This project was a kind of extension of PDPal, focusing on collecting audio narratives via mobile phones about local surroundings, personal rituals, and public sightings. It invited participants to leave voice messages describing the flora, fauna, or behaviors they observed in their environment.
It was an experiment in using mobile phones as tools for public art and storytelling, leveraging the technology available at the time to create a collective audio tapestry of everyday life. The basis for the interaction was VXML (Voice eXtensible Markup Language), which allowed users to interact with the system through voice commands and touch-tone inputs. It made creating a voice-based application more accessible in that you could script the interaction flow and logic using that particular markup language. It included voice recognition capabiliites, and the ability to record and playback audio messages.
I was super intrigued by the possibilities of the platform and so did a few projects leveraging it, including a commission to create an alert system for following baseball games, and this system that allowed people to call in to leave audio messages about their feelings about civil society at a time of (admittedly mild compared to today) a murmur of mild civil unrest (c. 2005).
Not much material is in the archives, but I'm glad I had held on to this brochure we had printed up to promote the project.