What is the Telebunny?
The telebunny is an experiment in asynchronous voice communication and voice telepresence through physical devices. By calling the number, leaving a voice message, and scheduling a time for the message to be delivered, you can let the owner of the telebunny know that you were thinking about them, and hope that they find some comfort in hearing your special message. Maybe you have a young child at home while you're away on business? Or a special sweetheart who you know will be coming home from work tired and late? When the time comes for the message to be delivered, the telebunny lets its owner know that there is a message waiting for her. Giving it a gentle squeeze will connect the call and relay the message in your own voice.
How did you make the Telebunny?
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The telebunny was constructed using a soft cotton knit and polyester fiber stuffing, a hacked portable phone and an AGI script using the Asterisk Open Source Telephony platform. I made the bunny myself, leaving an open flap in the back to insert and remove the phone's hardware, including the battery, which can be recharged using another phone. This phone's base is plugged into a landline where the telebunny is programmed to receive messages. The original speaker is still intact, making the message audible when the telebunny is close to the user's ear.
Why did you make the Telebunny?
I'm interested in the types of interactions that occur between people, and the technological tools that enable them. Our methods of communication become intricately linked to the hardware we use to converse with one another, and the interfaces that we adapt to overtime tend to have an adverse effect on the conversation itself. In exploring new types of interfaces, I hope to make the user more aware of the interaction taking place and how it is shaped by the techonology that makes it possible.
Earlier this semester I met a woman who had just moved to New York, leaving her 11 month old baby back in Korea in order to come to NYU for graduate school.I started to think about the kinds of interactions that she could still have with her baby while overseas. Talking on the phone would be silly, of course, but hearing the sound of her mother's voice, I thought, must still be an important part of her early development. There should be a new device, suitable for a young child, to facilitate this kind of audio telepresence.
As I was thinking about the telebunny, I also started to think about what this kind of communication, essentially, an answering machine, means to me as well. The telebunny is slightly different in that it is not intended to indefinitely store messages, but the feeling of coming home to a device that holds messages for you, something that is fixed but often surprising, is something that simply doesn't translate into voice mail, which can be checked anywhere, at any time and which displays the identity of the caller before the message is even retreived. I wanted to transplant this feeling of expectancy and surprise into a new device, one that invokes a feeling of comfort and intimacy. In this way the telebunny is really meant to be used by anyone who wants to send a special message to someone they love. It's these simple interactions that occur, enabled by specific devices intended to capture the essence of those intentions that I wish to explore, countering the modern day evolution of ubiquitous "always on" hardware.
Special Thanks
Thanks to Shawn van Every for his awesome Redial class, and his ongoing patience and support. Thanks to Despina Popodopoulis for giving me time to sew and make lovely things. Thanks to whoever designed the Kleptocracy font and to squidfingers for the gorgeous background patterns.