Saint Joe

okay: if you're the (slightly) adventurous type, and if you don't live in San Jose, California, just call 617-712-3060 or 617-712-3061 on your phone or cell phone. Yes, right now. Use the map above (of the light rail system of Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority) to help you answer the questions you are asked when the phone picks up. Pretend you're on the train.

If you are in San Jose, or can get there easily, take this number and your cell phone with you, and get on the light rail, wherever you may find it. Then call the number once you're on the train.

If you're like me, and can't be manipulated into doing random things by being asked if you are "adventurous" or "spontaneous", this is the latest installation by artist John Klima (whom I interviewed for a post last month, if you'll remember.) Klima is not averse to being manipulated into offering studio visits to visiting bloggers, so I got to tread the sacred boards of his Williamsburg studio during my recent New York visit (the occasion of a transportation adventure of my own, since you can't get to one part of Brooklyn from another part of Brooklyn; welcome to American transit, folks, where the lunatics are running the food service.)

The installation, titled "Saint Joe" and created for the 13th Annual International Symposium of Electronic Art, is simple of conception, and very complex in the experience. The phone number connects you to a computer phone system Klima set up, containing a love story told in fragments of narrative: one for each station in each direction. You begin by telling the system where you are (and to a certain extent, who you are.) The system then tells you the story. You navigate from narrative fragment to narrative fragment by telling the system when you've passed the next station. Or, as the New York Times puts it:

By dialing another number from within the city's light rail system, callers can access a ''sci-fi erotic'' narrative by the New York artist John Klima that will unfold differently depending on your particular train route.

For his sprawling story Mr. Klima cooked up a strange cast of characters, including a modern-day incarnation of St. Joseph of Nazareth, for whom the city was named, and a cross-dressing bicycle acrobat who is based on a historical figure. But the plot varies with your stated romantic orientation and inferred location. Once the computer program at the other end of the line identifies where you are and where you're heading, it will start dropping in chunks of story that incorporate a McDonald's, a church or a public urinal that are visible from the train window.

The story will become more erotic the longer you listen, Mr. Klima promises. ''There is a huge amount of narrative that gets pulled together on the fly,'' he said. ''Everything I do is complicated and baroque. It's all a game with a complex set of rules.

... yeah, just call the number and follow the directions. You'll pick it up.

Klima has done a lot of research into the locations, toponyms, and history of San Jose (named after Saint Joseph, Jesus' stepfather, who is a character in the story.) The locality is woven into the story---and is relevant to the telling as you pass each station. Ideally, you'd experience this from the train. I played around with it with my cell phone and a VTA map in Klima's studio, but I'm saving most of the experience for when I return to the Bay Area. (And I'll post more about it when I have been and done.)

In the meantime, the festival is over, so presumably the signs in the VTA with the number posted on them have been taken down, but Klima is leaving the phone system running as long as there is still interest in it (i.e. as long as people are still calling), and he's also still altering and adding to the narrative as the mood strikes him. So call in from afar and be sure to pass the word on to your friends in the Bay Area.

Here are some links to official text about the installation. (He hasn't gotten around to putting it up on his website yet.) And click here for the New York Times review of the exhibition.