Hacking Voicemail

Isn't it astounding how much we use our voices to talk to computers nowadays? Whenevever I call customer service, I must first talk to the computer receptionist who wants to direct my call. I picture her as an anamatronic lady from the late 80s, held up with cobwebbed hydraulic pistons. How long have I been on speaking terms with a computer? Instead of feeling taken advantage of by yet another computer, here are a few things you can do to take advantage of the situation.

• Talk to the computer with a thick Accent. Jar Jar Binks makes for a good time.
• Pretend you're 70 and have never talked to a computer before. Say something like "Hi, I'm, calling regarding an issue with my service. I was reviewing my bill the other..." When it cuts you off, just repeat what you said, but louder.
• Just say, "blahbudubadubaduba" over and over again. While neither computers nor humans understand what you're saying, computers invariably give you the benefit of the doubt and sincerely apologize when they don't understand.
• Of course, you can always say "customer service representative" over and over again. If the computer insists that it's only trying to help you by correctly directing your call, argue with it.

At any rate, I decided to hack my voicemail. I got a Skype account and called myself and a friend to capture the default prerecorded voicemail message. Then I edited it in Adobe Audition, and put it back into my phone.

The first draft of my altered voicemail was just the vanilla regular version of the default voicemail plus the woman saying "one is the loneliest number." I made it from the following audio clips:

1, is, the, 'l', tone, leave, message, number.

But it didn't sound right, and a lot of it was because of the limited source material I had. A possible answer for this is to drop ten bucks into a Skype account to capture more from Cingular's voicemail interface (that thing you listen to when you retrieve your voicemail). She talks a lot there.

So I ditched that effort and tried to imagine what would happen if the anamatronic lady broke down - here's what I came up with.

Voicemail Message.

And here's a screenshot of the audio mix of the 'or' sequence at the end of the message:

Click to enlarge in new window

I've also made a customizable version for anybody to use. Here's how:

1. Download this file
2. Dial into your voicemail and navigate to change your message
3. Play the file, pausing when you should say your name
4. Say your name
5. Continue to play the rest of the file

Enjoy!

Wiremap 256

So while I was building this, I knew that there was not much of a margin of error, and quite a few opportunities for error to add up. Each wire uses 4 pixels, and each pixel is only about a millimeter wide. Accounting for the lame straight edge (a taught string), inacurate drilling, and blurring of the projection image, I was prepared to cut every other wire if blurring was too much. Accordingly, while I wanted to call it "Wiremap 256," I decided to lay off until I was certain that there would actually be two hundred and fifty six wires in the final project. Well, I finished putting it all together and callibrating it this week, and am proud to call it Wiremap 256. Have a look:

[youtube]gtNXEXppoS4[/youtube]

Like always, the video isn't really a good representation of the experience of standing in front of a volumetric renderer, but hey, you sorta get the idea.

I mention some Java applets in my video, here they are:

• http://www.phedhex.com/wiremap/256/calib/
• http://www.phedhex.com/wiremap/256/globe/
• http://www.phedhex.com/wiremap/256/cube/

Feel free to take a look at the source code and play around with it (a link to the code is available at the bottom of each page). All of the programming was done in the Processing environment. If you have any questions regarding the code, feel free to email me.

Wiremap 1.02

Since I quit my day job, I've been focusing most of my efforts on building the second version of the Wiremap. Here's a video explaining the process of a big Wiremap.[youtube]eHM2d0MKzdo[/youtube]

This was filmed about a week ago. Since then I've drilled all 256 holes and sanded it down. In order to elevate the large piece of plywood, I constructed four booms. Take a look:

The boom is a vertical iron bar stuck inside a ready-mix concrete base. The container is a modified bed riser (here are some images as an example of what I mean by that), with the tops cut out with a jigsaw. And here's just one of em:

So after I mixed the cement and poured it into the bed risers, I propped up the metals bars using a level, making sure the bars were sticking straight up.

