booth, which I call the “Cell Atantic CellBooth”, is a wearble object you can carry around with you and set up when you need a moment to talk . The deliberate nature of setting up the booth and standing in place while one talks enforces the idea that the call is important -not something to do while picking up the kids, working out, or driving. Ultimately, I desired to recreate the illusion of privacy and stillness afforded by oldschool, 4-walled phone booths, but also to update the booth as a portable object that would fit into a modern life.

What emerged was a wearable/portable phone booth and subsequently a piece of performance art that calls the attention of New Yorkers to the changes in human behavior due to the ubiquitous use of cellphones. The project prompts people to take stock in how cell phone technology has altered the ways in which we communicate with each other and the environment surrounding us.

(Via EngadgetMobile)