Cell Tango is a dynamically evolving archive of cellphone-transmitted images contributed by participants from anywhere within the reach of cellular transmission and reception. The received images are organized based on cellphones' area codes, carriers, time and date of transmission, and participants' contributed categories and descriptive tags.

Will cellphone technology transform how we create/use images produced “on the fly”? In what ways do online visual databanks such as Flickr recontextualize the images we create and share? Can such online images be used creatively as components in artistic works that explore the construction of visual narratives through the juxtaposition of sequenced images? What may be relevant implementation of voice annotation to add metadata to images?

Cell Tango, (formerly titled "Global Collaborative Visual Mapping Archive" (GCVMA)) consists of a dynamically growing archive of cellphone transmitted images tagged with metadata contributed by participants from anywhere within the reach of cellular transmission and reception in the world. The received images are visualized within a virtual 3D architectural structure and organized based on a number of metadata criteria such as cellphones numbers (original contract locations), carriers, time and date of transmission, and participants' contributed categories and descriptive tags.

Description
The project consists of an interconnected client-server architecture, where information sent by cellphone is input via email into a dynamically growing archive of photographic images. Images can be received from a broad range of cellphones over a number of telecommunications providers. The system parses various types of metadata, including area code, carrier information, date and time, as well as semantic information tagged by the senders. These are used to organize the images within the various visualizations.

The received images are visualized within a virtual 3D architectural structure, their organization based on a number of metadata criteria such as cellphones' numbers (original contract locations), carriers, time and date of transmission, and participants' contributed categories and descriptive tags.


Production Team
George Legrady, concept development, project management, and visualization; Angus Forbes, systems engineer and visualization;
Mark Daggett, social software engineer and web services

Acknowledgements
Nicole Starosielski, PhD program, Film Studies. Contributions to narrative structure and interaction design. Zach Rubin, project assistant.

Media Arts & Technology, University of California, Santa Barbara. Canada Council for the Arts Media Arts Award. National Science Foundation IGERT Summer Stipend.

Premiered at the International Society of Electronic Arts (ISEA), San Jose, June 2006; and featured in the exhibition “ Speculative Data and the Creative Imaginary” National Academy of Sciences Rotunda Gallery, Washington, DC, Summer 2007