My colleague Cayden Mak http://thenoiseofthestreet.net and I document Cafe Taza in Buffalo NY because of its location, clientele, and status as an independent business in the heart of Allentown.
We place 250 postcards in Cafe Taza directing participants to a voice mail phone number, a blog, http://tazatalks.posterous.com, and an email, taza.talks@gmail.com; where they are invited to leave personal thoughts in voice, text, or image on any subject they chose as a way for us to learn more about the people who visit Cafe Taza.
The Google voice mail service provides written transcription, which is filled with errors because speech recognition software isn’t 100 percent accurate – what is?
The audio recorded voice mails and Google voice transcriptions complete with errors are installed in Cafe Taza. The clientele are invited to respond or add on to the original transcriptions in a game which challenges the players to predict the errors of Google speech recognition to create an intentionally flawed accidental poetry.
Laura Curry 