FEEL FOUND
A work for unnamed voices, distance, waiting, surveillance, and delayed listening.
DOCUMENTATION
Flyers have been posted across six U.S. states.
More than 200 have been installed throughout Los Angeles alone.
The coordinates of every flyer are recorded.
As of this writing, seventeen messages have entered the system.
The work is already in progress.
FEEL FOUND
Leave your house after dark.
Go alone.
Do not choose where you are going.
At every intersection, take the direction that feels least reasonable.
Continue.
Do not check where you are.
When the world feels familiar:
keep walking.
When it no longer feels arranged for you:
stop.
Sit.
Stay for nine minutes.
Do nothing.
Do not photograph anything.
Do not make the time useful.
Notice what it feels like to stay.
Notice what feels found.
Notice what feels misplaced.
Listen.
Notice what repeats.
What the air is doing.
Something moving at the edge of your attention.
Something completely still.
A smell.
A light turning on.
A light turning off.
Something you almost failed to notice.
Something you cannot name.
Once nine minutes have passed:
call
(213) 518-7690
When the line answers:
do not introduce yourself.
Do not give your exact location.
Do not explain why you are calling.
Speak from where you are.
Speak about what is present.
What you hear.
What you smell.
What moves.
What remains still.
What the air is doing.
What almost escaped your attention.
What you cannot name.
If a memory enters:
let it.
If you lose your thought:
let it go.
If you have nothing to say:
remain silent until you do.
Do not try to make the message beautiful.
Do not try to make it interesting.
You do not need to finish a thought.
When you are finished:
hang up.
Do not listen back.
Go home.
You will not be told who receives your voice.
You will not be told where they are.
You will not be told when it happens.
One day,
somewhere else,
someone you will never meet
may lift a telephone
and your voice will answer.
AFTER YOU CALL
Your recording enters a waiting system.
Your name is not attached to it.
Your telephone number is not given to the listener.
Your exact location is not disclosed.
The place where the recording entered the project remains attached only as geographic data.
Then:
the recording waits.
Days may pass.
Months may pass.
The person who left it continues living a life the work does not know.
Eventually, somewhere else, another person makes an appointment.
They enter a room.
They lift a telephone.
The system chooses a waiting voice.
Then your voice begins.
TO HEAR ANOTHER
Make an appointment.
Choose an available time.
Arrive on time.
Come alone unless accessibility or safety requires otherwise.
The address is provided after the appointment is confirmed.
You will not choose the recording.
You will not know what is waiting for you.
THE OTHER SIDE
Arrive at the appointed time.
Approach the door.
Open it.
It is unlocked.
Enter.
You will find yourself in a living room.
Recognizably a room.
Not quite a home.
Not quite an exhibition.
At its center:
a desk.
A chair.
A telephone.
A camera is visible.
A customer service representative is waiting.
They will confirm your appointment and explain the conditions of participation.
You will be told that your time inside the room will be watched and recorded.
The camera is not hidden.
The recording is part of the work.
Read the consent form.
If you agree:
sign it.
You may leave at any time.
You are not required to complete the encounter.
Once the form is signed:
the representative leaves.
The door closes.
No one is home.
You are alone.
You are still being watched.
THE ROOM
Sit at the desk.
At its center is a telephone.
Beside it:
a pen
and a small piece of paper.
The camera remains visible.
It records from a fixed position.
No one speaks through it.
Pick up the receiver.
The telephone connects automatically.
Before the recording begins, the system gives you two measurements:
the distance between this telephone and the location where the recording entered the system,
and
the amount of time that has passed since it was recorded.
For example:
2,106 miles.
118 days.
Then:
silence.
A voice begins.
Listen.
THE VOICE
The person speaking cannot see you.
They do not know you are here.
They do not know when you arrived.
They do not know what your face does when they hesitate.
Whether you lean closer.
Whether you look away.
Whether you become uncomfortable.
Whether nothing appears to happen at all.
They may have forgotten making the recording.
They may be somewhere entirely different now.
The place where they spoke may have changed.
The flyer that brought them into the work may no longer exist.
But their voice has arrived.
You may hear speech.
Wind.
Traffic.
Footsteps.
Breathing.
A television through a wall.
An animal.
A train.
Someone changing their mind.
Someone remembering something they had not intended to remember.
Someone losing a thought.
Someone stopping before they are finished.
You do not know where they are.
You do not know who they are.
They cannot hear you.
There is no interruption.
No reply.
No clarification.
For the duration of the recording,
you receive someone
without being received in return.
