During the summers, when I'm in Maine, I work at a desk that's located beyond all tendrilly wi-fi reaches. It takes me a few days to break the constant e-mail-checking habit, then I find I don't want to check my e-mail ever, and often don't for days.
Growing up in Luton, we'd always eat on a cloth, placed on the floor of the living room, with no TV allowed. There were no chairs back in Bangladesh and Dad wanted to keep the tradition, so we never owned a dining table.
I don't have a BlackBerry or whatever you call it. And there is something to be said for being isolated and out of phone range, because you can fall into a habit to such a degree that you don't even realise that you've lost something: silence.
I want people to come to me open and vulnerable. When they come to the gallery, they have to leave their watches, their computers, their Blackberrys, iPads, iPhones, because we are so incredibly used to technology, and I wanted to remove that.
We don't own a TV. My kids are always outdoors.
I often find that I like the vibe of not having technology around me.
I'm happiest when I'm with my daughter and I don't have any distractions with my phone going off.
And by banning [smartphones] from the set, the whole crew tends to work tighter with each other. And then it just becomes a thing where people kind of fall in love with the idea, 'This is the film-industry that I signed up for! This is really wonderful.' But then they go back to another set and everybody's on their cellphone, everyone's in their own little box, and they get depressed about it.
I dream of not having access to technology. I think it's a very wonderful time that we have found ourselves in, in terms of access to information, but alone time is better for some personalities than others. And I would very gladly give it up. I think I'd do very well.
