[sudo-discuss] transborder immigrant tool (TBT) -> undocumented immigrant mobile phone app art project

One of the most well done usability mobile phone apps I've ever seen. Some artist academics created a feature phone mobile app for undocumented immigrants on the San Diego/Tijuana desert border. It was a very simple compass app that also had a tuning fork feature. the closer the immigrants came to hidden water reserves left out by charities and activists, the more the phone would vibrate. This was to solve the problem of immigrants dying of thirst in the desert. Of course they got into trouble... <3 http://hyperallergic.com/54678/poetry-immigration-and-the-fbi-the-transbord… Almost five years ago, Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) 2.0 <http://digitalarts.lcc.gatech.edu/unesco/internet/artists/int_a_edtheater.html> /b.a.n.g. lab <http://bang.calit2.net/> released the first iteration of the Transborder Immigrant Tool <http://bang.calit2.net/xborderblog/> (TBT), a mobile-phone technology that provides poetry to immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border while leading them to water caches in the Southern California desert. In 2010, the project caused a firestorm of controversy on the American political scene, and the artists of EDT/b.a.n.g. lab were investigated by three Republican Congressmen, the FBI Office of Cybercrimes and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder of EDT (with Brett Stalbaum) and principal investigator of b.a.n.g. lab, is an associate professor in the visual arts department. framework and open artist apis http://www.walkingtools.net ============================= Romy Ilano romy(a)snowyla.com