An interesting and old school media prank, as described by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE in OVO issue 12 (SCIENCE) in 1991.
TESTES-3 was the phone number & name of the first phone station (or “line,” as we called it) that Richard, Sumu Pretzler & I created & co-operated. It was operated anonymously & centered around an answering machine that was used to receive input & to play output made from edited versions the input. It didn’t attract much attention until its third month when it came to the notice of reporter Franz Lidz.
As partially explained in his “Underground Telephone Network” article, Lidz tried to get us to agree to an interview by leaving messages via TESTES-3. Given that we considered anonymity to be essential to our functioning communally produced participatory phenomenon we reacted cautiously to his request, in a way that we thought to be consistent with our principles.
Rather than let Lidz interview us, we thought that it would be more appropriate if he interviewed the TESTES-3 callers to help make them realize that they were TESTES-3 as much as we were (albeit in a different way).
