currently

Fall 2007

• Design Workshop
• MC Magazine Internship
• Redial
• Show/Tell Studio

Cocurricular

• ITP Radio
• Stuff for Kids
• The Half Hour Cozy
• Thesis

archived

Spring 2007

• Designing for Constraints
• GUI in AJAX

Fall 2006

• Physical Computing

Other Projects

• Graphics
• Video
• Web

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FINAL PRESENTATION

Phone Numbers

• ITP Asterisk: 212-796-0729
• Calling Card Stories: 646-810-8656
• Guadalajara Virtual Number: +52 (33) 4624 2939

Links

• http://www.callingcardstories.org
• ITP phpMyAdmin
• Dialplan code
• PHP code

SUMMARY

Calling Card Stories uses the functionality of a calling card system to tell stories. You start by getting a calling card with set minutes. Upon dialing an access number you are prompted to enter a pin. You use your available minutes to hear chapters of a story. The stories you will be hearing for this version of the project come from a series of recorded conversations between my family members living in both California and Mexico. Though the conversations jump from cousin to aunt to uncle, common storylines emerge: a death, an upcoming wedding, and God. At the end of the story you learn that the people in my family, as with any family, have very strong opinions regarding these things.

You may hang up at any time during the story, the calling card system will remember your most recent chapter location when you call back. If you reach the end of the story before your minutes run out, you are invited to record a response which will get posted to the Calling Card Stories (callingcardstories.org) web site.

Please note that there is a connection charge applied to your first minute of every call. Surcharges apply to calls made from payphones. A maintenance fee will be charged for every week you keep a balance on your card. You have 90 days to use your minutes before they expire. Other terms and conditions apply.

OBJECTIVE

My goal with this project is to turn the calling card system in on itself. That is, connect the caller to the stories of people who normally rely on calling cards to keep in touch.

I want to do this for three reasons: First, I have an interest in exploring new narrative forms. Second, I want to create a project that deals with the immigrant experience, particularly with regards to the issue of keeping in touch with loved ones abroad. And third, because I love to talk on the phone!

BACKGROUND

My mother is an immigrant from Guadalajara, Mexico, migrating to the U.S. when she was 18 years old. My mother’s family in Mexico is very large. She is the youngest of 10 children, three of whom have also migrated to California. Throughout my life calling Mexico has been as constant as trying to find cheaper ways to do so. Most recently my mother has signed up for an international dialing plan that provides one low flat rate to Mexico instead of dealing with the hassle of calling cards. However, most of my other family members still rely heavily on calling cards for their international dialing.

In addition, it is much cheaper to call Mexico from the U.S. than the other way around. What ends up happening is that family in Mexico will “flash” or make a quick call to the U.S. to indicate conversation availability. The person stateside will return the call. This way the cost of the call is shifted to where the minutes are cheaper.

PROCESS

This project has three components: The calling card system, the gathering of content, and the callingcardstories.org web site.

1. The Calling Card System

• Built with Asterisk, PHP and MySQL. The Asterisk dialplan interacts with the PHP file, the PHP file has access to Asterisk functionality using the Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI). Callers are identified by their phone numbers. These numbers, PIN and minutes are stored in the database. The PHP file updates this information continually during the call.
• Dialplan code
• PHP code

2. Gathering Content

I wanted to automatically record a series of phone conversations in a chain I would initiate with my mother. The instructions were simple:

• Call a member of the family in the other country.
• Pass along the access numbers with instruction.
• You must call a different person than the one who just called you.

I purchased a virtual Guadalajara phone number. I mapped the number to our Asterisk server. When someone in Mexico called the Guadalajara number they were greeted with a message about my project. This message informed the caller that s/he will get to make an international call at a local rate, and that as a part of participating the call will be recorded. At the end of the message the caller would dial the U.S. number after a beep to get connected.

For family in the U.S. to call Mexico, they would dial the ITP Asterisk number, enter my extension, and receive a U.S. to Mexico version of this same recorded greeting.

3. The Web Site and Caller Feedback

At the end of the story in the calling card system callers are invited to record a response to what they just heard. Their response gets automatically posted to the callingcardstories.org web site.

The web site is a very simple Wordpress blog. The recorded responses are sent via email. I am using Shawn Van Every’s ParseMailScript to parse these emails and post the audio content to the blog. I also used his QuickTime Audio/Video Posting Plugin for Wordpress.

