1000 Cellphones debuts at world’s largest media arts exhibition
David Carroll, Sven Travis, Benjamin Bacon, and Haiyan Huang debuted their mobile media installation, “1000 Cellphones” at the opening of Synthetic Times 2008, a media arts exhibition at The National Art Museum of China, Beijing, as a Cultural Olympics venue.
1000 Cellphones is comprised of custom bluejacking and bluetracking software visualizing active devices on four aligned flat-panel displays mounted in the foyer of the museum’s café.
The software extracts the last six digits from discovered device MAC address ID signifiers gathered by the tracking tools. It then converts these digits to an RGB Color HEX value, and renders a 2D perspective particle in virtual space. Device names animate across the screen, revealing radio identification evidence of the most recent 10 devices found.
In addition, devices are bluetooth push “spammed” mysterious photographs to willing device users.
The custom PULL software tools were written in Python, mySQL, PHP, XML and ActionScript 3.0. PUSH tools are “off the shelf” Bluetooth spammers.
- Watch video
- View complete photo gallery of Synthetic Times Opening Ceremony
- View complete photo gallery of 1000 Cellphones Process Documentation
- Follow Ben Bacon’s Flickr stream
