With a simple text message and press of a button users can have their text messages and camera phones take on a voice, sound and space of their own.

freeSTYLE is a way to make a short live music video using text messages as lyrics and camera phone pictures as graphics.    freeSTYLE takes cellphone communication and turns it into a new category of freestyle text message expression.   Guided by a hip hop beat of choice, the user can hear and see their mobile presence in the form of a live music video.

freeSTYLE was derived out of the idea of being able to use your cell phone to manipulate architecture by controlling the sound and graphics in a space.   Remotely users can send text messages and images to make their voice heard and identity present. freeSTYLE offers the ability to remotely control the collective audio and visual aspects of public spaces with mobile devices. Mobility is constantly defining, recycling, disposing, and reinterpreting the idea of identity. Cell phones offer an extension of and a portal into ones own identity. freeSTYLE exposes the very conscious connection to ones mobile identity by bringing the sounds and visions of mobility to the edges of digital space.

Users can send text and picture messages from their cell phone to the freeSTYLE and have their written text messages show up on the screen with a voice accompanying the text. Simultaneously a hip hop instrumental is creating and guiding the voice and graphics so the text from the cell phone becomes the lyrics and the pictures from the camera phones form the graphics. freeSTYLE has 21 different voices to choose from including male, female, creature, robot, and even a voice that mimics human laughter. Instead of just being read back to the user, the voice is controlled by the beat of the music. Essentially freeSTYLE takes the users cell phone text messages and freestyles their text back to them.

Dana Karwas

Dana Karwas is an artist who is interested in using the effects of technology to create social public spaces.   Dana communicates projects that are rooted architecturally and extend to the edges of social and cultural dimensions.   Her current work focuses on the interactions of identity through networking objects, composing sonic environments, and creating dynamic architectural forms.   Recently she investigated the public social space of suburban parking lots through a self generating architectural installation. Dana has worked with Rafael Viñoly Architects in NYC, 32 Beijing New York, Ibos and Vitart architects in Paris France, Degrezero Architecture in New York and has also studied with Luke DuBois, Kadambari Baxi, Clay Shirky, Douglass Rushkoff, Jean-Marc Gautier, Tom Igoe, Peter Pran, Rene Diaz, and Paola Sanguinetti.   In 2003 she received a bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Design. In 2005 Dana will graduate from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.