We’re sick-and-tired of the old dichotomy, band v. audience. Our cogitations on the subject led to an idea. This idea is not an ultimate solution to the problem. But we feel it’s an encouraging step. We call it Sh! Mob.
Instead of limiting our performance to 5 people playing music, at select shows we project a real-time multimedia slide-show as a backdrop to the band(s). The content of this slide-show depends on you and your fellow show-goers.
Do you have a camera phone? Snap a picture1 or record a video2 during the listed time. Then, send it via text message (MMS) or regular email to mob [at] thebellbeat [dot] com (might as well add that to your phone contacts). Fair warning, if you’re not comfortable sharing said image or video with a bunch of people live (and the entire internet), think twice before pressing “send.”
Do you have a Twitter account? Update your status with the hashtag #shmob or #thebellbeat. You could also mention @thebellbeat. Any “tweet” containing any of those 3 tags will suffice. Note: Make sure your Twitter profile is publicly viewable.
Moments after pushing “send” your picture, video, or tweet will fly through space, bounce off satellites, and into a series of tubes finally ending as part of our show, or… Your show.
After the show you can check out all the images and videos sent by browsing back to this page and clicking this link. Or check out the tweets by clicking this link.
Send as many pictures, videos, and tweets as your mobile plan allows. Also, you don’t have to be at the show to contribute. You don’t even have to be in the same country. Just make sure you send your pictures, videos, and update your Twitter status during the allotted time frame (listed in Eastern Standard Time at the bottom of each show entry).
1 Accepted picture formats: JPG, GIF (non-animated), and PNG. Pictures must be 5MB or less in size.
2 Accepted video formats: AVI, WMV, MOV, MPEG (1, 2, and 4), 3gp, M2TS, OGG, and OGV. Video cannot exceed 90 seconds.