CROSS CONNECT

June 2009, Budapest @ Kitchen Budapest

This was an Artist in residency project at Kitchen Budapest, the "spicy" Innovation Lab of East Europe.

‘Cross-connections’ is a term that was commonly used when one call between two people from a landline phone was superimposed by another call making both the conversations heard by all four people involved. Often leading to the four speaking with each other. This is interesting because privacy, suddenly becomes a relative term. It has little to do with isolation but with the hope of not being discovered in a crowd.

Cross Connect - residency project's video from KIBU on Vimeo.

Cross connect (July 2008) from ramyah gowrishankar on Vimeo.

The installation idea consists of two phone booths across the same street. The conversations that happen in the seemingly private space of one phone booth seeps out into the public and disseminates through many floating molecules in the street. The other phone booth allows for others to intervene and join the conversation happening in the first booth thus further distorting the dynamics within a private conversation.

Cross connect intends to explore:

1. The notion of privacy- the feeling of un-discoverability in a space. The more "connected" one is today, the more accessible is his/her identity. (related - surveillance, RFID tags, GPS, social networking sites)

2. The presence of listeners, participants and "hackers" in every communication model.

3. To also look at the nature of conversations that take place. What do people talk about?

This project was made in collaboration with researchers at Kitchen Budapest - Melinda Sipos, Andras Szalai, David Lakatos and Peter Puklus

Exhibition:

Kitchen Budapest One year Exhibition , Millenaris, Budapest. July 2008

How it works:

A few landline phones in the exhibition space allow viewers to make free calls on the condition that others will hear their conversations. This conversation is transmitted through an FM transmitter. The balloons disseminate these conversations. They have a FM receiver and a speaker that receives these conversations and plays them back live.

The balloons have enough weight on them to just about balance their buoyancy so they don't fall down or fly up. They also have a small lightweight propeller along with an IR distance sensor. So if the balloon begins to move down, the propeller slightly thrusts it upwards.

All the components are put together in the form of a disc at the bottom of the balloon, and thus can be reused by just replacing (or refilling) the balloon.

Also at http://kitchenbudapest.hu/en/crossconnect

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