These thumbnails are a selection of computer generated images made by experimenting with the Lcd object in MaxMSP. I made a series of mini applications with a simple graphical and numerical interface that created square shaped designs of 400 x 400 pixels. It was possible to save them in the Pict format or send directly to an available printer.

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Cold Callers

• Never focus on price alone (even in a price driven market)If you win business on price, you’ll lose business on price

• People do not buy for logical reasons, they buy for emotional reasons

• Selling requires commitment from your clients

• How do you deal with call reluctance

• It’s all in the script

• How you can blow it in three seconds

• Establish a guide to Open them up, and close them down

• Softly, softly

• Ask the right Questions and listen to the replies

• Get the person’s name right

• Ask few qualifying questions before launching into an irrelevant sales pitch

• Don’t ramble on, remember those commissions

• Don’t introduce irrelevant information

• Don’t pretend to have knowledge you don’t have

• In this garden only carbon life-forms and superdense silicon tend the automatic, but remember carbon based systems can become mechanistic too

• Don’t sound too eager – it’ll make you sound amateurish and desperate

• Don’t offer too many alternative times and dates for an appointment – it confuses

• Confirm appointments in writing

• Withhold your number

Selected Information source:

Better Business

Outstanding Results

Workthing

Image on the theme of Haptic Radio 1

Image on the theme of Haptic Radio 2

Image on the theme of Haptic Radio 3 (moving image still)

Image on the theme of Haptic Radio 4 (detail)

Human Fingers Tend The Automatic 2

Vividly Painted Farmhouse and Silo

Face of Bjork sketched from a magazine

Computer control has been installed and continuously tested over several days running the video analysis software. The image from the Spy Camera is processed with the video output either projected or appearing on a large monitor via VGA analogue or RCA connectors.

When one approaches the sculpture they see their own image on screen composed into an animated image that stylistically echoes the physical design of the crafted wooden panel. An animated form appears around their head and shoulders that is suggestive of an Icon.

Prior to refitting the enclosure an additional Max code abstraction was placed into the updated patch that automatically searches and downloads anonymous confessions from the internet then repeats them with the Mac OS speech synthesis software. After a phase of testing it was decided to keep this self regulating function as opposed to the original interactive concept.

Detail from the Auto Confessional 2.3 patch

Since it’s modification the sculpture has been exhibited at one of the Wormehole Salon Events at the Whitechapel Gallery London 2006.

Testing the first version of the video analysis Max patch running on a recycled Power Macintosh 7600. The Mac was acquired without the cover just the outrigger keyboard and AV ports card.

The motherboard, drive and power supply now removed from the outrigger the AV card temporarily removed here. The USB and SCSI card wont be used.

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The Crucifix and ornamented wood base is installed inside a custom flight case. The yellow Sony pocket TV is placed on the top left side of the case and connects to the pinhole spy camera in the centre via a 3.5 mini jack at the back.

The right side of the opened flight case is it’s lid. Two appropriated and extensively modified, preprogrammed DJ sampling and sequencing units were fitted inside. The idea behind doing this was that one could approach the sculpture press a foot pedal and digitally record a confession which could be sampled and replayed to a selection of sound loops triggered via the sequencer. The two units worked standalone and did not interface with a midi computer program.

Completion of Stage 2

The sculpture was exhibited in this stage at the DMZ Media Arts Festival London 2003, the Widows Art Centre now called invention.tv Bath 1999, Network A.D. Event 1998 Candid Arts London.

Also at the Baldwin Fine Art Gallery in Salado near Austin Texas USA 2000 - 2001.

Baldwin Fine Art Gallery

Jon, Barry, Miriam, and Bill

Temple Parking Lot

Window Art Centre Bath 1999

It was discovered through exhibiting the piece that the interaction process with the sound equipment wasn’t straightforward, it was too complicated and fragile for public hands on engagement. When the sculpture came back from America it was decided to reclaim the hardware, but to return to this part of the project by addressing the theme with another solution that was more automatic and self regulating.

Work in progress while staying at the “Guest House” in Little London, Old Town Swindon, Wiltshire. During the build a proposal was written to the Millennium Commission to design an installation to be included in the Faith Section of the Millennium Dome based upon the ideas that inspired the Auto Confessional 2. It didn’t get a consideration.

The Crucifix is mounted onto an ornamented wooden base. Underneath is a chamber to house two Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps and the transformer for the Spy Cam and PDA.

Completed Stage 1 ready to install into the flight case August 1998

Download Listen to a sample recording of the Networked Confessional

The Auto Confessional Network is an automatic and self-regulating installation of singing consumer desktop computers that reveal peoples cathartic anonymous online confessions.

Specifically designed software that consists of one server application networked to nine clients that are distributed over a small network that continually download Cyber-Confessions from secular and Quazi-religious websites that offer a form of digital absolution via the convenience of an anonymous posted entry.

The system downloads the resulting information which is parsed into a text buffer and sung by Text to Speech Synthesis in a melodic Canon, a form of structured hymn that is also known as a Round. The Canon is sung by a choir of eight 1998 Apple G3 iMacs and a Graphite Power Mac G4. There is something voyeuristic and compulsive about listening and watching these machines intermittently melodically chant to an audience what is oft ones most private and intimate dialogue in the search for repentance and the desire for absolution. The experience can be altogether funny, beautiful, and profound, to being disturbing, unsettling, and darn right sexually explicit.

Sketches

i-Macs Image

Perspective

Diagram 1

Diagram 2

Diagram 3

Auto Confessional 3 stage 1

Software test January 2nd 2007

Wood, Metal Bolts, Palm Pilot, and Analogue output Pinhole Spy Camera June 1998

The Pilot PDA randomly displayed paragraphs from the book of Genesis by pressing the touch screen. The camera was connected to a yellow Sony pocket TV.