Hutong Watch is a guided walk promoting critical reflection on our immediate environment, accessed using a mobile phone, and undertaken simultaneously by two colleagues in different locations.
Instructions are received via text from Hutong, and participants undertake a series of challenges whilst keeping in touch using smartphone messaging apps.
Hutong Watch takes participants on an identical rectangular walk traced onto different maps. It finishes with a short meditation delivered as a phone call to participants as they sit in a quiet public place of their own choosing.
Colleagues in three continents took part in Hutong Watch in April 2015: in Mexico City, New York, and London.
It devised and delivered as part of a pilot of artistic interventions in the workplace at SHM Productions, and delivered using a custom-made programmable telephonic interface on loan from Coney.
+ listen to the Hutong Watch meditation
Hutong Watch was inspired by and adapted from another test piece called Hutong, created by Mel Cook with Hey Fan, Tassos Stevens and Annette Mees for Coney in 2010.