History – Anna Huff

The Homesick Hotline

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The new collaboration project with Kathy Guo is still staying true to our original interests about creating illusion of intimacy and how to simulate care or presence of loved ones who are not here or far away.

Homesick Hotline

Phones can become an isolater when people are around but turn into our sole connection when far away. The Homesick Hotline is a listening library of nested voice menus that will guide callers to specific stories determinded by how they answer questions through the hotline. Callers can then leave voicemails which are then recorded and are turned into more voice menus. The idea is the hotline can grow itself and become an interactive database of sampling family memories and history.

Our timeline

Nov 1

-research family trauma/family love interviews

-research interview tips/styles

-make an email account

-figure out hotline system. Are there ways to hack it?

Nov 8

-Start conducting interviews, start recording them.

-get our interviewees to branch out and interview/record the people they know.

Nov 15

-organize recordings, put them into phone numbers

-start designing the white pages?

Nov 22

-keep collecting/organizing recordings, put them into phone numbers

– designing the white pages? Book of story extracts?

-start making installation

Nov 29

-make installation

Dec 5

-documentation

-presentations

-finalizing project

References

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Wind Phone

In Japan there is a Wind Phone where people can talk on an unconnected phone to speak to loved ones who had passed on. It was built by Itaru Sasaki in 2010 when he lost his cousin, and in the following year the infamous tsunami hit Japan triggering a nuclear meltdown. The gesture is simple but powerful and it is believed almost 10,000 people have made a pilgrimage to speak into the Wind Phone.

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From rick rolling to rejection hotlines, there are so many pre-recorded voices that exist only through our phones. The structure of a hotline is interesting because the expectation is to talk to a person but often just end up interacting with recordings/desk assistants. In regular hotlines, the one number you call is the entry point to an entire system of people. In the Homesick Hotline we hope to reverse that and have the callers become the network of the hotline.

Reading Response: What is Cybernetics?

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Cybernetics is about the essential relationship between humans and machines. Norbert Wiener makes the case for making smarter and more capable machines to free humans from being button pushers or mind numbing computer operators which is a waste of human intelligence. The advancement of machines is actually a humanist motivation and Wiener envisions it as craft movements that use social reform and integration as their central idea.

Feedback loops and AI is essential for machine and human communication and symbiosis. Machines act as a “pilot” or “guide” for humans; just look at phones and computers. These communication and researching machines already act as our external brains. Opening communication and integration between man and machine is important for creating sympathy. The more machines can be humanized, the more we can humanize the systems machines already control and influence like economy and social fabrics.

Cultural Aspects of Reflected Images

Narcissus is a greek myth about a young man who falls in love with his own reflection. When he realizes his love is only his own reflection, he becomes so heartbroken that he commits suicide. He discovers his illusion could never become real and his despair leads to his own death. The myth is supposed to be about the dangers of self-obsession but for me the allure and loss of illusion is poignant to me.

Another version of this story surfaces in pop culture in Harry Potter with The Mirror or Erised. When someone looks into the mirror, their reflection shows what they desire most in the world, and the longing for the things people see in the mirror but can never have in real life, drives people into madness or suicide. In storytelling, mirrors and reflections are used to portray character introspection or reveal a psychological state. Self-reflections reveal alter personalities like in Black Swan, hidden desires like the magical mirror in Harry Potter, alternate dimensions, and passage of time like in 2001: A Space Oddessy. In visual art, mirrors distort reality or displace space like Anish Kapoor’s Sky mirrors.

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Self-reflection started from distorted images in water to polished metal and then finally mirrors and photographs. Catoptomacy, which originates in ancient Greece, was a way to predict the future by interpreting reflections (originally in water) in polished metal disks to interpret patterns of moon beam reflections. This practice is most likely the origin of crystal ball fortune-telling. Mirrors are seen as portals or gateways into the spiritual realm, that the distorted images can give them glimpses into the other side.

