1-800-TELL-ALL (1997)

1-800-TELL-ALL (1997)

With Scotty Brookie and Elizabeth Stephens

Phone booth, voice mail, surveillance camera, LED sign, computers, data and slide projectors, window screens.

1-800-TELL-ALL, a collaboration with artist Elizabeth Stephens and computer expert Scott Brookie, used popular forms of communication – telephone, voice mail, video, store display – to bring people’s private thoughts and identities into the public arena on New Years Eve. People lined up to enter a phone booth erected in downtown Santa Cruz. This almost extinct form of private/public space became a vehicle for both shelter and exposure as the interface to three prominent second story windows. A voice mail system presented a menu of personal questions like “If you could say anything to anyone, present or absent, what would it be?” A video surveillance camera captured participants’ images. Upstairs and out of sight, 4 computers, 3 projectors, and a crew of rotating volunteers created a feedback system in which people and their words were randomly projected on the windows and viewed from the street, sandwiched between other images that suggested the passage of time. This piece became a kind of public confessional wishing well.