MobileSCOUT tops 100 calls!!

"Don't delay, call today!" - Ranger

Hi all,

Ranger and I have heard from a lot of you and well, we're giddy about the worlds you've described to us. For example, some of you told us about mesmerizing badgers, laying in highway ditches, some cave dwellers, being stuck in classrooms or cubicles. First of all, let me say that after MiniKISS*, badgers rock, so respect the furry tail. Second, we realize mobile phones let you make calls from most anywhere and we encourage scouting out new locations but learn from us, don't push up to the front speakers and blow out your eardrums, ok? Last, for those of you trapped in cubicleville or schooltown we're here for you. Just give us a call or go see us online and spare the office supplies and desktops.


Off you go now,

Squirrel





* FYI:

Mini-KISS is back on tour:

http://www.littlemanentertainment.com/upcomingshows2.html


+ + +

Mobile SCOUT

A mobile phone & web public art project by Julian Bleecker, Scott Paterson and Marina Zurkow

Online, and on your cell phone

www.mobilescout.org


Commissioned for the exhibit, “Database Imaginary” by the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada

Curated by Sarah Cook, Steve Dietz, and Anthony Kiendl Nov 14 2004, Jan 30 2005

Nov 12, 2004, New York : Mobile Scout, a field guide of audio narratives, will launch this weekend on cell phone and web. Using your mobile phone to call a toll-free number, you are guided through a verbal interaction with the Mobile Scout Ranger - an automated quirky naturalist and his foxy Squirrel assistant. Through this interaction, you will leave a voice message describing your local surroundings, characters, or events. As recordings are left by participants, they are instantly made available at the web site, www.mobilescout.org, which structures participants’ interactions in the form of a field guide database.

In a new slant on "time based media," Mobile Scout is 3000 participatory minutes long - that's the duration of Mobile Scout’s toll free minutes. “Many internet projects lack temporal shape,” says Paterson. We decided to contrast the anywhere/anytime/always constraint typical of internet projects by limiting ourselves in the time dimension. After 3000 minutes of public participation, the www.mobilescout.org field guide will exist as an archived repository, representative of the time-specific character of the project.

“In this post-election media-scape, where nothing is different but everything has changed, it's critical to give cultural voice to our concerns, observations and celebrations,” prompts Zurkow. Bleecker enlightens, “Mobile Scout is the first world-wide megaphone in that it takes advantage of the ubiquity of the telephone and the pervasive character of the internet, amplifying, cataloging and documenting these audio moments all around the globe.”

Mobile Scout was commissioned as part of the “Database Imaginary” exhibit at Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, that opens Nov 13th, 2004 (databaseimaginary.banff.org <http://databaseimaginary.banff.org/> )

The Mobile Scout field guide is available for download at http://www.mobilescout.org/downloads/mobileSCOUT_Brochure.pdf

To see and participate in the Mobile Scout field guide go to: www.mobilescout.org/

With Mobile Scout, Zurkow, Paterson and Bleecker continue their acclaimed, experimental “mapping” project PDPal, which was exhibited in Times Square through Creative Time in 2003-2004, and through the Walker Art Center in Minnesota in 2003. For more information on PDPal and the artists, go to

www.pdpal.com/about