As part of the Territorial Play event that launches the Tracing Mobility programme Chris Cuellar is inviting one performer to switch places with him in Chicago for the day using a mobile phone to occupy space in Chicago whilst being present in Nottingham. ***You will need to be available in Nottingham between 4pm and 12am on Friday 14th May and have access to a GPS enabled phone with a mobile internet data plan.
You will be invited to walk through the city for this duration, transmitting your location to a the Sullivan Gallery, Chicago and providing commentary on what you can see and/or experiencing via Twitter.
As the ubiquity of location-based web services increases, this project asks what it might mean to read a person or landscape like a newsfeed. For this extended performance, I will be transmitting my locations with verbal commentary in real-time via Twitter & Google Maps to the Art Institute of Chicago’s Sullivan Gallery in the USA for a period of three weeks. On May 14th, I will be re-routing the feed to the Broadway Media Center in Nottingham for the Territorial Play event. Meanwhile, a surrogate performer in Nottingham will “switch places” with me and simultaneously transmit their locations back to Chicago in real-time during gallery hours (5PM-12AM UK time).
Technical Requirements: Mobile-enabled Twitter account & GPS-enabled smartphone with Instamapper app (free download @ http://instamapper.com). The Instamapper app will work on iPhone, Android, or Blackberry devices (NOTE: the app will NOT run in the background on iPhones).
Performance Considerations:
The goal: Total Mobile Transparency. Run the Instamapper app whenever you are moving, ideally for the entire length of the performance (7 hours). Tweet as much as possible, at least once a minute, commenting on whatever catches your attention.
Optional: Use the Situationist notion of the derive (the passive drift through space) to guide your movements. One pattern I have been experimenting with is the spiral. In practice, this motion quickly becomes an easy way to “get lost.” Other possibilities: imagine yourself as a kind of virtual ‘tour guide’ for a remote audience, with your movements enabling them to “see” what you are seeing.
To volunteer yourself as the surrogate performer please contact Mat Trivett by emailing mattrivett@radiator-festival.org you must be available for the full duration of the performance.