“SMSage”, an art installation by Tim Redfern and Ralph Borland, currently showing at the Conflux Festival in Brooklyn, is an SMS-driven urban installation that plants a sound murmur in the city when people send text messages to it. The project converts submitted text messages to speech and plays them over a parabolic speaker built into its housing. It is meant to provide a “mad murmur” in the city, scrambling the messages over time, and reciting its phone number to passersby on the street.
SMSage makes surveillance fun – Link
2 thoughts on “SMSage makes surveillance fun”
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“smSage is a device to plant a murmur in the city; a mad murmur, a voice that moves between sense and nonsense, loudness and quiet, accepting and repeating words and phrases, and progressively scrambling them.”
The concept of parabolic speakers was news to me…
” The device is contained in a security camera housing, which contains a parabolic speaker to throw the sound at a nearby surface. The sound appears to come from a point on a wall where the speaker is directed.”
As for me, that is the saving grace for the project.
For much in the same way the MikroKopter inspired “Where’s my wrist rocket….” thoughts, the only thought from this post was “Who the Heck(edit) wants to ADD another mad murmer to a city….”
But the projection speaker idea…Neat!