Everything got in my way today. I told myself I would not be going outside at all in this ridiculously nasty weather, but out there I was, soldiering ahead with the latest iteration of my kiosk project. With one efficiency after another I have reduced it to a single phone number and a one-minute escape hatch whereby I can blast audio loud as hell and be long gone before it starts. So no one will associate the sound with me, at least I wouldn’t think they would unless I did it too often from a single kiosk and people recognized the pattern.
But I’m edging away from blasting loud sounds out of these things. People are not stupid. Instincts upon hearing loud noise come out of those things are to find a kill switch, and most people seem adept at figuring out it must be the red button. When I had the howler noise coming out of these things people reacted almost immediately, punching the red button and shutting it off.
Noise might have been my original intent but this week I discovered that subtlety seems to be more effective. I actually noticed this about a year ago, in an earlier and more cumbersome iteration of this project. This week, out on Broadway, I had this one dude absolutely transfixed, and I am not glorifying myself by saying so. He was clutching the kiosk, recording the sound with his phone, as I said things like “Can anybody hear me? This network has been hacked,” and “My favorite color is brown.” That last sentence, which I attempted to make sound like some kind of code phrase, was borrowed from something I overheard someone else say on the street. I thought it would wig that person out if they happened to hear coming out of a kiosk my voice reciting the same words they had just uttered. But that person did not appear to take notice as they passed a kiosk.
It has potential, though. It’s another side of what I’ve done other times, which is sit at home and listen to the street sounds, shouting back words after I hear people say them. I connected with people in that manner maybe a dozen times. Little kids seem especially susceptible to responding to that sort of thing, a fact not lost on me for its potential to make me look like a creep, which I’m not. It should be the stuff of fiction but it is now entirely realistic that perverts and the like could use these devices for harassment and intimidation of passers-by. I’ll probably take a pass on further interactions of that sort.
Another act I came up with, and this one’s been simmering in my mind for a long time, was to speak one side of a phone conversation, creating the impression to anyone who hears it that a phone call had somehow been intercepted by the kiosk. I found myself reliving painful conversations I’ve had, mostly with women, and feeling a bit of catharsis on account of it. But I don’t know what anyone’s reaction to this has been except that I spotted a group of three people who stopped to listen. But that sound of one side of a conversation being intercepted by one of these kiosks is about as close to Joe Frank as I’ve come in this project.
I don’t intend to stand within eyeshot of the kiosks by looking for reactions. In fact I intend to use prerecorded bits that will loop eternally. I ended up mining for reactions this week as part of testing my latest streamlined technique for doing this. The connections I made with these people (who never seemed to suspect anything of me) were all over the place, from exhilarating to weird. This is an audience of absolutely anybody, not just those who might have an interest in what I guess could be called performance art. I don’t want anyone to think it is art. I want them to think it is, simply, real.
The audience is not voluntary, so these people who stopped in their tracks to listen are not there to support me and be sympathetic like they might be if I was a stage performer and they paid to be there.
It’s a streetside Voluntary Audience versus Involuntary Audience thing, but I’m yet to figure out how bringing theater to the sidewalk is processed by those who encounter it. Does conventional wisdom about audiences even apply to this situation? Is the conventional wisdom turned around, or was it never right to begin with?
Conventional wisdom is that a voluntary audience is better for the speaker/performer than an involuntary gathering. A voluntary audience wants to be there, and involuntary gathering does not. But I think a voluntary gathering could actually be more hostile, its audience members showing up not to support but to heckle, and demanding they get their money’s worth (assuming it was paid entrance). An involuntary audience might actually be more attentive, or at least respectful, since they are implicitly required to be there. I think they would be more respectful to the speaker/performer since there would presumably be some kind of authority figure around. I’ve seen performers get heckled and booed off the stage by ticket-holding audiences, but I don’t think I ever saw a college professor get booed off the lectern.
My audience is a little of both, voluntary and involuntary. No one is required to stand and listen but the unexpected intrusion into their space makes it hard for some to just ignore it. Thus it feels involuntary.
I’m playing into concepts of paranoia about the surveillance capabilities of these things and the not-new idea that in technology signals can get crossed. There was a book put out in the early days of wide cell phone adoption which documented nothing more than stray bits of conversation that bled through the phone lines and were audible to almost anyone with a phone. In some areas that was said to be endemic. I don’t know how well that book sold but its publication suggests that these “overheard” bits of accidental interception are intriguing to some.
It’s been a fun week on the kiosks, that’s the last I’m gonna say about it today. I actually have many thoughts about the sketchiness of the company whose product is presently making all this possible but to go into detail would reveal too much.
