“Sad Portland” by MYNDWYRM/Ben Gansky (2012)

Sad Portland is an phone-based interactive piece made for the South-East neighborhood of Portland. A flyer depicts a map of the area, highlighting a cemetery, along with a drawing of two tombstones whose numerals have been replaced with symbols. At the bottom of the page, a ten-digit phone number features these same signals instead of numerals. If a person chooses to play, they will go to the cemetery on the map, find the tombstones in the drawing, and substitute the numbers of the tombstones for the symbols, calling the Sad Portland Hotline. At this point, they encounter a robotic voice giving them options (“If you are in the cemetery, press 1; if you are in the schoolyard, press 2; if you are in the abandoned lot, press 3; for Sad Portland radio, press 4” etc). There are over 5 hours of content to explore; approximately 50 people participated in the piece over the course of several weeks.

I chose this piece to represent two related skill sets, one abstract and one specific. Specifically, myself along with the MYNDWYRM collective of artists built this piece in Twilio, a web-based phone automation system. (We used OpenVBX for ease of use.) So I have experience building interactions and systems in Twilio/OpenVBX.

Secondly, this piece is one of about a dozen fully realized works I have made that focus on participation and interaction at the border of live gaming and performance.