PROJECT LAUNCH

The project will go live at the ITP Winter Show

Sunday, December 16 from 2 to 6pm
Monday, December 17 from 5 to 9pm
721 Broadway, 4th Floor
http://itp.nyu.edu/show

My project will be in room 447, the room designated for mobile and other phone projects.

GOING FORWARD

I would like to not rely on phone numbers for identifying entries in the database. I think people would be more willing to use it if it did not store their phone numbers. This would require building some sort of dynamic PIN system, or perhaps a combination of randomly generated PIN and user-selected ID. If this project were entirely web-based (with virtual calling cards instead of printed cards,) these things would be much easier to accomplish. But due to the high cost of printing, I am unable to print cards with unique PINs for this version of the project. For the ITP Winter Show, many cards will be printed with one PIN, callers are identified in the database by their caller ID.

I plan to use this project as proof of concept for my application for the 2008 Digital Artists Residency Program (DARP) at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my mom and dad for being supportive of and receptive to “my cuh-razy ideas.”

I would like to thank Shawn Van Every for all the fish. And for his scripts:

• MySQL query helper function.
• ParseMailScript
• QuickTime Audio/Video Posting Plugin for Wordpress.

Thanks to Patricia and Felipe for helping me troubleshoot the Wordpress audio posting.

 

Calling Card Stories: A calling card system as a storytelling device.

The goal of this project is to tell the stories of newly arrived immigrants.  People new to the United States rely on calling cards to communicate with loved ones in their country of origin. Calling cards offer low rates but at the same time bury a multitude of hidden charges and fees in the fine print. Through this project you will be able to learn more about life in a new country by listening to the recorded phone conversations of immigrants. That is, if you have enough balance left on your card.

Project Summary

I want to create a calling card system as a storytelling device.  I want users to be able to access a story and at the same time apply the functionality of calling cards to the user experience of hearing the story.  As you listen, the balance on your card decreases. Since the stories will be serialized, you can hang up during the story and return to the nearest chapter marker when you call back.  If your balance reaches 0, the system disconnects.

In theory you would have to get another card to refill your balance. For the final project however, you can simply call back and your balance will be restored.  I am doing it this way because I am not producing unique PINs on each card.  Instead, I am using the PIN as an extension that connects you to the story.  There will be two stories, therefore two “PINs” (two extensions.)  I will reproduce only 2 cards.  I will associate card amounts to the phone number of the caller.  When a new number gets added to a database, it gets credited with a certain amount.  Or, when a credit reaches 0 and that person calls again, it receives a new credit.

Flowchart (click to enlarge)

Scenario

Caller dials access number on calling card. She hears a recorded greeting. Meanwhile, Asterisk checks the callerID. If it is blocked, she is prompted to enter her phone number.

The number, whether user-entered or taken from callerID, is entered in a database and immediately associated with 2 fields: one field that gives value to the card (AMT) and one that keeps track of your place in the story (CHAPTER).

The caller is then prompted to enter the PIN printed on the calling card.  The caller’s balance is announced.  The story begins.  The database calculates a fee for every minute the caller listens, with a connection surcharge for the first minute.  This is subtracted from AMT.  Calls are rounded up to the nearest minute.

The story is a series of recorded conversations each 1-4 minutes long.  There are about 5 conversations, and each conversation is considered a CHAPTER.  Between each conversation will play a 20 second clip of interstitial music.  Once a conversation ends, the CHAPTER marker increases.  This way if a caller hangs up without hearing the whole story, or if the caller runs out of credit, then s/he can return the last listened-to conversation without having to start from the beginning.

If the calling card credit runs out, the story gets interrupted with a message announcing the lack of remaining credit and then hangs up.  The caller then has to call back to get more credit, it will remember the conversation location.

At the end of the story the caller is asked if she would like to record a response. She does so and it gets posted on the Calling Card Stories web site.

 

Code Name: Project 2175

Last Spring I started go-go dancing at a bar in Williamsburg. My instructions were simple: dance four sets, thirty minutes each set, wearing as little as possible. I was paid a flat fee and kept the tips. Aside from that there were no other constraints, I had complete creative freedom over my outfits.

I used this opportunity to try some new things. Most of the go-go boys I see follow a similar formula, a simple striptease usually involving American Apparel underwear or a jock strap. What I wanted to do was incorporate a theme or narrative into the stripping component. Here are a couple of pictures of my themed outfits. The outfits involving a striptease received the most response and tips from the audience, particularly the “office exec” strip where I stepped up on the platform in all the elements of a business suit save trousers, stripping until all I had on were the glasses, underwear, and loafers.

