Cab conversations

Daniel J. Wilson, a cab driver/artist/documentary filmmaker in New York, started recording conversations in his cab and put them together into an audio collage. Then his cab became a transportation, performance, and gallery space all-in-one when he played the collage back for passengers.

“It’s this world where people act like you don’t exist, even though you’re three feet away,” Mr. Wilson, 35, said from the front seat of his cab recently. “You get this fragment of a person.” 

Of course, those fragments can have jagged edges. Unlike a bartender, who is expected to at least feign interest in the tales told by his regulars, a taxi driver is rarely used as a sounding board. Yet he is still privy to explosive confessions and earsplitting breakups, office gossip after work and whiskey-induced phone calls before dawn. 

He talks about the process of gathering the sound in a video on his website 9Y40. He also put a book together, an interesting collection of artifacts and notes from his experience getting a New York City cab license.

(via NY Times)