Please Stay on the Line - Juliet Martin
Project description
The web based artwork "Please Stay on the Line" opens to a dark screen with six payphone buttons on the left. An anonymous but annoyingly familiar recording recites the war cry of telephone communication,
By clicking on the telephone buttons the user calls up different web pages which reveal to narrative threads. One path presents the telephone as a mystical form of technology and the other a story of a dying man who checks his pacemaker over the telephone. On one page a grid of randonly produced telephone numbers can be "played" by runningthe mouse over them. On another, a blank slate invites the user to compose the dying face of an old man through the movement of the mouse. As the man's face is assembled, the message "myheart is in the palm of your hand' is revealed. The title "Please Stay on the Line", begs not only that the user not hang up the phone but also that the man may live.
http://www.rsub.com/thenvelope/pstol/
Requires: Java Applet support.
Also by Juliet Martin
My Computer Never Thinks of Me
http://www2.sva.edu/hereandthere/juliet/eniac