I liked how adding a little theater to the simple act of go-go dancing engaged people. During a conversation with my go-go mentor we talked about fun and playful ways to engage people. He told me about how he used to tie Crayola markers to string and attach them to his body, when people tipped they could then write on his body. It was at this point when I started thinking about ways to incorporate technology, particularly sensing and wearable technology, into my costumes.

One outfit I started constructing is what I call 2175. It started with Kate Hartman giving me a helmet on the condition that I would do something with it. I used it to start my 2175 Warrior outfit. The idea behind is that I am a warrior from the year 2175, a post-apocalyptic future of urban and electronic decay. I was inspired by old episodes of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century and the Pompei Club dance sequence from Sweet Charity. The outfit was basically a tattered cape sewn using cheap muslim fabric and a silver spraypainted helmet. And some tighties, of course. (See the rest of the pictures in the Flickr photoset)

I liked the direction I was going with this outfit and started thinking about ways to enhance it with sensors, soft circuits, and of course LED lights. I started wondering: What type of accessories does a warrior from the year 2175 carry or wear? What about a belt? What about a handheld weapon or device? How do these accessories interact with the rest of the outfit? What about visual feedback that acknowledges tips receives and possible encourages it? I must point out that the helmet serves as a wonderful enclosure for electronics, there is about an inch of space between the hard part of the helmet and the soft part that cups the head.

For Project 3 I am proposing an iteration of “Project 2175.” I want to refine the helmet and cape, using the helmet to provide visual feedback for tips received and the cape to respond to movement.

Project 2175 Trajectory

• October 31, 2007 (Halloween): Test out cape and helmet. Wear it out at the parade.
• November 5, 2007: Present in Design Workshop
• November 14, 2007: Go-Go dance with complete outfit at the new monthly party “LoveMuscle” at Happy Ending, 302 Broome St, 10 PM.
• January – March 2008: Enter outfit into a wearable tech fashion show.
• March – June 2008: Evolve go-go act, develop boylesque routine.
• June 2008: Compete for the title of “Best Boylesque Performance” in the Miss Exotic World pageant in Las Vegas, Nevada.

 

What a delightful exhibit! I feel like I was invited into the mind of this artist. I enjoyed so many pieces. I particularly liked the exploding ceramic lamp. The hologram bulbs were a treat. I also really enjoyed the mirror shaped like a half heart jutting out from the wall. It was so simple yet at the same time managed to be so nuanced.

There were some things I did not care for. Particularly, the paper lamps. It’s not that I did not like them, but I did not find them to be as precious as everyone else seemed to. They were fine, but they looked like something my aunt would put in her living room.

 

Design for the Real World
Chapters 9 & 12

I have very mixed feelings about this reading. First, I just can’t help but wonder that if industrial design relies on mass production, can there be industrial design without mass production? If, for example, Ikea did not exist and people got their furniture from a local carpinter (if they did not inherit it,) then would the industrial designer and the carpinter merge back to one?

Second, the concept of “designing for the other 90%” for me raises so many questions that I don’t see raised in the discourse around designing for the other 90%. The biggest question to me is, why is there that “other 90%?” To me, the term “designing for the other 90%” can be rephrased “designing for the accumulation of wealth in a system of global capitalism.” I wish it were called “designing for a new world of redistributed wealth.”

This is not to say that I am against all the design concepts illustrated in the reading. For example, the bicycle and tricycle designs I would consider to be “designing for the redistribution of wealth” because it helps people be less dependent on automobiles and petroleum.

 

I observed Heather and Matt do their show, “Lazers With Lasers.”

http://flickr.com/photos/robotim/sets/72157602613584163/

ITP Radio setup:

• Turntable on a raised platform
• Tabletop microphone stand with microphone
• ITP Radio mixer or “board”
• Computer monitor, keyboard, mouse. The computer tower sits on the ground.

Key Observations:

• DJ will use his/her laptop.
• There are too many cables.
• It is hard to use the computer, which sits on the ground. The keyboard does not fit on the tabletop completely.
• The center space is unusable. This has to do with the fact that the ITP Radio stand is also the stand used for the thesis presentations. The stand has a sound two channel sound mixer built into the center, (separate and inferior in quality to the ITP Radio mixer,) creating a square foot of unusable space.

I asked Heather to configure the space however she liked.
She took the raised platform from under the turntable and put it over the unusable center space for her laptop. Matt suggested hanging the microphones to free tabletop space.