062 // come up to my room 2009

Collaboration with Patricia Schraven. (programming assistance: J.T. Rinker)
February 2009. Gladphones - public space interactive installation Come Up To My Room alternative design event.
Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, Ontario

Marshall McLuhan suggested that we cannot visualize while telephoning, as the act demands complete participation of our senses and facilities. This may explain why many people have a strong urge to doodle while engaging with the telephone, either during conversation or on hold. This installation is an attempt to bring the other senses into play in a new relation by creating real time physical visualizations derived from speaking into a telephone.



This project attempts to address McLuhan’s ideas on the telephone, and investigate human-machine interaction when a completely ubiquitous device is used as the interface. The participant simply speaks into the telephone handset as they normally would, unknowingly providing the machine with their voice frequency. This frequency is sampled and sent through a custom piece of software (PD), where it is converted into a pure tone. This digital snapshot of one’s voice is amplified through a deconstructed speaker core whose purpose is to transmit the frequency’s vibrations through what is known as a Chladni plate. A thin sheet of aluminum vibrates to a specific wavelength forcing a fine grain sand into complex geometric configurations that are specific to the voice frequency of the participant. The expectation of the telephone shifts from that of a personal auditory response, to that of a public visual response. As the voice of participant changes in reaction to the machine, so does the visualization that the machine provides.