168 Converging Technologies / Portable Identity The Mobile Telephone / Portable Identity 11. Adams, M. Experiments in mixed reality, Receiver magazine / Vodaphone, 2003 The addition of a camera to the mobile phone has had a huge effect on the availability of imagery. It has offered us a tool for the production of our identities that has all the ostensible signs of creativity yet is neatly wrapped up in a post- modern consumer culture. There is a striking similarity between the phone camera and the Victorian locket, the carrying of miniature family portraits, concealed discreetly against the body, along with a tactile element such as a lock of hair. A vibrating alert supplies a tactile experience as we send more images directly into the pockets of our loved ones. `Technology often promises transcendence from real life, but it is eventually domesticated through its interaction with real bodies in real spaces.' 11 Phone-photos can also function as visual calling cards. Each of us can choose a soundtrack and a visual identity for our regular callers ­ a miniature televisual identity for each of our friends. Many of us choose images that are not the likenesses of the caller, but visual metaphors that describe some characteristic of them. Teenagers explore their own visual vernacular by `celeb-ing' ­ communicating by sending an image of a celebrity. This relies on an agreement among their community about the characteristics of celebrities and can be either flattering or very critical. It is essentially a visual dialect that exists outside of the official culture of communication, even if only until it is recuperated by a smart advertiser. The transience of associated meanings in `celeb-ing' not only guarantees that parents can't understand the code, but it roots the whole exchange in the here and now.