Concept 2 Talking Box #Lyndon Comments Added

Talking box

Thesis Based on: 

"Our modern built environment drains joy from our lives"
What stance are we taking. Trying to break peoples routines get them to enjoy spaces more. 

Context of Use:  

This installation will be used in bus station or a ferry station.

Again more specific.

Concrete scenario of use

‘A is going get CityCat to work, he go to the ferry as usual, there are two row of  benches all of them face the river, there is no chance to face the other people and talk to them, people sit one by one and A started to look at his phone. Suddenly, a voice came out from the back of benches. It said: “hey, guys, I can not see any interesting on you phone. A and an other people nearby trying to find out what happened, and they both pick up their phone.

installation description

■The installation is a small box with speaker inside.

■This box will be putted on bus station benches.

■The speaker will have personality to talking to people who sit on the benches.

■When people sit on the benches, the box may talking to get their attention, they may invited talking to each other. For example: “hey, how are you?” “I know you are looking at you phone, am I right?” “people next to you told me you are beautiful”.

■People will notice this talking box and get their attention out of their phone. 
There is not a lot of opportunity for reflections. Maybe the box could ask people are they have finished talking how much fun they had?
Do we need to add some recorder or note to get feedback?


Personally like this idea as its create a good start for communication between strangers. And the equipment of this project are quite simple and easily to implement. But, sometimes, people may think their privacy was infringed or they had a important phone call. I would suggest may have a less direct as an opening. Secondly, it will be better to create some topic ahead of project start to avoid awkward silence meanwhile provide a method to measure the quality of project(interesting topic, smile or bad face, how long they spent on specific topic etc).