As a telematic service that allows multiple constituents to fluidly participate in broadcast-like scenarios through their mobile devices at the flick of their thumbs and the swipe of their trackpads, it affords a new kind of radio-making that is built for live scenarios, where your hand is on the dial. It is cheap and quick and easy, and more akin to live sports broadcast, but for art and activism. I see it as a compliment to the canned podcast radio magazine format.

Listeners get an immediate way to call in and contribute. Producers can make shows by themselves, in collaboration with others, at remote locations or on site, and/or in synchronous or asynchronous modes. Both listeners and producers can hop-on or off the stream at will. It all works in a browser, outside of app stores, and is a different kind of networked radio where the boundary between listener and producer can be strict or blurred.

The underlying transport of Mezcal is similar to other teleconferencing software. What sets it apart is that the network configuration is centralized within a Multi-point Control Unit (MCU) that minimizes bandwidth at scale. Furthermore, the Mezcal interface provides audio-specific features such as mixing of multiple audio sources, re-streaming to Icecast, fingertip access to various online media archives, etc. The project is at a working beta status and in constant development in collaboration with activists, artists and researchers from the USA, UK, Netherlands, Italy, Colombia, and Australia.

Not unlike how a piano provides its “users” with a vast set of possible acoustic outcomes - everything from classical to jazz and noise - I see Mezcal as an instrument for diverse practices in transmission and sound art, for providing alternative modes of point to point communication for social movements, and as a new technological form of environmental and journalistic reporting.

The biggest difference between Mezcal and other telematic software is in its vision. I don't see this research as a tool for industry or even for band practice (not that these things are bad); I see Mezcal as an expressive instrument for diverse sound, music, and transmission practices, for participatory and open-ended artistic performance, for growing social movements, and for live environmental reporting, all under expanded musical pretexts.