Rachael Morrison's "Joybubbles"

The short version?  Call this number: 718-362-9578.

The long version:

Back in May 2010 I got an email from a woman named Rachael Morrison.  Rachael said she was an artist who wanted to create an audio art piece having to do with Joybubbles, the blind whistling phone phreak who passed away in the summer of 2007.  She wasn't sure exactly what the piece was going to be or what precisely she was going to do with it, but it seemed like a neat idea.  We ended up talking by phone and she interviewed me about phone phreak history and Joybubbles' life.  She also interviewed Steven, Joybubbles' long-time friend and the executor of his estate.

Months past and, honestly, I pretty much forgot all about it.

So it was a lovely surprise to get an email from Rachael saying that she had completed her audio artwork.  You can listen to it old school -- over the phone -- just like an episode of Joybubbles' Stories and Stuff telephone recordings line.  It's at 718-362-9578.  You can listen to it in one 38-minute episode, or, if you don't have that kind of time in one sitting, Rachael has broken it up into four shorter chunks.

I think she did a really nice job with it, especially the way she blended Steven's remembrances with audio from Joybubbles talking on old recordings of Stories and Stuff.

That number again: 718-362-9578.

Call now, operators are standing by.

Comments

[Koos]

A great project to honour one of the original phone phreaks. And very fitting to make it available over the phone. But calling a US number for 38 minutes has its price from the Netherlands. And I'm not about to try to do it on somebody else's dime, old-school phreak style.

Is it possible to access the audio art over the Internet using a SIP call? That would be awesome and still have a phone experience.

[Rachael Morrison]

You can find out more about Joybubbles and my telephone project here: http://www.meta-magazine.com/ You can also listen to a short segment of the recording on the Meta Magazine website.