Public Privacy Hotline, Columbus

2019
Phone, custom electronics and software,
motion sensor, speakers
Dimensions vary by phone
Voice actor: Andrew Kagen

Award of Distinction, COMPAS Visual Arts Contest

Check out an earlier version of the phone in The Huffington Post’s “If This Art Could Vote” project. 

See documentation on GitHub.

Related project: Metadata Radio

Public Privacy Hotline informs listeners about how surveillance impacts their daily lives, reclaiming the telephone as a site of communication and information. Mimicking the very surveillance technologies it critiques, the phone uses a motion sensor to “ring” at passersby and begins “dialing” as soon as the receiver is lifted.

In using vintage landline phones, the work references a time before cell phones and GPS tracking, when the metadata from a phone call might only reveal one's address and when emergency hotline slogans reminded callers they were “never alone.” The emergency now is just the opposite: we are never ever alone, and this loss of privacy and solitude has immense personal and political consequences.

Part of an earlier series of work begun in the wake of Edward Snowden's NSA disclosures, the Columbus-specific iteration of Public Privacy Hotline includes references to Columbus landmarks and geography as well as updated sound clips drawing from more recent revelations about how corporate surveillance threatens our democracy. Previous site-specific versions of the project have included a gallery wall phone for Smack Mellon’s “Of the People” exhibition in Brooklyn, NY and a solar-powered public payphone in Somerville, MA.

Funding for Public Privacy (Somerville) was generously provided by the Somerville Arts Council and Nave Gallery. Thank you to Sam Bobra, Diego Olvera, Qichao Shao, Michael Greenberg, Susan Berstler, and Greg Jenkins for their help with previous versions.