OVO

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). We played the recording of Lidz’ proposal as our outgoing tape for a while, adding our own disguised voice suggesting that people leave their phone numbers so that we could forward them to Lidz – thus enabling him to contact them. We compiled the responses onto one tape (mixing in our own phone numbers with theirs so that we could test how Lidz would follow through – if at all). We then telephoned Lidz, &, after a brief explanation in our nasal & rhythmically regulated TESTES-3 voice, played the recording for him to write the information from. Contrary to Lidz’ claim in his article we know he didn’t try calling them all because he never contacted us at the home numbers that we provided him with.

Some trouble did ensue for us when Lidz told the phone company that we were using his voice on our answering machine without his knowing who we were. A phone company employee called us & explained that is was a violation of FCC &/or Public Service Commission regulations for us not to identify ourselves on our tape. I tried to explain, in a roundabout way, that it was important to us to continue unidentified. A solution was reached when it was realized that someone could publicly take responsibility for being connected with our outgoing messages without that someone having to be anything more than a cooperative front. The obvious candidate for such a position was Lidz since he was the one who had stirred up the trouble in the first place. We suggested this to him (again via the phone & in our disguised voice) and he agreed. The ironic climax to this was that many of our tapes referred callers to Lidz (c/o his newspaper) for more information about us – without Lidz every knowing who we were.

We had originally wanted our phone station & number to be VD-RADIO but we had been told that number wouldn’t be available until June or July, so we started with TESTES-3 instead. As the availability time approached, we decided that with VD-RADIO rather than keep it cloistered at the center between the three of us we would make our end of the project open to more people. In order to do this, we thought that it would be best for us to be no longer anonymous.

Our idea was to give Lidz such a sensational interview that the resultant spectacular article would broaden our base of participants with notoriety. We started by revealing that we were TESTES-3 to a woman named Joan who was an acquaintance of ours & who had been one of the earliest TESTES-3 callers. We asked her to be our accomplice. We called Lidz & robotically told him that if he were to be at the Western-most phone booth of two phone booths at the comer of a particular intersection in Baltimore at a certain time & date that he would receive further instructions.

When he arrived at the phone booth Joan was already waiting in the one adjacent. She called his booth & told him she was right next to him & that she was supposed to take Lidz in her car to a parking lot next to the downtown prison. He obliged by going with her & she lied by telling him that she didn’t know who we were & that she had simply called TESTES-3 & we had convinced her to cooperate. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Lidz, Sumu Pretzler followed than in his camper van.

Joan got lost & finally pulled into a convenient parking lot. Sumu pulled in next to her, had them get out of Joan’s car and into his van. They were required to put on special vision complicating glasses in order to be permitted to go any further towards the interview. Lidz put on glasses with lenses made from prisims which substantially abstracted his perception of space. Joan was given diffraction glasses. It was night-time – so the distortions were further aggravated by the main light sources being headlights & street lights. They were both given paper hats (in the form of papal hats) to wear. Sumu drove them around town, playing specially chosen music on the tape player, on a labyrinthian long ride to confuse their sense of whereabouts, until his van broke down.

The breakdown forced him to call another TESTES-3 accomplice, John Ellsberry, who had to go to where the van was to give it a hot-shot. Sumu finally made it to the complex of alleys behind where our TESTES-3 headquarters were where he let Lidz & Joan out & hand-led them through a pedestrian alleyway to where Richard & I awaited them. The alleyway was dark & deserted. At the beginning of a short dead-end, Richard & I stood wearing the same types of hats that they were & diffraction glasses & were holding flashlights under our chins to heighten the dramatic lighting. John’s camera flashes added to their already substantially distorted vision as he took photos of Joan & Lidz being nudged down a trash-filled stairwell into a decrepit basement.

In order to reinforce the impression that TESTES-3 was a guerrilla operation we had made the house seem even more derelict than it already was. The basement came with a rotten floor with large holes in it that was dangerous to walk across and, just a few minutes before, half of the building’s power had blown out, so we hadn’t needed to alter anything down there. The basement to first floor steps were very narrow & the walls were spray-painted. At the top, the kitchen was made invisible by a gauzy hanging (and by darkness) which directed them through another slightly wider hallway toward the front steps leading to the second floor.

At the end of this hallway, there was ordinarily a wide entrance into a living room on the right which we had covered with a precariously balanced approximately 8‘x6′ wall covered with graffiti. As Lidz felt his way gingerly down the hallway (the prism glasses made walking very difficult) he touched this wall & it fell with a gigantic crash breaking various things in its path. That was even better than anything we’d planned. We guided them up to another floor & took them into my bedroom where the TESTES-3 machine was hidden. They were directed to sit on a large water-bed as yet another contribution to the feeling of lost equilibrium. They rolled around awkwardly on the bed with the only light in room being a strobe.  The whole time Richard & I had been speaking sparsely in our clipped & quasi-inhuman voices.

By now the impression that we had made was so bizarre that Richard threw a bit of contrast in by offering them beers & asking them if they’d like to listen to the Rolling Stones. Lidz asked if it was okay for him to take his glasses off – saying they were giving him a headache. I put on a Creature of the Black Lagoon mask & Richard put on a ski mask & we consented to the removal of the glasses. Lidz’ semi-restored (the strobe was still strobbing) normal vision revealed two men in masks rather than the two bespectacles & be-hatted figures had seen fragmented previously. We showed him the TESTES-3 machine & tamed on the monitor as a call came in. Our outgoing message tape had someone singing “they’re coming to take me away, hoho, heehee, haha… ” montaged with a multitude of other materials – yet another facet to add to the surreal feeling of the whole situation.

Sumu Pretzler returned from parking his vehicle & we all adjourned to a different bedroom where an overhead where an overhead light was on. We removed our masks & the interview began. The room had been rigged with tape-delay & we punctuated the atmosphere by blowing though noise-makers that echoed like pterodactyls flying in a canyon.

Needless to say, we expected Lidz to go into great detail about the ordeal he had been put through to get his story. Imagine our surprise when the ironic climax to all this was that Lidz didn’t mention our Lidznap at all. The joke was on us.

(from OVO 12 SCIENCE November 1991)