And here's a close-up of the base:

The cement is still drying, so I'm going to wait another day before I set up the planks. Sometime in the next couple of days, though, I should be able to drop the strings and get a first draft up and running.

Welcome to the Phedhex Blog

I've moved everything over from phedhex.blogspot.com to this site, www.phedhex.com/blog. This Wordpress blog software is pretty flippin' sweet - it did most the work for me. I'll still have to categorize my posts, fix the broken images (my blogger account won't let me hotlink em), and design and build a theme for this site. At any rate, welcome to the new home.

YouTube Anaglyph Dancing Video

I have a thing for 3d glasses. Here's a pic from a blog entry of long ago:

When I made this photo sometime in February, I thought it'd be fun to make a 3d dance video.

In order to make a 3d movie, what you do is you take two camcorders and you separate the lenses about eyewidth apart. You film a scene with both lenses simultaneously, and you get some video editing software to filter it through to make a moving 3d image.

So sometime back in July I did just that. I borrowed a friend's camcorder and filmed me freestyling. The dancing ain't my best, but the 3d effect came out pretty good.

Just FYI, to really get a sense of what's going on here, you'll need to get yourself a free pair of stereoscopic 3d glasses from rainbowsymphony.com. I'm not exactly sure why they're givin em out for free, but heck, I'll take.

[youtube]7hw5fPjX2Ts[/youtube]

PS. If you want a better version of this video, get a hold of me (hwang.al at gmail dot com) and I'll email you the .avi so you can fullscreen it. It turns out that it looks way cooler when it's bigger.

Dancers dance in a 3d medium - we weren't meant for video. It's the difference between a painting and a sculpture. Some forms translate well, liquid and tuts, while other forms don't, miming, digitz.

Forms translate differently because the natural inspiration behind them translate differently. For liquid you have the sine wave, for tuts you have ancient Egyptian wall paintings.

My inspiration for miming is the everyday 3d objects that I encounter. I need real space in order to create real things, and I want to assume that anybody watching has access to that real space. When I digit, I'm building 3d contours like a digital wireframe, or I'm traveling across space like a centipede. These are volumetric, and they don't flatten as nicely as, say tuts.

So this video succeeds in adding weight and texture to my body - and the digitz and miming render nicely.

Hip Hoppin and phedhex.com

Thanks for everyone for bearing w/ the dry spell of blog entries (even though most of you reading this are probably geeky enough to be plugged into the RSS). At any rate, back in March I was featured as a dance teacher in Cao Fei's opening at Lombard-Freid. Other than the ritual of free wine and cheese that is the "Chelsea Art Opening," I got to watch myself in a video teaching old Chinese people how to dance hip hop. There was even some footage of me doin some breaking of my own.

I thought that would be the last I'd hear from them, but sometime last month they sent me a media packet. Not only does it include two large prints of me gettin jiggy w/ it, it also includes a sticker sheet, with two stickers of me - one of me pulling a handplant, and another of me teaching an old Chinese guy how to raise the roof.

Have a looksee:

Here's one of those large prints:

And the other...

This is the sticker sheet. That's right, I'm on a sticker:

Here's that first print, but in sticker form:

And, the best for last:

In dance news, I'm scheduled to work with Morgan Murphey, a friend and in a piece where I dance in my underwear. Rehearsals start as soon as MMurph gets back to the city in the first week of September. I'M GONNA BE A DANCER MOMMA!!!

In digital news, I bought www.phedhex.com, where I've set up a Wiki to document all my digital work.

Also, I plan to move up outa this blogspot joint and into a phedhex.com hosted Wordpress blog. For a casual reader, this doesn't mean much (except that you'll go to www.phedhex.com/blog), but for a geek RSS reader, you can subscribe only to Movement posts, only Digital posts, or if you wish, you can continue to feed into all work. I should expect to have that up in maybe a week.

Till next time...