Landlines is collaboration between the artists Hamilton & Southern, and Onteca Ltd, a Liverpool games company. In collaborating with Onteca Hamilton & Southern have been able to extend their practice into the development of custom made tools, which will be used in future exhibitions. Through this collaboration Onteca has been able to extend its work with mobile phone games to develop geo-applications.

For more information about Artist and Industry collaborations, and a diary and report on Landlines development, please see the publication:

Research - The Itemisation of Creative Knowledge
Ed Clive Gilman (2006) FACT & Liverpool University Press
ISBN 1-84631-038-5 / ISBN 978-1-84631-038-6

Or the FACT website

Hamilton & Southern have a social and tactile approach to the use of technology in art. They work with groups of people to explore a location and are currently interested in how technologies, such as satellite navigation, can be used to explore a kinaesthetic sense of place through movement. Their work is made through residencies that engage with local people, producing installations, performances and websites. Hamilton & Southern have also worked closely with Onteca Ltd to produce 'Landlines', a collaborative mapping tool for mobile phones. Their work has recently been shown in the UK and Canada.

Jen Hamilton received her M.F.A. in 1996 from Concordia University in Montreal. She now lives and works in Saskachewan, Canada. She has been collaborating with fellow graduate colleague UK artist Jen Southern since 2002.
www.24elements.net

Jen Southern received her MFA from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada in 1996. She now lives and works in Huddersfield, UK where she is a Senior Lecturer in Multimedia Design at the University of Huddersfield.
www.theportable.tv

Jon Wetherall is Managing Director at Onteca where he has worked at the intersection of Arts, Technology and Training. He has recently run a number of projects, which involve uploading and downloading mobile phone content. These include working with the mentioned Kensington Vision’s Ringtone Billing Platform for Reverse SMS and a facility for communities submitting photos from their mobile phones. Wetherall is also lead technologist on 'Landlines' a major arts research project funded by the Arts Council and NESTA, which uses mobile phones to upload locations of multiple users. Wetherall co-foundered the award winning International Centre for Digital Content (ICDC) where he co-developed the first Digital Games Masters programme in the UK. His experience as a senior computer game programmer at Sony taught him that the most interesting work occurs when Artists and Technologist collaborate.
www.onteca.com

Thanks to Adam Hoyle for programming the Mapper interface.

This project is part of the ITEM program supported by FACT, the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology, UK, NESTA, and the Arts Council of England.
Landlines development has also been supported by the Digital Research Unit, University of Huddersfield and Arts Council England, Yorkshire.