Listen until the voice stops.
THE CAMERA
While the caller exists in the room only as sound,
you exist in the work as an image.
The caller leaves:
a voice without a body.
The listener leaves:
a body without a voice.
The camera records you receiving someone who cannot see you.
You are not asked to perform a reaction.
The camera simply remains.
The person speaking cannot see what happens to their voice when it reaches someone else.
The person listening cannot see the person who left it.
The system can hold both.
The participants cannot.
WHEN THE VOICE ENDS
The line falls silent.
Do not immediately move.
Wait.
Then return the receiver to its cradle.
The recording you heard has completed its public transmission.
It will not be assigned to another public listener.
You were its listener.
The system marks the voice:
HEARD
A preservation copy may remain within the private archive of the artwork.
But its journey through the listening system is finished.
One person left something.
It waited.
It traveled.
Another person received it.
That particular encounter will not happen again.
ONE WORD
Look at the paper on the desk.
Write one word.
Not a summary.
Not a diagnosis.
Not what you believe the speaker meant.
Do not try to describe the person.
Write one word for what remained after the line went silent.
If no word feels adequate:
leave the paper blank.
Turn it face down.
The word belongs specifically to your encounter.
It remains attached to the image of you listening.
The caller left a voice.
You leave an image
and one word.
Nothing more is required of you.
Stand.
The camera is still recording.
You do not need to look at it.
You may.
Walk to the door.
Leave the room.
Close it behind you.
Your appointment ends.
The chair becomes empty again.
The telephone resets.
Another voice waits.
THE THREE TRACES
Every completed encounter produces three linked traces.
THE VOICE
A person leaves sound without remaining physically present.
THE IMAGE
Another person's body is recorded receiving that sound.
THE WORD
The listener leaves one piece of language attached to the image of their listening.
Voice.
Image.
Word.
Inside the system, all three belong to the same encounter.
Outside the system, they do not have to be shown together.
The person who left the voice is not given the video of the listener.
The listener is not given information identifying the speaker.
A future exhibition may show the voice without the body that eventually received it.
Or the body and its word without the voice that caused them.
The relationship exists.
Access to the whole relationship does not.
THE RECORD
A completed encounter may eventually be represented internally as:
FF–0317
VOICE ENTERED
08.14.26
WAITING PERIOD
43 days
DISTANCE TRAVELED
2,104 miles
PUBLIC LISTENS
1
LISTENER WORD
hollow
CCTV RECORD
01
VOICE RECORD
01
STATUS
closed
The data confirms that something happened.
It does not explain what happened.
THE FLYERS
Every physical flyer is assigned a unique identifier.
For example:
FF–LA–0217
FF–NY–0041
FF–PA–0018
When a flyer is installed, its coordinates and date of installation are recorded.
The person who encounters it is not required to identify themselves.
The flyer remains in public.
Weather changes it.
People pass it.
Someone ignores it.
Someone tears it down.
Someone photographs it.
Someone calls.
Participants and collaborators may install flyers in other cities.
Every installation becomes another point in the network.
Several months later, when possible, the location is revisited.
The original flyer is removed.
Something else takes its place.
The coordinate remains.
The instruction changes.
THE TELEPHONES
Vintage landline telephones are being incorporated into the listening system.
Each remains functional.
When the receiver is lifted, it automatically connects to the project.
There is no live person waiting on the other end.
The system chooses one recording.
Before the voice plays, it calculates:
the distance between the recording's point of origin and the telephone,
and
the amount of time the recording has been waiting.
Those measurements are spoken first.
Then the voice begins.
When the recording ends:
the line disconnects.
The recording leaves public circulation.
The telephone resets.
It waits for someone else.
WHEN THERE IS NO ROOM
Not every city requires a physical listening room.
Where one cannot be built, a flyer may instead direct a participant to another telephone number.
That number does not accept a recording.
It delivers one.
The participant calls.
The system selects a waiting voice.
The caller hears:
distance.
Delay.
Then:
one recording.
No identity.
No conversation.
No reply.
When the voice ends:
the line disconnects.
The network does not require its participants to occupy the same architecture.
Only the same system.
VOICEMAIL GREETING
You have arrived.
Speak from where you are.
Do not give your name.
Do not give your exact location.
You may speak.
You may pause.
You may leave silence.
Leave your message after the tone.
THE CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE
The representative exists at the threshold.
They schedule the appointment.
Verify arrival.
Explain the conditions of surveillance.
Provide the consent form.
Then:
they leave.
