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Imagine walking into a museum and having a tour guide take you through an exhibition at your own pace through your mobile phone. This type of virtual tour guide is rapidly becoming commonplace and was recently showcased in Amsterdam, where KPN's Mobile Museum Guide enabled visitors to receive additional information at a number of participating museums. As visitors approached an exhibit, they automatically received information about it via Bluetooth communication.

Imagine walking into a museum and having a tour guide take you through an exhibition at your own pace through your mobile phone. This type of virtual tour guide is rapidly becoming commonplace and was recently showcased in Amsterdam, where KPN's Mobile Museum Guide enabled visitors to receive additional information at a number of participating museums. As visitors approached an exhibit, they automatically received information about it via Bluetooth communication.

Art is also finding a new audience outside of the gallery. Start Soma, a San Francisco gallery for emerging artists, has launched Start Mobile, the first retail art gallery in the world to sell original art for mobile phones. Curated by Start Soma founder John Doffing, the service allows thousands of original works of art from prominent emerging and underground artists to be downloaded onto mobile phones.

"Mobile phone wallpapers have long been limited to banal graphics, contrived iconography, and blurry clip-art of models in bikinis," says Doffing. "With Start Mobile, we are bringing original artwork to a brand-new medium."

Musicians in the UK are using the ubiquity of the mobile phone to perform concerts to audiences outside the confines of the concert hall. The Philharmonia Orchestra has become the first UK orchestra to allow its live performances to be recorded for both audio and video on the mobile phone. A very different group of British musicians - the Rolling Stones - has also been pushing the boundaries of mobile music by offering fans live access to European concerts during a recent tour. With technology from Single Touch, subscribers were able to use their phones to connect straight to the band's sound board.

Theater is also finding a home on the mobile phone. The UK Theatre Network is allowing theatergoers to find out more about a musical or play before going to see it. Subscribers can watch short videos providing theatre news, reviews and interviews with the stars of the stage.

Another service, Call Cutta, is taking theatergoing one step further, with audience members becoming active participants. Billed as the world's first mobile theater, Call Cutta originated as an interactive walking tour involving mobile phones in Kolkata, India.

With Call Cutta, audience members go to the theater where, instead of getting a ticket, they are given mobile phones and instructions to go to a particular building or location. They then get a call from one of Call Cutta's call-center agents turned performers, who guides them through the city, past historic buildings and sights where they have to find various clues that connect to an overall story.

Daniel Wetzel, a member of Rimini Protokoll, the group behind the concept, says it has already proven very popular. When Call Cutta was performed in Berlin, it attracted 1700 theatergoers over a five-month period. The plan is for the concept to run in eight cities simultaneously over a year.

"The mobile telephone means that the contact between the actor and the spectator is much more intimate than it is from the stage," Wetzel says.