Art

pl. 01

PHONEBOOTH

Made from an original Pacific Bell payphone purchased on eBay, PHONEBOOTH is a dystopian exploration of the absurdity and isolation that arises from the modern communication era. Upon picking up the receiver, visitors find themselves willingly subjected to extended periods of waiting on hold as they engage with the installation and attempt to navigate a complex phone tree while listening to continuous ai-generated advertising content. To modify the phone, I kept much of the original circuitry, added a Raspberry Pi to manage phone tree UI and record audio files, and replaced the speaker, mic, and wiring to up the audio quality. Other modifications included a dynamic LED array, sonar sensors to activate the ringer when a person walked by, and a megaphone on top to lure over potential customers with persuasive ad copy. Debuted on the playa in 2023. Done in collaboration with Emmett.

PHONEBOOTH official website

Photos of PHONEBOOTH construction

pl. 03

Understanding beluga communication through sensorial artworks and immersive sound experience

I worked with the artist Antoine Bertin to develop a exhibit that allows humans to explore and better understand beluga whale communication by converting recordings of contact calls—vocalizations belugas use to coordinate with each other and signal their unique identity—into 3-D latent-space representations using a specialized audio autoencoder model. Antoine and his team created sculptures from latent representations that humans can interact with and move through in physical space, letting us inhabit the “acoustic space” occupied by the whales.

The work was presented at the 2024 CurieuCity Festival in Brussels as part of an immersive listening experience in which Antoine invited the audience to interact with physical representations of beluga calls while being immersed in undersea soundscapes and audio of beluga dialogues.