OPEN CALL: Field recordings via telephone

Bldgblog is looking for field recordings by phone. So if you're anywhere that seems sonically interesting over the next few weeks – a waterfall, a migratory bird preserve, a shuddering freight elevator, the Cornish coast, a screeching Red Line train, the International Space Station, a secret meeting between Bush and Ahmadinejad – feel free to give us a ring: +1 (206) 337-1474. You'll be connected to a voicemail account where you can simply hold your phone up high – and proud – and record whatever it is that you're listening to. Meanwhile, feel free either to leave a brief explanation of what it is we're hearing, or even call back and explain what sounds you've left for us to sort through. And then the best of the best will be played live on the radio in New York City – and podcast round the world – via DJ /rupture's weekly radio show on the incomparable WFMU, 91.1-FM.

The basic idea, if you're curious, is to open up the artistic possibilities of field recordings to anyone with a telephone – whether that's a mobile phone, a public phone, or even a phone attached to the wall in your kitchen. The results should prove that you can acoustically experience a landscape through the telephone. Tele-scapes. As it is, mobile phones in particular present us with an untapped microphonic resource; these roving recorders encounter different environmental soundscapes everyday – the insides of lobbies and elevators, cars stuck in traffic, windy beaches – yet we're so busy using them for conversation that we overlook (overhear?) their true sonic possibilities. The telephonic future of environmental sound art is thus all but limitless – and putting some of that on the radio is just fun.