TINA2009 : Call Me Your Experiment - mobile phone dance workshop

Call Me Your Experiment was a workshop held in Newcastle's Civic Park on Friday 02/10/2009 as part of the This Is Not Art 2009 festival

Alison Currie explained her project, but I missed the start of the workshop so I might have misunderstood the whole aim. What I gathered was that we had to learn and perform a dance when our mobile phones rang. Her idea was that mobile phones often interrupt us and the ring tone could be used as a song to dance to, and slow us down from being a slave to the mobile and answering too quickly. It was a type of mobile phone flash mob. We were given the song 9-question_it.mp3 via bluetooth - her friend had written it. A few of us played the song on our phones at the same time - or slightly different times, so there were some nice phasing sounds.

The music sped up in the middle of the dance so we had to do the steps quicker towards the end. Alison said she was surprised - happily - that everyone picked up the steps within the short amount of time during the workshop.

I thought it was fun - it was good to do some stretching & exercise in the park in the sun too. but I think my battery would have been flat or the caller had hung up the call by the time I'd finished the dance if I had received a call. :)

here's a quick video of Alison teaching the steps & demonstrating the dance :

video page ::: .mov file ::: .flv file ::: archive.org page

Alison Currie is an independent dance artist interested in creating work for alternate spaces, and unsuspecting audiences. Her major project 42a will tour nationally in 2010. Adelaide's Experimental Art Foundation page has some details of Alison Currie's 42a's 2008 performance.