They do not remain in the room.
They do not listen beside you.
They do not interpret what you heard afterward.
They do not ask whether you enjoyed the experience.
They do not provide closure.
Customer-service language ordinarily promises access to another human being.
Here,
the representative can admit you into the system.
They cannot connect you to another person.
CURRENT SYSTEM
At present, the public telephone number routes to a dedicated voicemail box.
Recordings are being collected as the physical flyer network expands.
Flyer coordinates are documented for later stages of the work.
Vintage landline telephones are being sourced.
A PBX system is being developed so that lifting a receiver can automatically connect a telephone to an extension within the project.
Each extension will play one waiting recording before disconnecting and resetting for the next visitor.
The first full listening room will open in Los Angeles once the archive contains enough voices to sustain it.
The room is designed to be portable.
It can disappear from one city
and reappear in another.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
The project will eventually move from its current voicemail system to programmable telecommunications infrastructure.
Local telephone numbers may be established in multiple countries while feeding into the same distributed network.
A voice left in one country may eventually be heard in another.
Listening rooms may appear in different cities.
The room does not need to remain geographically fixed.
The structure does:
an appointment.
A representative.
A consent form.
A visible camera.
A desk.
A chair.
A telephone.
One waiting voice.
One listener.
One CCTV recording.
One word.
Then:
disconnection.
The archive may grow geographically larger.
Each encounter remains extremely small.
One voice.
One body.
One word.
THE ARCHIVE
The archive exists because the system requires memory.
But memory does not mean access.
The voice archive is not a streaming library.
The CCTV archive is not a gallery of participants.
A visitor cannot browse strangers.
A listener cannot choose which voice they receive.
A speaker cannot search for the person who eventually heard them.
The archive knows:
where a voice entered.
How long it waited.
How far it traveled.
Which encounter received it.
What image was produced while it was heard.
What word remained afterward.
No participant is given access to the whole relationship.
The system remembers the connection.
Each person experiences only one side.
CONSENT / PRIVACY
By leaving a message, you consent to the recording becoming part of Feel Found.
Do not state your full name, address, exact location, telephone number, or other identifying information you do not want included in the work.
Messages containing identifying information may be edited, withheld, anonymized where possible, or omitted.
A person's voice can itself be recognizable.
The project therefore cannot guarantee complete anonymity.
The recordings are more precisely described as:
unnamed voices.
Listeners are not intentionally provided with the speaker's name, telephone number, exact location, photograph, biography, or social profile.
Participation in The Other Side requires separate consent.
Before entering the recorded portion of the listening room, the listener is informed that CCTV footage of the encounter becomes part of the artwork.
The camera is visible.
Its placement is disclosed.
The consent form states how the recording and the listener's associated word may be stored, archived, reproduced, or exhibited.
A participant may leave before beginning or stop participating during the encounter.
Consent to participate in one part of the project does not imply unlimited consent to every possible future use.
The work depends on asymmetry.
It does not depend on deception.
DOCUMENTATION
The work produces evidence:
flyers.
Coordinates.
Dates.
Installation identifiers.
Telephone hardware.
Call records.
Waiting periods.
Distances.
Voices.
CCTV recordings.
Words.
Empty rooms.
Disconnected lines.
Removed flyers.
Replacement instructions.
Voices still waiting.
Voices already heard.
Documentation should reveal the movement of the system.
Not solve its absences.
PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE
The project uses technologies designed to connect people:
telephone numbers.
Extensions.
Voicemail.
Queues.
Routing.
Recorded voices.
Surveillance cameras.
Customer-service representatives.
Appointments.
Consent forms.
Waiting systems.
Archives.
A telephone ordinarily implies that somebody is available on the other end.
A camera implies that somebody may be watching.
Here:
the person you hear cannot see you.
The person who may later see you cannot hear what you heard.
The representative has already left.
The caller is already gone.
The listener arrives too late.
The system is the only thing present for both.
It receives.
Stores.
Measures.
Routes.
Watches.
Pairs.
Remembers.
Disconnects.
The caller leaves a voice.
The listener leaves an image.
The image leaves one word.
Each is evidence of someone who is no longer there.
There is no conversation.
No reply.
No exchange of names.
No mutual recognition.
The work does not repair that distance.
It holds it open.
Between them:
time.
Distance.
A telephone.
A camera.
A word.
And a line that remains open
just long enough
for a stranger to enter the room.
Please stay on the line.
Your call is important to us.
All representatives are currently unavailable.
There is no one on the other end.
Someone was here before you.