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Breaking mirrors or destroying a portrait is bad luck or an omen of death. In myths, vampires or evil creatures do not have reflections or shadows because they do not have souls at all. What is it about the human image that makes it “spiritually tethered” to its original owner? Ironically, instead of being afraid that getting your photo taken will steal your soul, people now want their “souls stolen” by images because that is how immortality is achieved. There are piles of family albums in most homes, social media documenting selfies, and even the hope of one day uploading consciousness into the cloud.

Holographic Imagery and Cultural Interpretations

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A hologram is a photographic capture of a light field using a laser and when lit properly will create a three-dimensional image. The first holograph was invented in 1962 by Yuri Denisyuk in the Soviet Union and by Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks at the University of Michigan. Often confused as a hologram, the Pepper’s Ghost trick is 2D projection reflected through glass. Even though it is not a hologram, I would categorize it as holographic imagery because the intended purpose is to recreate (or imitate) a projected 3D object to be interacted with. It is no surprise Pepper’s Ghost caught on in theatres since the stage is the original platform for manifesting fantasy. Unlike story-telling, theatre adds physical vehicles to guide the imagination and as stage tricks became more sophisticated, the more real the illusions became. What is special about live theatre is that it is taking place in real time and is grounded in that “truth” even if the story is fantasy unlike movies and television which are records of past happenings. “Movie magic” is accepted as common place or easy with film editing but a live performance is respected to be much more difficult. Cultural applications of holographic imagery are made for first hand

Hologram figure of virtual British group Gorillaz appears on stage during their performance at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2005 in Lisbon

interaction. For example, famous singers are resurrected from the dead to perform on stage and politicians can perform live rallies at multiple locations all over a country at once. The famous example is Tupac at Coachella where a life-like animation of the deceased rapper sang and danced with the real Snoop Dog using the Pepper’s Ghost trick. Other musicians and actors have been “raised from the dead” and some bands only perform live as projections like the Gorillaz. Holograms and projection tricks are meant to be seen in person and do not photograph well. They are always experienced live.

The latest development of hologram technology is sense of touch. Japanese researchers from University of Tokyo’s Department of Complexity Science and Engineering (DCSE) have invented the Haptoclone. The Haptoclone can make a hologram of an object, like a ball, and when that holographic ball is tapped, the real ball resting a foot away will roll off its platform. The sensation is very light and feels like a slight brush because the ultrasound waves responsible for the sense of touch must be used at a low power or else the radiation levels will become dangerous. So technically a virtual handshake, or a hug would cost you your life.

Starting from the popularity of the pepper ghost trick, the illusionary phenomena has been used to “resurrect the dead”. The transparent quality makes sense to use the mirage-like images for spirits but even now there is a company in South Florida that manufactures Pepper’s Ghost trick set ups to make a “hologram eulogies” so people can attend their own funerals (Link http://aimholographics.com/ ). What is it about these optical illusions that are used to fantasize about death and the afterlife? Is it that they appear to exist between reality and imagination? Or does it feel like a doppelganger has been created that will live on once you die?

220px-The_Invention_of_Morel_1940_Dust_Jacket The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Casares is a science fiction novel from the 1940s about a device that makes a holographic recording of an entire island for a one week span. When the main character is cast away on the island he is the first to witness the holographic video and believing that it was displaying real people, falls in love with one of the recorded women. The catch of the holographic invention is once you are recorded, you will only exist in the recording and will no longer exist in the real world. The goal of immortality was achieved by the inventor but the immortality is only realized through the perception of others watching the recording. I love seeing echoes of the age-old fears of mirrors, photographs, and even paintings having the ability to steal people’s souls by capturing a person’s likeness. Casares layers more metaphor and depth to his story but the sentiment is still there. The superstitious attitude has now turned to intentional obsession because now we want our “souls to be stolen” by images. There are so many fantasies of “immortality” from Black Mirror’s uploading consciousness to the cloud to Futurist inventions of cryonics and Bina 48.