On February 17, 2005 I took the commuter rail from Providence to Boston, MA with my friend Seth Gass (for companionship and video documentation) to try and find my friend Jenny Frankowski. Jenny is a person that I grew up with since second grade, but I have not been very good about keeping tabs on. I serendipitously ran into Jenny last year (2004) in New York at a subway stop. She was visiting a friend and I was running an errand for my internship. Totally incidental. Since then I have not made contact with her, so I took it upon myself to re-create a serendipitous moment for the first trial of my Conversational Location Project. The only information I had about Jenny, however is that she works in Boston. That’s it. No picture or place of employment, just that she has a job in Boston.

The basic rules for the project are these: 1) I can only locate a person by talking face to face with another person. 2) That means, no phones, phonebook, internet use or anything other than face to face conversation. 3) When a specific direction is given, I have to follow it. Once I have reached the new location, I can ask for more directions. 4) To bail me out in a dead end, I can track down others in the area that I think might be able to help, but I can only do it face to face; I cannot call them for help.

Continue reading about the Conversational Location Project...