Rhizome.org

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  Karaoke Wrong Number (2001-2004) - Rachel Perry Welty

  Posted: 2-February-2010, 5:00pm CET by Jenny Jaskey

  
  

  Rachel Perry Welty?s video shows a frontal head and shoulders view of the artist herself lip-synching to messages left in error on her telephone answering machine. Welty uses expert timing and facial gesturing and maintains a priceless deadpan expression during the intervals between messages. Karaoke Wrong Number reveals the simultaneous connections and disconnections of contemporary life, where technology both assists and impedes communication.

  -- FROM THE ENTRY FOR "KARAOKE WRONG NUMBER" ON THE ICA BOSTON SITE

  
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  National Dinner Tour (2004) - Marc Horowitz

  Posted: 2-February-2010, 6:00pm CET by Jenny Jaskey

  Original Crate & Barrel ad with Horowitz's Number
  
  

  I was working as a photo assistant for Crate & Barrel. While on set one day, I wrote ?dinner w/ marc 510-872-7326,? my name and cell phone, on a dry erase board featured in a desk product shot. A few months later, the catalog, containing my dinner invitation, was printed and sent to millions of people. I eventually received over 30,000 calls from people wanting to dine with me. As a result, I traveled the USA in a tiny RV for a year dining with strangers.

  -- FROM THE ARTIST'S WEBSITE

  
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  The Representative (2005) - Carey Young

  Posted: 2-February-2010, 7:00pm CET by Jenny Jaskey

  
  

  The Representative is a ?portrait? of a call centre worker that can be accessed by telephone.

  Call centres are an increasingly ubiquitous and technocratic interface between large organisations and the public, and their spread has been described as endemic to a globalised world. With The Representative, visitors are invited to sit within an installation of domestic lounge-type furniture and use a single phone to connect direct to a call centre agent working at a remote location. The callers are offered the chance to ?get to know? the agent, and thus to experience a ?portrait? of the call centre agent accessible via a call centre interface. Young hired the agent and defined a ?vignette' of them by agreeing a generic script of topics for possible conversation to be offered to callers at the start of each call, based on interviews with the agent about their personal background and experiences of call centre work. Following these initial options, calls were unscripted and based on the conversational interests of the caller.

  The Representative is a development of Nothing Ventured, an earlier work by Carey Young which was staged at fig-1, London in 2000, in which she hired a call centre to ?represent? her. The Representative, at its simplest level, offers a view of the life and experiences of a call centre operative whose individuality and identity would normally be denied to the caller. The calls would exist somewhere between a personal chat, an interview, the reality-TV style exposure of a ?civilian?, a script, an exposé of working conditions, a piece of journalistic research, a portrait and a service, with the caller put in the position of researcher, audience, voyeur, client and potential friend.

  -- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT

  
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  TXTual Healing (2006 - Ongoing) - Paul Notzold

  Posted: 2-February-2010, 8:00pm CET by Jenny Jaskey

  
  

  TXTual Healing was created in the early days of 2006 by Paul Notzold and has become a collection of interactive public projections and performance formats that encourage creation of dialog through text messaging from mobile phones. Whether interacting with custom digital signage, or live performers TXTual Healing builds community through public story telling via the mobile phone.

  -- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT

  
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  Telephone Piece (1997/2008) - Yoko Ono

  Posted: 2-February-2010, 4:00pm CET by Jenny Jaskey

  
  Telephone and designated line, to receive telephone calls from the artist.