The Plesiophone series is a set of four interactive artworks that comment on the evolution of human communication. It uses the medium of the telephone and cell phone. Plesio is from the Greek word for near and is the opposite of Tele from telephone. Each piece attempts to provide an interactive experience to allow participants to step into the future essence of desired communication. Through the pieces we look at the question, "What is our communication future?" Do we want to have a "puff or air" to open our closed ears as in lands from Gulliver's travels?

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Description of PlesioPhones

PlesioPhone 0 - Airphone

In this piece, two people talk to each other through plastic masks around their face and ears connected to each other by a plastic tube. The masks allow two people to talk to carry their private space around with them while they talk. Their voices are meant only for the recipient and are not public property. The tube connects the speakers so that the distance between them is always close and intimate. In a sense, it is the opposite of the public, portable cell phone.

PlesioPhone 1 - PhysicalPhone

In PhysicalPhone, two people communicate with each other through two channels. One is a long distance voice channel and the other is a physical channel formed by touch. PhysicalPhone complements the inTouch system as we explore intimate conversation through touch. In contrast to the force feedback cylinders, in PhysicalPhone, communication can only occur when two people touch each other. When one person calls another they must touch before they can hear each other. We use a simple touch sensitive circuit to detect when two people are touching. Now they can have an intimate conversation. They are physically close, but we process their voice so they appear far apart. If they lose contact, they communication is cut. We use jMax running on two computers to add noise and delay to the speech. This reinforces the virtual distance of the voice channel using a cell phone and the real physical distance of the physical channel. The jMax patches also receive the human contact sensor information to connect the talkers. PhysicalPhone provides the opposite experience to the telephone. It creates virtual distance between people who are physically close. Users have freedom to exchange their voice and thoughts in virtual space, but also maintain their physical intimate channel. It suggests a new style of human communication and physical experience. In a variation of PhysicalPhone, the physical channel can be made remote so talkers can be anywhere in the world. Here body touch becomes virtual but stays physical to link the people always by the two channels.

PlesioPhone 2 - StringPhone

The third piece of the series is called StringPhone. In this piece we engage the talker's bodies to enhance personal and intimate conversation. This piece is like a traditional string phone. Tension must be applied to carry sound. We use both a real string and a virtual string attached to each phone. The virtual string is projected on a large screen which appears to be connected to the real string. This is depicted in the video except we do not have our video projectors yet so we show the piece on a small computer screen. We use force sensors to measure the tension of the string. When one person calls another, they both must pull the string before they can hear each other. If one lets go, the conversation stops. The voice and tension sensor are processed by jMax. When they pull tight they are reconnected. The physicalness of both pulling the string intimately links them through their body. Literally, you can feel the tension in the phone; it gives a sense of strong connectedness with the other talker through the pulled string during the conversation. Stringphone lets you remember the simple, but often forgotten principal of communication which is that communication is a collaboration of both sides and it is fulfilled only through your physical effort.

PlesioPhone 3 - SMSPhone

In this piece, we comment on the future of communication. Currently, short messaging service (SMS) accounts for more than 30% of all cell phone traffic. What does this mean? We comment on this by connecting two talkers on their cell phones through a voice processing system. Figure 4 illustrates how the piece works. Each phone talks to a voice-to-text system such as viaVoice. The talker's voice is converted into a text representation (this is expected to be only a very rough approximation of what is actually said). The text is then sent to the other cell phone and converted to speech using a text-to-speech synthesizer (also available in viaVoice). This works both ways. Thus, each talker communicates solely through text messages. These messages are also sent to each talker using SMS for reading later. SMSPhone provides an experience of future communication. It also emphasizes that the telephone is a contemporary art form enabled by its mass audience. SMSphone on the surface is nothing more than a telephone number, it is the mass audience that collaborates to make it an artwork.

Opportunities for 496 Students

Elements of Project

The PhysicalPhone requires a human touch sensor integrated with our jMax sound synthesis environment. You will need to build this into the final system. The StringPhone needs some force sensor integrated into telephone-like objects and jMax. You will also have to create some additional 3D computer graphics. The SMSPhone is being placed on a server in London, UK. It is created using VoiceXML with enhanced services based on JavaBeans and the Vox Pilot development environment.

Skills Useful

Simple sensor design / instrumentation Linux programming jMax VoiceXML OpenGL Tkogl3.0

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