[Rumori] idea to port over to audio domain?

[Bob Boster]

bb> Got tweaked to the Yellow Arrow Project on another list I'm on and I 
think it has promise.  Even more so for audio...  If someone has nothing 
better to do that port this over to a revised version for audio, I think it 
would be a great public service, not to mention probably a lifelong gig 
with some clever grant writing.  Sounds like an Aaron Ximm kind of thing, 
but the more the merrier...


Source Site:

http://global.yellowarrow.net/


Nice Washington Post article:


>  Targeting the 'Art' Around Every Corner
>
>  By Tommy Nguyen
>
>   A bright arrow hovering over the rush of city life usually means "get 
> moving": Hang a left, take a right, barrel straight ahead. But the bright 
> yellow arrow stickers that have started popping up in the Washington area 
> have a different goal: to slow people down, maybe even stop them for a moment.
>
>  Launched last summer by Counts Media, a New York-based arts and gaming 
> company, the Yellow Arrow Project is a kind of geographical blogging. 
> Adherents have been placing the palm-size stickers -- each with a unique 
> code -- on street signs, city monuments, store windows, abandoned 
> buildings -- anywhere, really, that observers encounter what they deem to 
> be "art." Then, using a cell phone, they send a brief text message -- 
> which could be an interesting historical fact, a restaurant review or 
> just some goofy poetry -- to Yellow Arrow. People who come across an 
> arrow can call the Yellow Arrow phone number, punch in the sticker's code 
> and receive that message.
>
>  Outside a building at Seventh and S streets in Northwest Washington, for 
> example, the sticker offers up this discovery: Old wonderbread factorys 
> not abandoned. a bike graveyard inside.
>
>  Another, posted in an auditorium at George Mason University, conveys a 
> hopeful dream: And even though today we play to an empty house, perhaps 
> tomorrow the whole world will applaud .
>
>  "It's a creative platform where people can contribute collectively to 
> the places they live," explains Jesse Shapins, Counts Media's creative 
> development manager. So far, he says, about 2,800 arrows -- which are 
> sold on Yellowarrow.net for 50 cents each -- have been planted and 
> registered by participants worldwide, from New York to Berlin to Cairns, 
> Australia. More than 100 of them are in the Washington area.
>
>  Molly Aeck, who placed the Wonder Bread arrow, is one of the area's more 
> dedicated participants. Aeck, 23 and a recent Stanford grad, has gone the 
> extra step of logging 11 of her arrows on the project's Web site, 
> complete with digital snapshots and a helpful locator map.
>
>  On a scorching weekday afternoon, she is walking along 14th Street NW 
> with a yellow arrow stuck to her index finger, looking for her next 
> target. Her arrow seems to be wilting.
>
>  For the academically-inclined Aeck, the arrow project is reminiscent of 
> the place-based artistic expressions of the situationist movement, a 
> group of 1950s thinkers and artists who, among other things, theorized 
> about the pleasures of a process they dubbed "psychogeography."
>
>  "These situationists would walk around and fall into these 
> 'observational drifts' -- to find new perspectives in urban life," she 
> says. "It's an appreciation for observing things around you."
>
>  The situationists originated in Italy, where they must have drifted 
> around on cooler days. Aeck's sticker is beginning to curl up.
>
>  "I think these arrows can engage a passerby who doesn't have time but 
> just to pass by," she says.
>
>  Many more people are likely to pass by them in the future. That's 
> because about 300,000 more stickers are being released through "Lonely 
> Planet's Guide to Experimental Travel," the guidebook empire's foray into 
> eccentric, participatory tourism. (It suggests, for example, writing a 
> poem about every main square visited.) Six bright stickers come with 
> every book.
>
>  "It's about the personal experience," Shapins says. "There are stories 
> in these arrows that you can't find in a conventional map."
>
>  Most of the postings on Yellowarrow.net are more playful and poetic than 
> pointed, but some people have used the project to create action.
>
>  Aeck, for example, chose as one of her targets a place called Cafe 
> Collage, on T Street near 14th, next to the restaurant Cafe Saint-Ex. She 
> lives nearby and used to hang out there before it was closed down because 
> of permit problems. She'd like to do so again, so she sticks an arrow 
> just below the front window. Her message:
>
>  open Collage! a meeting place for artists and writers. The waitresses at 
> Cafe SaintX next door can tell you how to contribute to Collages revival.
>
>  Howard Rheingold, author of "Smart Mobs," "The Virtual Community" and 
> other writings that deal with communication technology's role in 
> activating communities, says he likes the idea of collective voices like these.
>
>  "There are two separate but connected issues here," Rheingold says. 
> "One, using the cyber-world to connect people's opinions, information and 
> places in the physical world. The other is the bottom-up part: People 
> making things happen, and even changing policies, from the bottom up."
>
>  Shapins says the company has been approached with ideas from a variety 
> of groups, including bicycle advocates in Boston seeking to create safer 
> streets and politicians in Europe who think arrows might be useful in 
> election campaigns.
>
>  And it's not the only project of its kind. Another New York-based 
> effort, Grafedia (a melding of "graffiti" and "multimedia") lets people 
> set up e-mail addresses using the @grafedia.net suffix, and then 
> automatically send out images, videos or sound files to others who 
> message them. Murmur, based in Toronto, works like Yellow Arrow but 
> returns audio recordings instead of text messages.
>
>  Rheingold says the trend is exciting, but the arrows themselves are a 
> sticky issue for him.
>
>  "I would really like to see this yellow arrow as a temporary on-ramp to 
> something very virtual," Rheingold says. "I would hate to see the world 
> covered with more debris."
>
>  Kenneth Bryson, a D.C. police spokesman, doesn't sound too thrilled, either.
>
>  "We can certainly appreciate arts projects," Bryson says. But "when it 
> comes to defacing property, we ask that citizens cooperate with their 
> local law enforcement." (Yellow Arrow discourages placing arrows on 
> private property without permission.)
>
>  Aeck says that she doesn't want to see a city full of arrows, "but the 
> positive aspects of the project outweigh the reservations I have about 
> it." And so she goes back out into the streets with sheets of yellow 
> arrows in her bag, ready to aim her thoughts at the heart of the city.
>
>
>  Would you like to send this article to a friend? Go to
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/emailafriend?contentId=AR2005070102280&sent=no&referrer=emailarticle
>
>