b r i e f : The artist group Satellite Bureau use a GPS drawing tool called Landlines to create dynamic installations and performances. Landlines is a multi-user drawing tool for mobile phone and bluetooth GPS. It is both a programme and a device and it has been the main piece of equipment the Bureau has used while on residency in Banff, in Cardigan Wales, Huddersfield England, and Regina and Canada.

As you walk with a Landlines device, your latitude and longitude are systematically sent via mobile phone to an online database. Coordinates from the database are then redrawn to the local computer.

What is significant about the Landlines programme is it allows routes to be portrayed in real time as they are being created. This near one to one correspondence of 'creating' a path and portraying it at a remote location is a dynamic feature that we want to exploit in making installations and performances.

Landlines was developed through "ITEM", a research and development programme aimed at exploring and developing the potential of new media tools for exhibition and exposition. Organized by FACT media centre Liverpool and supported by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, technology and the Arts) and Arts Council England, the programme is supporting a small cluster of research projects that bring together artists and technologists to explore the possible future directions of new media technologies. ITEM funding was awarded to artists Jen Hamilton and Jen Southern, with Jon Wetherall of the games company Onteca LTD. in 2004.