Only in the super-wired age of MySpace, Twitter, Google Maps and Kyte would a label leave its hot property for 2009 in a field 173 miles north of Inverness with £20 in his pocket and instructions to book his own tour.
Frankmusik - Picking up supplies?
But that is exactly what forthcoming Channel 4 and MySpace show Live & Lost will be doing with sparky 23-year-old mercurial melodist Frankmusik.
Frankmusik is a natural early adopter, producing his hi-tech pop on his home Mac, using his MySpace to talk directly to his fans, obsessed with livecasting from his mobile. Now the star who calls his music 'Bladerunner Pop' is about to participate in an experiment that is part Logans Run, part reality TV, part human geocaching and part digital hall of mirrors. It's also the world's first completely interactive tour promoted by two major media partners.
Taking artist/fan interaction into futuristic uncharted territory www.frankmusik.com is launched today – a website that will plot his position with mobile GPS on to a live Google Map, day and night. The interactive tour will be the subject of a Channel 4 show broadcast in its entirety in April. Every night of the tour the production team filming his adventures will also upload a daily 'highlights' show exclusively to the Frankmusik MySpace.
Twitter asks 'what are you doing?' Live & Lost asks 'where's Frank?' The big F icon on the map answers. Meanwhile fans can 'flag' themselves on the same map after creating a socially networked fan profile.
If the madcap technological caper comes off, Frankmusik will have made it back to London having played to 5000 people, where a Live & Lost party will celebrate his home coming at Camden Dingwalls on Wednesday 1st April (tickets given out online and by hand on his adventures). Not to mention his debut single proper Better Off As Two out on Monday 6th April. After years of manufactured pop Vincent is taking the genre apart and letting fans look at its insides.
His companions on this cross-country cannonball mission will be a 2 man production team filming for Channel 4. Once his twenty has been spent, Vincent will rely on online followers and his dedicated fans for accommodation, travel, food. Luckily MySpace will be helping him by featuring his real time progress on their music homepage every day. Theoretically he could Twitter 'bacon sandwich needed' and trust in the kindness of MySpacers for sustenance. His Twitter (http://twitter.com/frankmusik), will feed directly onto the Google Map window on the Frankmusik website.
Another Frankmusik-eye-view will be provided by his video blogs and livecasts using his Kyte TV channel. Kyte streams footage filmed on his mobile phone live (you can watch the videos later too). Meanwhile the tour will include a Frankmusik Youtube channel encouraging the people he meets to upload their footage of him there. So theoretically Frankmusik could be filming a fan filming him and we can watch it on his MySpace. Touring 2.0 comes with a real time feedback loop.
Frankmusik's MySpace attests to thousands of friends out there in the UK. Here's his chance to find out how friendly they really are. Never before has a TV show been filmed under such interactive scrutiny. It's certainly live but will he get through it or get lost?