Sound Art on the Move Frauke Behrendt Media and Film Studies University of Sussex Brighton, BN1 9 RH, UK +44-7840148789 f.behrendt@sussex.ac.uk Introduction This paper explores the intersection of sound art and mobility. 1 The emerging fields of locative art and wire- less art experiment with the ever-changing geographical and social context of digital landscapes, mainly with a visual or textual focus. I would like to shift the focus from the visual to sound and discuss some emerging topics of mobile sound art. This discussion revolves around two examples, "IMPROVe" and "Tac- tical Sound Garden [TSG] Toolkit." I chose these examples from a growing number of works of sound art that experiment with everyday mobile technology, such as mobile phones. The examples propose different approaches to mobile sound art, the first one is concerned with mobile recording and remixing the urban soundscape, the latter is dealing with the collaborative spatialisation of sound in digital landscapes. Both illustrate how traditions of public sound art can work in the context of ubiquitous mobile technology. IMPROVe The mobile phone has been a recording device for some time, but this functionality is rarely used. The industry tried to market it as 'record-your own-ringtones' feature, but this never became popular. I don't think the quality of the recordings is the reason for this because ringtone quality was dreadful for a long time, but that didn't stop them to flood the market. Using the mobile phone for recordings is usually a one- off activity, people record a message for their voice mail of their new phone. Then, they don't think about the recording function any further, they don't connect it to the idea of soundscape recordings, for example. That's why it is interesting to explore this in sound art. Helsinki, 1 April 2006: A person is standing in the train station, holding a mobile phone up into the air. Another person is crouching down, edging closer towards a bunch of shrieking pigeons, inching a mobile phone towards the birds. About an hour later these two people meet up with some others in the same train station. They are pressing keys on their mobile phones whilst being surrounded by the sounds of pedestri- ans, phones ringing, an argument between birds, sirens, urban bustle. Familiar station sounds, but in unusual combinations, volume and loops. The group is using their mobiles to collaboratively remix the sound recordings they made with the same devices earlier on. They are participating in "IMPROVe" by Zeenath Hasan and Richard Widerberg (Hasan, 2006). 1. This paper does not talk about ringtones or using the mobile phone for conversation. - Behrendt, Frauke (2006) Sound Art on the Move. Paper at SoundAsArt Conference, Aberdeen, 24-26 November 2006. p 1 -